When Japanese Breakfast headlined a hometown Halloween concert at The Fillmore Philly in 2023, frontperson Michelle Zauner talked about the new album that the band just finished recording — “a water album,” as she described it — and debuted a dreamlike song called “Orlando In Love” for the ecstatic crowd. Today, that song is officially out there in the world, along with more details about the record it will be on, and a tour that brings them to headline The Met Philly this spring.
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is the title of the fourth album by Japanese Breakfast, and it is due out March 21st on Dead Oceans Records. The record was made in collaboration with producer Blake Mills, whose wide-ranging credits include work with Fiona Apple, Perfume Genius, Dawes, John Legend, and Alabama Shakes (he received a Grammy nom for his work on their 2015 LP Sound & Colour).
According to the label’s announcement, this record’s gothic novel aesthetic finds Zauner interrogating success and desire following the mainstream success that arrived with Japanese Breakfast’s breakout Jubilee — which had one of the longest album cycles ever, from summer of 2021 to fall of 2023 with little break — as well as her bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart. “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” Zauner says in a press statement. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.”
