Over three albums as Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner has established herself as a masterful chronicler of emotions. She deals in big feelings, expansive sounds and widescreen passion. On her fourth album, 'For Melancholy Brunettes (and sad women)', Zauner delves deeper and darker into a fantastical world of heightened emotional tension and rich storytelling.

The third Japanese Breakfast album, 'Jubilee', celebrated the transcendent power of joy through sparkling, synth-filled pop songs. This time, Zauner sought something different. "I knew after a record that had a very bright colour palette both sonically and visually that I wanted to make something darker," she explains on the day of the album's release. This album arrives amid fierce anticipation as Japanese Breakfast evolves from critically acclaimed cult artist to alt-pop star, bridging underground and mainstream with ease. It's a feverish sense of anticipation not lost on Zauner as she ponders her feelings with the album freshly out in the world. "I feel crazy. It's an overwhelming feeling," she admits. "As I get older, the novelty of releasing a big thing and the excitement around it becomes more complicated."

'For Melancholy Brunettes (and sad women)' is a daring follow-up to her mainstream breakthrough. It's knottier, denser and more ornate than her previous work. The evocative storytelling anchors the album, with understated sound supporting Zauner's imagery and character-building. It's a risk that she recognises but is happy to take. "You want everyone to like something you know not everyone is going to like. I don't want to make art that everyone likes, though," she laughs. "I knew it was going to be a record that some people were going to love and some people just wouldn't be down for."

Melancholy feels symbiotic with Zauner and Japanese Breakfast's work. "This is my innate personality," she laughs. "I felt very comfortable writing this way," she adds. What the album became, though, was slightly different from the original vision. "I wanted it to be a creepy, harder record. Songs like 'Magic Mountain', 'Mega Circuit' and 'Honey Water' were the direction I wanted to go in. I found that physically, though, my body didn't want to make 10 songs in that world, no matter how much I tried to write harder songs. They kept coming out as eerie, contemplative, melancholy songs. I realised that was the thread I had to follow and the overarching theme was this melancholic eeriness that is at the root of all these songs."

With melancholy's foreboding dread hanging like a dark cloud, Zauner explored its essence, contrasting it with the stark grief of her first two albums, 'Psychopomp' and 'Soft Sounds From Another Planet'. "I've started to think of melancholy less as an emotion and more of a condition," she explains. "I feel like grief and sadness are these violent emotions that are very physically overtaking and can encompass longing and heartbreak and jealousy and loss. With melancholy, I've come to think of it as a pensive and deep condition."

There's deep reflection throughout this album - internal contemplation and maturity from someone whose life has been shaped by trauma and a quest to understand their place in the world. "It's from this place of my life, reflecting on the passage of time and missed opportunity and feelings of unlived lives and anticipatory feeling of what will come to be," says Michelle, considering the album's core themes. "Those aren't things that are completely devastating, but they are complex. It's a complex sadness. I'm not overwhelmed and devastated about these things but there's a melancholy feeling about things that will never come to fruition or things I've missed out on. The passage of time, in general, and the fleeting nature of life is the thread of the whole record. It's people looking back on their lives and the decisions they've made and are teetering between their feelings."

Was it punishing to write from such a vulnerable place? "No, I feel really cosy writing these songs," laughs Michelle. "It's harder to write joyous songs than songs that are about thinking deeply about the realities of life which are both beautiful and hard. That was what I naturally gravitated to." The album captures a distinct moment for Michelle, 20 years into her career as a recording artist. "I think one thing that's really helped me in completing projects is just to think of it as an archive of who I am at that time as a person and an artist," she explains. "This is what I'm interested in, what I'm thinking about and what I'm capable of. Every record could only be made at that time and who I was at that time. It's a mature and thoughtful album. These are thoughts I wouldn't have had when I was younger."

