Sad Girls, Assemble: Japanese Breakfast Is Back with a Full Plate of Feelings on Heartbreak
Words by Kate Henderson
Since its release date of March 21st, The For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) album has reigned at the top of my rotation. When I found out Japanese Breakfast would be returning for a two-show stop in Philadelphia, the band’s city of origin, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snag a last-minute ticket. It felt so necessary to see the anthology of work that soundtracked my past three months in the very birthplace that formed so much of its context. The energy of a hometown show is always palpable, but this one felt truly special as it signaled the tour’s spring break. I could feel the excitement settle in like a magnetic pull, leaving me marveling at the musical genius born of — and infused with — the musical DIY spirit of the city as I left The Met.
In only 32 minutes, this album grabs you with a white-knuckle grip that’ll have you lamenting over it faster than your latest situationship left you (brutal, I know). In true spell-binding fashion, Michelle Zauner takes the messiest parts of relationships and poignantly channels that hope, sorrow, and fear into melodies that conjure up both ghosts and fantasies of our loved and almost loved ones.
The stage transported us to the spitting image of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus with an orange spotlight above Zauner strumming her jet black acoustic guitar. Waves and vast cloud cutouts channeled the feeling of being sat in the eye of a storm. Like a pearl in her white dress, set at the base of a giant seashell, a haze of smoke drifted over as gentle flute and seraphic sounds of chimes filled the room with the opening track of the album “Here is Someone”. This song introduces what is my definition of the album’s thesis statement: to love intensely despite the natural risk. What this song captures is the intense yearning we feel before meeting someone, and how the person we end up mourning is often just the other side of that same longing. In Orlando in Love she says “As if the sea had bore her to be an ideal women / She came to him from the water like Venus from a shell / Singing his name with all the sweetness of a mother / leaving him breathless and then drowned,” the imagery of being lost at sea is painted while trying to stay afloat in the push and pull of the tumbling waves of relationships, and with this, Zauner mirrors the same nakedness that Venus bares in the infamous Italian Renaissance painting.
Photo Credits: Pak Bae
Like a rip current, electric guitar pulls you under in the beginning bars of “Honey Water” which embodies how I think the opening chapters to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves would sound. Some of the best lyricism of the album takes place in the bridge of the song, “In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in / Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ‘til your heart expires” which hits the same way as being pushed into the deep end without a big enough breath, you can almost feel the embarrassing tinge of burning after water goes up your nose. It captures the feeling of simultaneous betrayal and desperation that creeps up on you the same way as any unexpected storm, like being lost in the sea of a tumultuous relationship. The red stage lights blinked like wailing sirens as the most painfully invigorating crescendo built up in the final minute and a half of the track. Nobody’s eyes could peel away until the final cord, like holding your breath underwater for just the right amount of time that is too long.
Zauner introduced my favorite track “Picture Window” on stage with a laugh while admitting its genesis came from her (direct quote) “crippling anxiety”. Seeing this live was an all-consuming paradox. The view from my balcony seat offered up a picturesque scene begging to be framed by a windowpane. Zauner’s vocals transfixed us all as she wailed “All of my ghosts are real / Heartbreaking like a punchcard / Keeps his mouth shut / Keeps his mind fixed and well hidden / You dream enough for two, dear / Picture window / Looking out on somewhere else” offering a stomach dropping reality check that sometimes everything a person can offer you is exactly what is right in front of you — imperfectly framed. This track can serve as a reminder that we all need perspective to properly absorb and digest a relationship, and to decipher how to frame it after the fact.
The album’s most popular single “Mega Circuit” probes modern-day masculinity in a way that shines a light on the darkness and ugly truths of brooding boys who think they’re being deprived of romance. To me, this song glares at the way love is viewed as commodity, “I better write my baby a shuffle of good / Or he’s going to 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 cutting holier truths” it underscores this warped idea of love being a transaction — something owed — while summoning the mourning tied to being trapped by a reductive phenomenon. It’s a tasteful sad girl anthem, carrying a justified amount of bitterness, and rich with evocative ideas — ones that echo “Savage Good Boy” from their prior album Jubilee. You can almost hear the intuition of knowing you’re making a bad decision. Like a live wire, this song forces you to unplug from that outdated concept and consider what might happen if you channel your energy elsewhere – into a better circuit of habits, one that doesn’t leave a trail of destruction or blow fuses on the way to the heart of heartbreak.
What’s most special about this project is that it’s the band’s first time breaking out from their DIY production style. With the eccentric and dynamic touch of Blake Mills, there is a freshness to this album that makes it feel like a new chapter for the band has begun. Personally, I am most familiar with Mills’s productions for Andrew Bird’s “Capsized”, Lucy Dacus’s “Ankles”, and Fiona Apple’s “Container”. His track record of balancing mature, dark themes with a lighthearted, tactful flair – especially on matters of the heart – does not go unnoticed on this album.
The multitudes of heartbreak Zauner experienced to create this album are a testament to the versions of ourselves we leave behind. Whether it’s versions of ourselves frozen in time with people we’ve outgrown or with a past city we used to call home, you can feel both the gentle and thunderous moments of grief throughout these tracks – mourning that former self. The For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) album has been haunting me with memories that aren’t even mine, especially because the place I live now was the backdrop for many of Zauner’s stories on love (ironically) in the City of Brotherly Love.
Get yourself a plate and serve up this album, especially if you need a reminder of the love we’re still capable of giving, imperfect and intense, and the heartbreak we should feel grateful to bear. Maybe even come back for seconds…
