{"product_id":"japanese-breakfast-for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-women","title":"JAPANESE BREAKFAST - For Melancholy Brunettes (\u0026 Sad Women)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff0000;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCD \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, \u003cstrong\u003eJapanese Breakfast\u003c\/strong\u003e’s fourth album, \u003cem\u003eFor Melancholy Brunettes\u003c\/em\u003e (\u003cem\u003e\u0026amp; sad women\u003c\/em\u003e), marks the band’s first proper studio release. Produced by Grammy Award winner \u003cstrong\u003eBlake Mills\u003c\/strong\u003e, the record sees front-woman and songwriter \u003cstrong\u003eMichelle Zauner\u003c\/strong\u003e pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its predecessor \u003cem\u003eJubilee\u003c\/em\u003e to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor Melancholy Brunettes\u003c\/em\u003e follows a transformative period in Zauner’s life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album \u003cem\u003eJubilee\u003c\/em\u003e and her bestselling memoir \u003cem\u003eCrying In H Mart\u003c\/em\u003e catapulted her into the cultural mainstream, delivering on her deepest artistic ambitions. 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.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends \u003cem\u003eFor Melancholy Brunettes\u003c\/em\u003e 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 “\u003cem\u003eOrlando in Love\u003c\/em\u003e” — a riff on \u003cstrong\u003eJohn Cheever\u003c\/strong\u003e’s riff on \u003cem\u003eOrlando Innamorato\u003c\/em\u003e, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet \u003cstrong\u003eMatteo Maria Boiardo\u003c\/strong\u003e — 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 (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). “\u003cem\u003eHoney Water\u003c\/em\u003e” plumbs the quiet rage of a woman married to an unfaithful man, watching him cede again and again to lust like a base insect perpetuating its own demise.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSadness is indeed the dominant emotional key of this record, but it is sadness of a rarified form: the pensive, prescient sadness of melancholy, in which the recognition of life’s essentially tragic character occurs with sensitivity to its fleeting beauty. Zauner finds space enough inside it for glimmers of hope. They are the consolations of mortals that poets before her have called out to and that poets after will continue to rediscover: love and labor, and though they run like tonic resolutions through the record’s many episodes, they sound most saliently on its final song, “\u003cem\u003eMagic Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e,” an engagement with \u003cstrong\u003eThomas Mann\u003c\/strong\u003e’s famous novel of the same name. For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of \u003cem\u003eFor Melancholy Brunettes\u003c\/em\u003e, she surveys the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dead Oceans","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":53997683442009,"sku":"SDZ-16968","price":14.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0588\/3455\/0945\/files\/Japanese_Breakfast_-_For_Melancholy_Brunettes__and_Sad_Women__-_CD_-_2025.jpg?v=1736269613","url":"https:\/\/spindizzyrecords.com\/products\/japanese-breakfast-for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-women","provider":"Spindizzy Dublin","version":"1.0","type":"link"}