Some people believe melancholy music can be strangely uplifting - finding comfort in the sympathetic feelings of someone sharing similar emotions. Like those who play The Smiths when they want to have a good time. Sadness becomes their companion. Michelle doesn't quite accept that melancholy music makes you happy but recognises its healing qualities. "I don't think it's uplifting but it can be enlightening," she says. "I don't know if it feels good but it can help you understand. It's addressing reality. It's important and part of the spectrum of human emotions."

That spectrum shines through the literary and cultural influences that shaped Michelle's creation of 'For Melancholy Brunettes...'. "I feel like I've written the best songs and lyrics of my life, and that's a really good feeling," she exclaims. "I was reading a lot and was really inspired by Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and The World Of Apples by John Cheever." Michelle also drew inspiration from visual art. "I was influenced by the paintings of the four furies and the concept of the four furies that I saw in the Prado gallery in Madrid, which are these dark paintings by Ribera that show men suffering the consequences of their actions."

These references highlight the scale of Michelle's ambition. There's nothing throwaway here, yet the work remains welcoming. The ornate world of 'For Melancholy Brunettes...' allows her to tell twisted folk tales full of grisly details, witty wordplay and eccentric characters while weaving her own emotions into these allegorical stories. Though the album takes a different approach to the stark emotions that run through all of Japanese Breakfast's work, Michelle hints at deeper personal undercurrents. "There are two enormous life events in my personal life that I completely cannot talk about that are hugely influential on this record," she explains. "Maybe someday people will know what those two things are. They are incredibly private and difficult to talk about."

As the album unfolds, themes emerge of flawed characters grappling with internal turmoil. "I was very inspired by different stories both fictional and personal of people being seduced by some kind of temptation and succumbing to that and confronting the consequences," reveals Michelle. "You have something like 'Mega Circuit' about a generation of young men who feel politically isolated and criticised seeking refuge in an ideology that's very hateful and dangerous." A timely observation for our troubled era. "You see a father in 'Little Girl' who has prioritised his desires at the expense of a relationship with a daughter he's now mourning," she continues. "You see a woman in winter in LA who's so consumed by her own melancholy and misanthropy that she's maybe missing out on some possibilities of ease and happiness. A man in 'Orlando in Love' who's seduced very literally by a siren and dies. In 'Men In Bars', you see a man who's overcome by jealousy about his partner flirting with men in bars that he goes to shoot the man. All are stories about people overcome by an emotion that leads them to make a mistake or decision to ruin some other element of their lives."

The sparkling opening track 'Here Is Someone' introduces the album's musical and thematic elements, balancing intimacy with grand ambition. "Sonically, it felt like the right introduction," says Michelle. "It works really well as a bookend with the last song 'Magic Mountain' both of them are really personal. What a great thesis statement - life is sad, but here is someone. I think that's a really sweet, simple and big sentiment which is how I often feel about my life when I'm feeling melancholic or overwhelmed. It captures pieces of both worlds that are working sonically on the record. There are moments of really beautiful interlocking guitars but then big spikes of huge arrangements almost foreshadowing the instrumentation to come."

In terms of crafting the expansive instrumentation, Grammy award-winning producer Blake Mills, who has worked with classic rock artists - most notably Bob Dylan - helped shape the sound, with Michelle finally enjoying the comforts of recording in a proper studio. "It was the first time that I haven't been in a freezing cold warehouse in the middle of winter," she laughs. "That was a luxury. A record sounds different if you're recording in a space that's meant for recording with equipment that's really exceptional and with people who have minds and ideas. It was a new experience for me to work with session musicians. I had never done that before. You watch them in awe, and I learned a lot."

Moving away from the previous album, there was a desire to put Michelle and her guitar front and centre. "A lot of 'Jubilee' were these really large arrangements that didn't have a lot of space for me as a guitar player. I really wanted the guitar to be a large feature. Most of the songs were going to feature me heavily on the guitar," she says. This is most evident in the enveloping epic 'Honey Water', the heaviest and most powerful moment on the album. "I wish I had more of that to give," smiles Michelle. "It's a really sexy side to me. I like that aggressive and sludgy sound. It was so fun. It feels like a snarling dog." This is the kind of song that aligns with her vision to "make a hard creepy Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails album."

