In the early 1960s — when he was still a young man, but past the point of being a consistent hitmaker — Little Richard recorded a song whose title summed up the arc of his career and, it seems, the trajectories of pretty much anyone who manages to achieve success. It was called “He Got What He Wanted (But He Lost What He Had).” The idea is that the lucky few who realize their dreams almost never get there the way they envisioned. And that “success,” as it were, is usually a complicated proposition infused with unexpected loss.
Michelle Zauner, the 35-year-old author and musician, is the latest person to experience this Faustian bargain. Notice that I put the word “author” ahead of “musician” — while Zauner originally rose to prominence as the singer-songwriter behind the indie-rock band Japanese Breakfast, her profile increased dramatically upon the release of Crying In H Mart, the 2021 memoir that spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. The book made Zauner the type of writer whose work populates airport waiting areas and Middle American book clubs. And it dwarfed the relatively modest audience for Zauner’s music, even as Jubilee — the album she put out within two months of H Mart four years ago — wowed critics and established Japanese Breakfast as a fixture at music festivals.
I interviewed Zauner for the Jubilee album cycle and found her to be both refreshingly humble and delusionally ambitious, particularly when she expressed interest — in addition to everything else on her plate — in directing the film adaptation of Crying In H Mart (a project that now appears to be shelved, temporarily or not). In time, Zauner would come to see the wisdom in slowing down. In an interview promoting the new Japanese Breakfast album out this week, the awkwardly titled For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), she spoke candidly about the burnout brought on by the tireless touring that unfolded in the wake of her literary fame.
“As soon as I was able to begin financially supporting myself by playing music and not having to work at a restaurant on the side,” she told Vulture, “I was like, ‘I’ve won the lottery — I need to just run as fast as I can and do everything and be grateful. I have to keep going at this clip.'” This eventually led to “getting crazy stage fright and health problems.” After the tour, she decamped to Korea and unplugged from western culture for a year.
Actually, before that Korea trip, she recorded For Melancholy Brunettes at Sound City, one of LA’s most iconic studios, with producer Blake Mills, a celebrated wunderkind who has worked with Alabama Shakes and Bob Dylan and whose name also appears in the liner notes of upcoming releases from Lucy Dacus and Perfume Genius. Listening to the album, I wonder if Zauner would have been well-advised to wait until after her overseas sabbatical. While the album on paper scans as a “leveling up” move — it’s her first time working in an actual studio, with the assistance of tenured studio vets like Jim Keltner and Matt Chamberlain — it plays like an exhausted reiteration of the previous record. Zauner’s frayed edges are foregrounded throughout, from the very first line of the very first song, “Here Is Someone.” Zauner sings, “Quietly dreaming of / slower days, but I don’t want to / Let you down, we’ve come so far / Can you see a life where we leave this behind?”
With all due respect, there’s nothing much “quiet” about this declaration, even if Zauner expresses it in a soft, dulcet croon. It’s about as direct a declaration of personal and artistic malaise as can be imagined. And when For Melancholy Brunettes — a musically sumptuous if emotionally inert record — does not just come out and state this feeling explicitly, it does so, over and over, implicitly. Whereas Jubilee was constructed in the style of bombastic, aughts-era indie-rock in the mold of Arcade Fire, Joanna Newsom, and Bright Eyes, the follow-up is aggressive only in its incessant, understated tastefulness. A sense of urgency is decidedly lacking. It makes me wonder if Zauner would be better off living the (seemingly) comfortable life of a bestselling author rather than trudging along as a mid-level indie rocker. Or, rather, I wonder if Zauner herself is wondering this.
Perhaps anticipating that kind of reaction, Zauner was careful in that Vulture interview to position For Melancholy Brunettes as “a slower burn.” And, to be fair, there’s some validity to that. Upon repeat listens, the considerable craft on display does seep in. Zauner has said that she’s re-embraced the guitar, and you can hear her delicate, finger-picked lines fluttering amid the baroque-pop trappings of songs like “Leda” and “Little Girl.” If Funeral and I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning were on Zauner’s mood board for Jubilee, the new record sounds enraptured with the musical lore of Los Angeles, particularly the highly orchestrated records that Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann made with Jon Brion, which is evoked by two of the stronger numbers, “Mega Circuit” and “Winter In L.A.” And then there’s the most SoCal move of all — recording a duet, “Men In Bars,” with quite possibly the laziest man in Los Angeles County, Jeff “The Dude” Bridges, a likeably odd choice that unexpectedly pays off.
Nevertheless, a discernible sleepiness persists. After listening to For Melancholy Brunettes on repeat for a few days, I went back to Soft Sounds From Another Planet, the second Japanese Breakfast album from 2017. And I was immediately pulled into the opening track, a surging six-and-a-half-minute rocker called “Driving Woman.” What struck me was how, like so many great indie-rock songs, it sounded like Zauner was reaching for something grand and immense that otherwise seemed impossible to realize for a DIY musician on the basement-show circuit. The thrill of the track was hearing someone strive for those heights anyway.
For Melancholy Brunettes, in contrast, sounds like the work of someone who has the means to achieve grandiosity, but not the ideas or the energy to make those aspirational reaches compelling. I wish Zauner would have produced more songs like “Honey Water,” which harkens back to the scrappiness of the earlier records, but with a more lavish budget. Otherwise, this album sounds like what it may very well be — a side project for a celebrity author currently at work on her second, highly anticipated book.
