We always look forward to new music from best-selling author and singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast). Her latest LP, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), is set to be another classic., Produced by Grammy Award-winning guitar guru Blake Mills, this album examines a darker palette than its antecedent, Jubilee.
“Over the course of promoting this new album I’ve often been asked to clarify the difference between melancholy and sadness. I think of melancholy as a kind of anticipatory grief, one that comes from an acknowledgment of the passage of time, from the recognition of mortality and finitude. In some way, too, I think it marks the artist’s condition, constantly observing through that lens,” Zauner says of the album. “‘Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy,’ Virginia Woolfe writes. I wanted this album to capture the moments where that knife slips. When people want too much, when they cede to temptation, when they are seduced and punished.”
More: Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) reflects on food and family in memoir on Good Food 2022
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Saturday August 23: Japanese Breakfast @ Santa Barbara Bowl