{"product_id":"japanese-breakfast-for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-women-new-cd","title":"Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes ( \u0026 Sad Women )  (New CD)","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"col-md-12 col-sm-12 col-xs-12\" id=\"aec-product-description\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 class=\"aec-desc-label\"\u003eDescription\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"aec-desc-review collapse\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (\u0026amp; sad women), marks the band's first proper studio release. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills, the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined it's predecessor Jubilee 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\nFor Melancholy Brunettes follows a transformative period in Zauner's life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album Jubilee and her bestselling memoir Crying In H Mart 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.\" The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends For Melancholy Brunettes it's most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, it's spectral parts take the album's characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On \"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 (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). \"Honey Water\" 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 it's own demise. Sadness 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 it's 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 it's final song, \"Magic Mountain,\" an engagement with Thomas Mann's famous novel of the same name. For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of For Melancholy Brunettes, she surveys the future.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"ui-tabs ui-corner-all ui-widget ui-widget-content\" id=\"aec-musictabs\"\u003e\n\u003cul class=\"ui-tabs-nav ui-corner-all ui-helper-reset ui-helper-clearfix ui-widget-header\" role=\"tablist\"\u003e\n\u003cli aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-selected=\"false\" aria-labelledby=\"MusicCredits\" aria-controls=\"mt-2\" class=\"ui-tabs-tab ui-corner-top ui-state-default ui-tab\" role=\"tab\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\u003ca class=\"ui-tabs-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/webami.aent.com\/for-melancholy-brunettes-and-sad-women\/656605172521#mt-1\" id=\"MusicTracks\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv aria-hidden=\"false\" class=\"ui-tabs-panel ui-corner-bottom ui-widget-content\" role=\"tabpanel\" aria-labelledby=\"MusicTracks\" id=\"mt-1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"tracksonly\" id=\"aec-jukebox\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"jp-playlist tracksonly\"\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e1\u003c\/span\u003e Here Is Someone\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e2\u003c\/span\u003e Orlando in Love\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e3\u003c\/span\u003e Honey Water\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e4\u003c\/span\u003e Mega Circuit\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e5\u003c\/span\u003e Little Girl\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e6\u003c\/span\u003e Leda\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e7\u003c\/span\u003e Picture Window\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e8\u003c\/span\u003e Men in Bars\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e9\u003c\/span\u003e Winter in la\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"aec-tracknum\"\u003e10\u003c\/span\u003e Magic Mountain\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"AEC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51238098960687,"sku":null,"price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0276\/7228\/1160\/files\/japanese-breakfast-for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-women-new-cd-554802.jpg?v=1745537015","url":"https:\/\/madworldrecordstx.com\/products\/japanese-breakfast-for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-women-new-cd","provider":"Mad World Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}