Michelle Zauner’s in her Melancholy phase, but the sadness isn’t infinite

The lights come up and there’s Michelle Zauner up on a pedestal, sitting on the lower lip of a giant shimmering seashell, strumming a guitar and singing “Here Is Someone.” It feels like a real pop star moment at first. Outsized, classic, absurd — Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus simultaneously dressed up and stripped of its mythological baggage.

But as the lyrics unwind, the underlying solitude of the scene becomes apparent. “Quietly dreaming of slower days, but I don’t want to let you down. We’ve come so far,” she sings. “Can you see a life where we leave this behind?”

The new Japanese Breakfast record opens the same way. That song, sung sweetly, sadly, softly.

It’s called For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), and the title crosses your mind as you take it in, this vision of an artist who bares her soul from a place of solitude.

It is, perhaps, a too-real pop star moment.

Just a few years ago, Zauner shot to literary stardom on the back of her best-selling memoir Crying in H Mart. That sparked some much-deserved attention to her music.

Zauner used to toil in the indie rock salt mines: vans, floors, beer. She fronted Philly bands like Post Post, Little Big League and probably some others that have slipped my mind. But I’ll never forget watching Zauner launch herself into a drum kit one night at The Fire. For fun, for sport, for hammy rock star glory.

Now she’s a star for real: TV appearances, Time’s Most Influential List, a stint in L.A. (Not to mention Seoul, researching her next book.) Is that Oscar-winner Jeff Bridges contributing craggly vocals on the new record? Yep. Weird, but it works.

The Melancholy tour has taken Japanese Breakfast across the country and through Coachella — where you better believe Zauner made a “Co-shell-a” joke — before ending with a pair of shows at this pretty, old opera house in her old hometown.

The Japanese Breakfast story sounds lovely, literally, but fame never gives without taking and she has said in interviews that the pressures of success and bouts of imposter syndrome have haunted her in recent years.

But, ask a Philly music fan and they’ll tell you: Zauner is now and always has been the real damn deal.

Furthermore, let the record show that while the new record is more about dissecting hearts than moving hips, it is nonetheless an emotional banger. Lush, gorgeous, entrancing. For real, the crowd at the Met on Thursday night was positively enveloped by Zauner’s soft-power vocals and dreamy lyrical storytelling.

Standouts from the record — “Mega Circuit,” “Winter in LA,” the heartbreaking “Honey Water” — were standouts at the show, as was the surprise cover of Air’s “Playground Love.”

The music swelled and grooved, and at times approached the psychedelic in a surge of sax, violins and flashing lights.

The catharsis came in the encore, as it should. After all those moments of frisson and poetic despair, the band delivered a series of controlled explosions: “Paprika,” “Be Sweet,” “Driving Woman.” Older favorites with prominent hooks and beats, yes, but now more plainly of a piece with the Melancholy age. “Caught up in my feelings,” indeed.

And there’s Michelle, back in her seashell for the finale saying she loves us. Hear that crowd? It’s mutual.

California trio Ginger Root opened the show, unspooling funk-soul grooves, synthesizer hooks and endearing banter. They had their own on-stage videographer, which was a nice touch. Faces, fingers and fretboards were streamed to screens on either side of the stage, providing up-close cinema verite vibes. If you’re not familiar with Ginger Root, start with last year’s upbeat, power-poppy Shinbangumi and work backward through their catalog.