Latest news with #ForMelancholyBrunettes

Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Japanese Breakfast beats Melbourne cold with warm presence and irresistible performance
MUSIC | Rising Festival Japanese Breakfast ★★★★ PICA, June 5 'It's so cold here! What's going on?' says Michelle Zauner, driving force behind indie darlings Japanese Breakfast. Yes, it's cold in Melbourne right now, and especially in PICA, a big empty shed in Port Melbourne with uneven concrete floors and unlit portaloos. Everyone's wearing massive coats and basking in our collective body heat, while cursing our friends at the Jessica Pratt show in the warm, acoustically luxuriant recital hall. But I'm at a Japanese Breakfast show and thrilled about it. It's been eight years since they last visited, and since then they've put out the breakthrough hit album Jubilee and this year's literate, almost baroque For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), and Zauner has written a bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart. She writes songs dense with emotion and pathos, and performs them irresistibly. The six-piece opens with three songs from the new album, all dripping with Zauner's great lyrics and the band's rich instrumentation. She's in a frilly shirt and torn tights. Saxophone dances with flute as the lights play with the stage smoke. 'The breeze carries salt / And sipping milky broth / He cast his gaze towards the sea out / The Winnebago,' she sings on Orlando in Love. It's dreamlike. The sound bounces around indie genres. Honey Water leans into shoegaze. Slide Tackle – which she introduces with a cry of 'No more melancholy!' – plays with disco. The guitar finger slide comes out for the country-tinged Men In Bars, with drummer Craig Hendrix sharing the vocals, a part originally performed by Jeff Bridges. Throughout, Zauner's voice is so expressive and full of intent, and her presence is tirelessly warm and breezy. She introduces Winter in LA as being about 'being miserable in lovely places', a contrast that could apply to the whole set. It's not easy to tour to Australia in the '20s. As Zauner tells us, it's so far away and expensive ('IT IS EXPENSIVE!' someone validates from the crowd). But even with high overheads, Zauner wasn't skimping on the massive gong at the back of the stage, used only for the chorus of Paprika in the encore. Correct decision.

The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Japanese Breakfast beats Melbourne cold with warm presence and irresistible performance
MUSIC | Rising Festival Japanese Breakfast ★★★★ PICA, June 5 'It's so cold here! What's going on?' says Michelle Zauner, driving force behind indie darlings Japanese Breakfast. Yes, it's cold in Melbourne right now, and especially in PICA, a big empty shed in Port Melbourne with uneven concrete floors and unlit portaloos. Everyone's wearing massive coats and basking in our collective body heat, while cursing our friends at the Jessica Pratt show in the warm, acoustically luxuriant recital hall. But I'm at a Japanese Breakfast show and thrilled about it. It's been eight years since they last visited, and since then they've put out the breakthrough hit album Jubilee and this year's literate, almost baroque For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), and Zauner has written a bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart. She writes songs dense with emotion and pathos, and performs them irresistibly. The six-piece opens with three songs from the new album, all dripping with Zauner's great lyrics and the band's rich instrumentation. She's in a frilly shirt and torn tights. Saxophone dances with flute as the lights play with the stage smoke. 'The breeze carries salt / And sipping milky broth / He cast his gaze towards the sea out / The Winnebago,' she sings on Orlando in Love. It's dreamlike. The sound bounces around indie genres. Honey Water leans into shoegaze. Slide Tackle – which she introduces with a cry of 'No more melancholy!' – plays with disco. The guitar finger slide comes out for the country-tinged Men In Bars, with drummer Craig Hendrix sharing the vocals, a part originally performed by Jeff Bridges. Throughout, Zauner's voice is so expressive and full of intent, and her presence is tirelessly warm and breezy. She introduces Winter in LA as being about 'being miserable in lovely places', a contrast that could apply to the whole set. It's not easy to tour to Australia in the '20s. As Zauner tells us, it's so far away and expensive ('IT IS EXPENSIVE!' someone validates from the crowd). But even with high overheads, Zauner wasn't skimping on the massive gong at the back of the stage, used only for the chorus of Paprika in the encore. Correct decision.


