I’m sorry, I wasn’t familiar with your game.

Review Score:

A

March 24th / 2025 –

Picture this. It’s a Sunday afternoon. I’m cleaning (or trying to). A game on my computer is calling out to me like the Green Goblin mask. But I’m committed to being productive for at least a short time. I put on the new Japanese Breakfast album. I’m fully entranced. Consistently, Michelle Zauner throws new ideas at me that strike me and make me stop what I’m doing to appreciate them.

And then, to cap it all off, “Men In Bars” comes on near the album’s end. It’s a duet with an older male voice. I can’t quite place it, but it’s somehow familiar. It’s the album’s only other featured artist, and I feel like it must be someone I would recognize. So I put down my broom and pick up my phone to discover that voice belongs to Jeff Bridges of all people.

I was initially harsh on the singles to this project. But I see now that I jumped the gun on my initial judgements. It was as if someone had handed me an empty plate and splattered some ketchup on it. And then I started yelling and screaming and crying, but they just hadn’t put down the burger and fries yet.

I considered making that analogy something paint/canvas related. Something more poetic, perhaps. But I am so unbelievably hungry right now.

This album really is the sum of its parts. Japanese Breakfast has never before sounded so whole, so complete. Tonally, it’s darker than Jubilee, which was aptly named for it’s brighter, sunnier themes.

The album’s title sounds very Gen Z/internet coded, but actually comes from a book of short stories by John Cheever. And yes, that is the guy that George’s father-in-law to be had a secret homosexual relationship with in Seinfeld. Zauner plucked the title from one of Cheever’s stories because she always liked the idea of what she calls “semi-obnoxious” album titles. She cites the likes of Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… and the Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness – great pulls by the way.

Japanese Breakfast walks that line between the new and the old with grace – the brain rot internet culture and the classic literature of it all. This isn’t to say that any of Zauner’s music approaches brain rot territory. Just that it is tangentially related in its references – like in “Mega Circuit”, which might be the first song I’ve ever heard use the word “incel”.

The album’s sequencing, something I rarely actually make note of, is particulary well done. The album is paced excellently. It feels like a full three-act structure. And if it’s following the traditional structure of storytelling, “Honey Water” is something like the rising action. It’s phenomenal. This is the kind of song you try to time your plane take off to.

Blake Mills’ production is strong. His list of credits is as impressive as it is extensive. If you drew some kind of interconnected diagram with threads to all the musicians he’s worked with, I wouldn’t be shocked to discover he was one degree of separation from Obama or something. He’s produced for Bob Dylan, Laura Marling, Connor Oberst and more. Zauner draws from all the best aspects of those musicians to create the tapestry of sounds presented on For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women).

This is a beautiful album. Color me impressed. And Jeff Bridges? How does a collab like that even occur? I thought that guy was still trapped in a video game or something.

Review Score:

A

Gubb wrote this review. You can’t get mad at Gubb.