Japanese Breakfast announces new album Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)

Japanese Breakfast will release her album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), on March 21st via Dead Oceans. The LP was Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple)
Japanese Breakfast photo by Park Bae

Japanese Breakfast will release her album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), on March 21st via Dead Oceans. The LP was Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills (Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple). The album follows a transitional period in Zauner’s life, including the release off her album Jubilee and memoir Crying In H Mart. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” she says. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.”

The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends For Melancholy Brunettes its most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, its spectral parts take the album’s characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On the album’s lead single “Orlando in Love” — a riff on John Cheever’s riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo — the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren’s call, his 69th canto.

Additionally, Japanese Breakfast is announcing a 2025 tour in support of For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) that kicks off at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, CA and continues with headline shows across North America and Europe this year. The Melancholy Tour is the band’s first tour in three years, following the Jubilee Tour in 2022. Artist pre-sales begin tomorrow, January 8th, with general on-sale going up on, Friday, January 10th at 10 am local time. All dates below.

Japanese Breakfast
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)
Tracklisting
Dead Oceans

1. Here is Someone
2. Orlando in Love
3. Honey Water
4. Mega Circuit
5. Little Girl
6. Leda
7. Picture Window
8. Men in Bars (Feat. Jeff Bridges)
9. Winter in LA
10. Magic Mountain

Japanese Breakfast 2025 Tour dates

Apr 12 & 19 – Indio, CA @ Coachella Music and Arts Festival
Apr 23 – Austin, TX @ Moody Theater (ACL Live) *
Apr 24 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom *
Apr 26 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle *
Apr 27 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore *
Apr 28 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium *
May 2 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
May 3 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore *
May 5 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall *
May 7 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway *
May 9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
May 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia Presented by Highmark *
Jun 21 – Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
Jun 24 – Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
Jun 25 – Stockholm, SE @ Filadelfia
Jun 26 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA
Jun 29 – Manchester, UK @ Academy 1
Jun 30 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland
Jul 3 – London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton
Jul 4-6 – Ewijk, NL @ Down The Rabbit Hole 2025
Jul 8 – Paris, FR @ Le Trianon
July 10-12 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK Live
Aug 23 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl *
Aug 28 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic *
Aug 30 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater *
Sep 1 – Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theater *
Sep 6 – Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom
Sep 9 – St Paul, MN @ The Palace Theater *

* w/ Ginger Root

Pre-order For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) HERE

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