Japanese Breakfast | For Melancholy Brunettes & Sad Women

After a decade of utilizing alternative recording locations including warehouses, trailers, and attics, Japanese Breakfast's fourth album, "For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)," marks the band's first proper studio album, in the truest sense of the word.

The album was produced by Grammy winner Blake Mills, known for his work with Bob Dylan and Fiona Apple, among others, and recorded at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles — the birthplace of classics like "After The Gold Rush," "Fleetwood Mac" and "Nevermind."

On "For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)," frontwoman and songwriter Michelle Zauner retreats from the bright and extroverted that defined her GRAMMY-nominated predecessor, "Jubilee," to instead explore the darker waves lapping around within. A response to a transformative period in Zauner's life, where she has suddenly fulfilled some of her greatest artistic ambitions, and now, on the other hand, can reflect on the emptiness that follows and the danger of flying a little too close to the sun.

Sadness is the dominant emotional tone on this album, but it is sadness of a very specific kind: the thoughtful, foreboding sadness that comes with melancholy, where the realization of the fundamental tragic nature of life is coupled with sensitivity to its fleeting beauty.