Elsewhere, it's more understated. "There's a lot of depth to it and it's very subtle," describes Michelle. "I hope it's a record that people relisten to and pick up different things each time." One song with particular depth is the classic murder ballad duet 'Men In Bars' with acting legend Jeff Bridges. "I was really inspired by two big songs, which are actually my husband's favourite songs, 'Islands In The Stream' by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and the song Kenny Rogers covered called 'Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town'. It's about a man who had come home from war and has lost his legs and is begging his lover not to go to town without him, where she'd flirt with some dudes and leave him behind. I love the idea of turning that concept into a duet between a man and a woman." The song Michelle crafted tells her own stories of illicit romantic relations leading to fatal consequences. It's an example of the intimately detailed songwriting that illuminates the album as Michelle takes up the story: "They're both reflecting on the time they first met," she begins. "He has a zippo lighter and is showing off some tricks; he's a simple guy. She fell for the simple thing but now they've been in a relationship for a while and the woman is getting restless and he's maybe a little boring. The woman goes to the bar and makes some kind of flirtatious mistake and is apologising saying, let's not leave this behind, we've built this thing together. I fucked up but let's not end it over this. From his perspective, you're telling me not to break this off, but you've humiliated me, and you've wound up in the arms of men in bars, and now I'm going to take up arms at these men in bars. I thought that was a funny turn of phrase where they're both reflecting on the same events. In my mind, he's not a very emotional guy, and she's kind of skipped out on him. The one time he shows emotion is when he's been cheated on and he's now going to shoot the men in bars she's been flirting with.

It's that dark humour that runs through these fantastical gothic-tinged tales. While many are doleful and reflective, maintaining the melancholy theme, there's humour and charm too. "I really love the lyrics to 'Orlando in Love', I think they're quite funny," smiles Michelle. "A very me lyric is 'I wish you had a happier woman, one that could leave the house'. That couplet is very self-deprecating and funny and sad."

While 'Jubilee' provided a musical breakthrough for Japanese Breakfast, an even more significant breakthrough came with Michelle's first book 'Crying in H-Mart', released in 2021, which detailed her experience in the aftermath of her mother's death. 'For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)' was her first album written after the book, providing a welcome return to something natural and free. "After working on something so new and big like a book, which is a very long and very hard process, I was really excited to write music again because it's something I've done for so long since I was 16 years old," she says. "There are moments that are tough but it ultimately feels like the most intuitive medium for me still. It felt like a sweet homecoming to get to write music again after really struggling to write that book."

The album inhabits its own distinct universe, from the gothic medieval banquet of the album cover to the striking music videos and baroque splendour of the imagery. On the subject of food, which adorns the cover with fancy goblets and platters of meat, Michelle, as a true food aficionado, identifies the most melancholy types of food. "I think that the melancholy staples for this record are raw oysters and milky broth. Both things are deceptively simple but very complex flavours." Deceptively simple but complex aptly describes the album itself. We love a smart pop star. All of this considered imagery forms part of the world Michelle has created. "After the record was recorded, I moved to Korea for a year. I could really focus on the other aspects of a record that take a really long time, like preparing for the tour, designing the visual world. As I've become a bigger artist, it's become a bigger thing to consider. That sort of world-building is really fun for me, and it's a part of the album-making process that I've really come to enjoy."

Another example of approaching this record differently is the recent Melancholy Recital she performed to accompany the album release. A stripped-back performance full of theatricality, it was a special way to mark the occasion. "I wanted to approach it like it was a theatre performance," explains Michelle. "The nature of the record being so narrative and lyric focused and the first album that sounds really great stripped down meant I really wanted it to have a real storytelling element where I could really take my time to explore the songs and what went into them. I wanted to do something smaller for the fans. There's this misconception that I am so tortured by the success of this band, which is not the case. I'm a DIY artist. I came from a punk background where I played house shows and worked the merch table and got to talk to every person who liked my music and I sold them t-shirts myself. I used to send out merch from my house and write