Scoop
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Phoebe Rings Joins Japanese Breakfast As Support For The Auckland Winter Series
Press Release – Live Nation Entertainment TĀMAKI MAKAURAU AUCKLAND (MAY 29, 2025) – Live Nation is proud to announce local act Phoebe Rings will join Japanese Breakfast at the Auckland Winter Series line up at the Auckland Town Hall this June. Tickets to their June 7 show are on sale now. Well known for their signature blend of Jazz-inspired dream-pop sounds Phoebe Rings formed in 2019. Having created a loyal fanbase since opening for The Beths, and releasing their self-titled EP last October, Phoebe Rings will be debuting their forthcoming LP Aseurai, out June 6. Made up of lead singer/synthesist Crystal Choi, drummer Alex Freer, guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, and bassist Benjamin Locke, they join U.S. band Japanese Breakfast who will perform for the first time ever in Aotearoa next month as part of the Auckland Winter Series. After a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast 's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), marks the band's first proper studio release out on March 21st. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills — an innovator of uncommon subtlety, known for his work with everyone from Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple and quietly regarded as many a legacy artist's favorite guitar player — and tracked at the venerable Sound City in Los Angeles — birthplace of After The Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac and Nevermind among other classics — the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its 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. For 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 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 the album's lead single ' 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). Sadness is 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. Japanese Breakfast performs The Melancholy Tour for one night only at Auckland Town Hall in June 2025 as part of Live Nation's Auckland Winter Series.


Scoop
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Phoebe Rings Joins Japanese Breakfast As Support For The Auckland Winter Series
TĀMAKI MAKAURAU AUCKLAND (MAY 29, 2025) – Live Nation is proud to announce local act Phoebe Rings will join Japanese Breakfast at the Auckland Winter Series line up at the Auckland Town Hall this June. Tickets to their June 7 show are on sale now. Well known for their signature blend of Jazz-inspired dream-pop sounds Phoebe Rings formed in 2019. Having created a loyal fanbase since opening for The Beths, and releasing their self-titled EP last October, Phoebe Rings will be debuting their forthcoming LP Aseurai, out June 6. Made up of lead singer/synthesist Crystal Choi, drummer Alex Freer, guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, and bassist Benjamin Locke, they join U.S. band Japanese Breakfast who will perform for the first time ever in Aotearoa next month as part of the Auckland Winter Series. After a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast 's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), marks the band's first proper studio release out on March 21st. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills — an innovator of uncommon subtlety, known for his work with everyone from Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple and quietly regarded as many a legacy artist's favorite guitar player — and tracked at the venerable Sound City in Los Angeles — birthplace of After The Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac and Nevermind among other classics — the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its 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. For 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 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 the album's lead single '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). Sadness is 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. Japanese Breakfast performs The Melancholy Tour for one night only at Auckland Town Hall in June 2025 as part of Live Nation's Auckland Winter Series.


Scoop
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Full Line Up For Auckland Winter Series
Press Release – Live Nation Entertainment TĀMAKI MAKAURAU AUCKLAND (MAY 15, 2025) – Live Nation is proud to present the full Auckland Winter Series line up at the Auckland Town Hall this June featuring Sir Dave Dobbyn, TEEKS, Mall Grab and Japanese Breakfast. One of Aotearoa's most treasured musical voices, Sir Dave Dobbyn, will be live in concert at Auckland Town Hall for the very first time on Wednesday June 4, which is selling fast. Celebrated homegrown artist TEEKS will perform a very special sold out show with a string sextet and piano for one night only on Thursday June 5. Mall Grab is back, making his long-awaited return to Auckland on Friday June 6, which is selling fast. Japanese Breakfast comes to Aotearoa New Zealand for the first time on Saturday June 7, in support of their fourth studio album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). Auckland Winter Series is a new curated concert experience from Live Nation, in association with Tātaki Auckland Unlimited on behalf of Auckland Council. Featuring an eclectic lineup of international icons and homegrown heroes, the series brings world-class performances to the heart of Tāmaki Makaurau this June. Tickets are on sale now. For complete tour, ticket and event information, visit: Sir Dave Dobbyn, TEEKS, Mall Grab and Japanese Breakfast all perform as part of the complete Live Nation Auckland Winter Series line up. About Live Nation Entertainment Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV) is the world's leading live entertainment company comprised of global market leaders: Ticketmaster, Live Nation Concerts, and Live Nation Media & Sponsorship.