Japanese Breakfast Singer on Melancholy Album, Tour Coming to Mission Ballroom

Lyrics about Greek mythology, European Romanticism, "incel eunuchs," muddy ATVs and more paint the fourth record from indie-rock band Japanese Breakfast, dubbed For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women). Released earlier this year on Dead Oceans, the album feels at once equal parts tongue-in-cheek and earnest, as well as wholly melancholy.

Ahead of the band's Melancholy tour stop at Mission Ballroom in September, principal songwriter Michelle Zauner, the prolific vocalist and guitarist behind the band and the writer of the memoir Crying in H Mart, spoke with Westword about the album. Touching on the irony of desire in the wake of successes she has long worked toward, making sense of relationships and watching people hurt others and themselves, all while growing older, her work on For Melancholy Brunettes was a deliberate shift away from the bombastic and bright Jubilee, turning to contemplation instead of extroversion.

"I think after Jubilee, which was such an extroverted, joyous record, it felt really natural to almost like… when you are hanging out with friends for a whole week, the next week you want to just be alone and read a book or something," Zauner reflects. "So I think that after expressing that side of myself, it felt really natural to then want to make something that I knew visually was going to be a darker palette, and sonically it was going to probably move in that direction, too."

For Melancholy Brunettes indeed boasts a much darker lyrical palette than Jubilee, alongside self-referential lyrics about "muddy ATVs" and musical "shuffles," as well as a surprising yet welcome feature from Jeff Bridges on "Men in Bars."

For an album that's so reflective, however, the lyrics can also be read in jest at many points, even down to the title's seeming allusion to how many albums are downplayed to the category of "sad girl music." But like so many releases, that label does not fit Melancholy, which paints broad swaths of scenery with a down-tempo brush, and touches on some deeply personal topics for Zauner — primarily through lots of classical imagery. Zauner says that Melancholy has a lot to do with relationships: watching people fall prey to similar temptations over and over again, being afraid of becoming a mother and what that will take away from her, and other topics. Those who have read Crying in H Mart will be familiar with Zauner's thoughts on some of these themes, and many of the album's lyrics feel like they go hand in hand with those reflections.

"It's a record really about getting older, and about relationships that are stuck in a certain kind of cycle, or really bittersweet interactions of people that are constantly falling to the same kind of temptations like accidentally hurting other people or themselves, and being constantly tempted by this," she notes. "It's like something that draws them, even though it's the death of them."

This is especially evident in the single "Orlando in Love," in which Zauner riffs on a hero tempted by sirens, following suit with the 68.5 cantos from Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo (also later captured by John Cheever). Even in a track with such serious subject matter, Zauner doesn't shy away from innuendo:

"Orlando in love writes 69 cantos for melancholy brunettes and sad women," she writes.



Zauner says she initially wanted Melancholy to be a creepy album, which is part of why some tracks ring with an eerie tone, whether lyrically or musically, such as "Honey Water" and "Mega Circuit." The latter, however, also leans further into her dual-edged, murky sense of humor, calling upon scenes such as "plotting blood with your incel eunuchs," "shooting blanks off a blacktop surface" and "sucked you off by the AC unit," before plunging into its final refrain:

Well I better write my baby a shuffle good,
or he’s gonna make me suffer the way I should.
Deep in the soft hearts of young boys so pissed off and jaded,
carrying dull prayers of old men singing holier truths.


He played a major role in shaping the album's sound and had a "really special" inclination as to what each song needed, she says. While most of the songs had been written on acoustic guitar, Mills knew what guitar to put in her hand for a given track, she notes. Often it was acoustic, even if she had intended to play electric on certain parts.

"He really feels like a song needs a certain guitar," she explains. "He's good at picking what the mood of the song is based on, and like the wood or whatever. And a lot of times, for the songs that I played guitar on, I was always handed an acoustic guitar, whether or not I was like, 'Oh, just give me [an electric]. I don't even get to play electric on this one?'"

This move shows up on "Little Girl" and "Leda," a pair of delicate acoustic ballads with yet another round of scathing, meandering lyrics discussing people's habits, familial relationships, and reflections on the role of men under the thumbs of Grecian gods. "Oh, you always take it way too far. Is it the bottle or blood? I can’t relate to you at all."


Zauner sets some of the scenes in her book at super-DIY music spaces she'd played: coffee shops, people's basements, pizza parlors and other places "not even like the Larimer Lounges of Denver" in terms of their size and venue notoriety. Discussing these, she offers warm encouragement for musicians coming up in their own DIY scenes to keep writing, performing, and pursuing music regardless of how busy or chaotic life can be.

"I would say, if you really love it, there's no real reason to not do it," she says. "I always did it, when I was working jobs, there is a way to keep doing it, and hopefully this will add up to where you want it to go. And the real reason you should be doing it is because you have to, so just make time for it."

Japanese Breakfast, Saturday, September 6, Mission Ballroom; Ginger Root opens. Get tickets here.