Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) (2025)

While Japanese Breakfast’s 2021 breakthrough Jubilee was the result of a deliberate attempt by frontwoman Michelle Zauner to create more upbeat music, her latest album clues the listener in with its title: this might be a bit of a downer affair. It's not overly a bummer, though, and is in fact her strongest work to date. Lyrically, it delves into the perils of lust ("He’s gonna make me suffer the way I should"), while sonically it's richly melodic. At its best, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) evokes a collaboration between Court and Spark-era Joni Mitchell and Vespertine-era Björk.

For Melancholy Brunettes is the indie pop act’s fourth full-length but the first made in a proper studio. (Blake Mills produces.) This is immediately apparent, with the gorgeous, cascading, seemingly wrapped-in-faerie-light "Here Is Someone," which blends warm electronics with acoustic string pluckings—as well as flutes and vibes (the instrument) and whisper-sung vocals—all in the highest of fidelities. These are sounds you wouldn’t even attempt if you didn’t have multi-tracked digital capabilities at hand.

It's never been more clear that Zauner, whose 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart was a New York Times bestseller for over a year, is one of our strongest songwriters. There is a lot of diversity at play, although it’s not one of those records that sounds like a mixtape or a series of genre exercises. "Men in Bars"—a murder ballad featuring vocals from no other than Jeff Bridges—is a more-than-credible drinking song fueled by pedal steel. The subdued shoegaze of the infidelity ballad "Honey Water" could blare from any crowded bar in the world, while the Pet Sounds-ish "Winter in LA" bursts forth from a gloomy start to delight in string-backed harmony and full-throated vocalizing. Our main hope is that it’s fewer than four years until their next record.

TRACKLIST

1. Japanese Breakfast - Here is Someone
2. Japanese Breakfast - Orlando in Love
3. Japanese Breakfast - Honey Water
4. Japanese Breakfast - Mega Circuit
5. Japanese Breakfast - Little Girl
6. Japanese Breakfast - Leda
7. Japanese Breakfast - Picture Window
8. Japanese Breakfast - Men in Bars
9. Japanese Breakfast - Winter in LA
10. Japanese Breakfast - Magic Mountain