“I think I’m writing the best songs of my life,” Michelle Zauner - AKA Japanese Breakfast - says from her Room of One’s Own-esque cottage in upstate New York.
Zauner isn’t alone in thinking that, either. For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) is the fourth album from Japanese Breakfast, and arguably the best collection of music the indie outfit has released. It’s not long now until Melburnians will hear the magic of it in the flesh at PICA on 5 June as part of RISING.
Zauner last visited Victorians back in 2017, alighting Meredith’s Sup’ with her signature ethereal glow. Two albums, a Grammy nomination and a bestselling memoir (2021’s Crying in H Mart) later, Zauner describes the growth between who she was as an artist then compared to who she is now as simply and utterly “tremendous”.
Japanese Breakfast at RISING
- Thursday, 5 June
- PICA, Port Melbourne
- Tickets here
Keep up with the latest music news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
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“I think about music in a very different way,” Zauner says. “Even down to what type of pick I use from song to song. Stuff that I never would have considered. It became very serious, you know?”
A part of that seriousness came with collaborating with “genius” producer Blake Mills on the latest album. Additionally, after more than a decade of Japanese Breakfast, it was also the band’s first body of work to be recorded in a studio. “It was really the first time that I was looking to someone [to be] the guide in terms of production,” Zauner says.
“I feel like when I have produced a record in the past, it’s almost like ‘more is more’,” she continues. “I think for the first time, this record lets things be their beautiful, natural self.
“Because it was recorded and performed in the best way it possibly could, you don’t need all of that [other] stuff. It could be a little bit more subtle and nuanced in this way that I’ve never felt comfortable or competent enough to put out on my own.”
It wasn’t just that Zauner wanted to “relinquish some control”, but she was also thirsty for someone to “push me out of my comfort zone”. The result? A discovery of a new kind of comfort, coming from it “feeling much more like who I am than almost any record before.”
“Honestly,” Zauner says, “this record brings me so much joy to play. When I was writing it, I was in kind of a darker space. But I think, in a way, the record comes to a conclusion. I’m living in that conclusion now.”
Discovering joy in the melancholy
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From the album’s opening track, Here is Someone – “a real question of can I live a quieter life? Will I disappoint people if I take a different path?” – to the closing, Magic Mountain – “a coming to the conclusion of what that future will look like and how to find satisfaction and comfort in that new path” – For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) is a supreme exploration of grief.
However, this time around, the grief that arises is of a different sort to previous albums. It’s a grief for lives Zauner has never lived, for lives she may never live. And while the album is underlined with a melancholic sadness throughout, it’s an emotion that is far from how it feels to present this music on stage.
“After taking a year off and now approaching these songs from a new place emotionally, it’s been ironically such a joyful experience,” Zauner says.
“Now, I have four albums that are all from very different parts of my life. Psychopomp was this incredibly raw, vulnerable album about grief. Soft Sounds From Another Planet was this dissociative album about re-acclimating to life after tragedy. Jubilee is about giving myself permission to feel and experience joy.
“For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) is this really contemplative record about looking back on your life and feeling some anticipatory grief about your future.
“Having four albums to then make a big set list out of, I feel the most comfortable in some way because that’s the whole of who I am as a person. It feels like I’m able to be this multifaceted human being and not just like, the sad grief girl or not just like, joyful, big, extroverted front-person.”
Crafting stories out of lived experiences
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Between recording For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) and releasing it, Zauner took a year off from Japanese Breakfast to live in Seoul. While studying and reconnecting to family members, the artist was also collecting a kaleidoscope of experiences that she’s currently collating for her next book. “It was an incredibly healing year for me for many different reasons,” she says.
While previously she’s been able to work on her writing while on the road touring, the nature of these current shows has made it difficult to do both music and writing simultaneously. Which brings us to the Virginia Woolf-style cottage she finds herself in as we speak. “I’ve been really looking forward to getting away and doing some work [on the book],” Zauner admits.
“I don’t wait around for inspiration to strike – I show up every day,” she says about the similarities between writing a book and writing an album. “I think both come from observing what many people consider to be completely mundane parts of the human experience, and sort of extrapolating what is extraordinary to me about them.
“They’re very rooted in, for the most part, real-life circumstances or relationships or details,” she continues. “I think it’s learning how to trust that meter of what might be interesting or moving to people – and is moving to you – and going in on it.”
“There’s absolutely nothing to hide behind”
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“I will say – the biggest difference is that when I write music, I feel really smart, and when I write books, I feel really dumb,” she says in deadpan nonchalance. “I find writing music to be really intuitive, and I find writing prose to be really hard.
“It’s so fun for me to write music because what’s happening is so mysterious. You’re really relying on a sound in your head that you’re chasing. And in prose, it’s just you and the page and you’re really hammering out an idea. There’s nowhere to turn.
“You can’t, like, pick up a bass or a synthesiser if it’s not working,” Zauner continues. “You have to just show up and confront the same thing. And there’s no escaping it. That being said, I feel so deeply understood in my prose in a way that I don’t always feel in my music. There’s absolutely nothing to hide behind. It’s very exposing,” she adds, laughing.
While Zauner hasn’t begun writing new Japanese Breakfast music yet – despite feeling “really inspired lately” and finding herself “itching” to do so – she does however, have a new song that will be featured in Celine Song’s sophomore feature, Materialists.
“We can’t go to the premiere because we’ll be in Australia,” Zauner says. “But I’m really proud of that song and excited for that to come out.” Then, adding with a somewhat conspiratorial wink to the upcoming Naarm show, Zauner says, “maybe we’ll learn how to play it.”
For tickets to see Japanese Breakfast on Thursday, June 5, head here. To listen to For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), head here.
