Japanese Breakfast’s ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’ Is a Stunning Evolution in Sound and Spirit
Michelle Zauner, the mind and soul behind Japanese Breakfast, returns with For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)—an album that drifts away from the glittering optimism of Jubilee and plunges into deeper, more reflective waters. This new chapter in her discography is rich with orchestral grandeur, literary allusions, and emotional rawness that showcase her growing ambition as both a songwriter and storyteller.
The album opens with “Orlando in Love”, a sweeping, cinematic track inspired by Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending classic. From the start, Zauner crafts an atmosphere thick with longing, nostalgia, and quiet defiance. The arrangements are lush and expansive—strings swirl, harps glisten, and piano lines fall like soft rain. It’s her most sonically ambitious work to date, yet it never loses that intimate, bedroom-born vulnerability that made her earlier albums so beloved.
A standout moment arrives in “Men in Bars”, a hushed duet with actor Jeff Bridges that shouldn’t work—and yet it absolutely does. Bridges brings a gravelly warmth to Zauner’s shimmering melancholy, like a late-night conversation with an unexpected confidante. “Picture Window” leans into stripped-down storytelling, echoing the grief-laced beauty of Psychopomp but with a more mature, composed voice.
Produced by Blake Mills, the album benefits from a studio polish that never feels sterile. The instrumentation breathes and bends with Zauner’s emotions, offering her the kind of sonic playground where heartbreak and healing can coexist. Her writing here is less about catharsis and more about sitting with the quiet ache of things unsaid, unfinished, and unfixable.
For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) is the sound of an artist who isn’t afraid to expand her palette, dig deeper into herself, and take her listeners on a journey that’s as mythic as it is deeply human. It’s not just a collection of songs—it’s an elegant meditation on identity, loss, and the strange comfort of sadness. With this album, Zauner doesn’t just evolve—she ascends.
