Chekhov’s gong: Japanese Breakfast return to Manchester… wiser, sadder, yet no less dazzling
The indie-pop band brought their new album to Manchester Academy.
Photo: Winter in LA Music Video
Japanese Breakfast are one of the most fascinating acts of recent times. Brainchild of front woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner, the group rests in a peculiar place within the music industry. Not quite small enough to be a cult group strictly belonging to ‘those in the know’, yet not quite big enough to be bona fide hit-paraders.
Regardless of their position in the alternative canon, their back-catalogue emphatically sparkles as one of the highest quality… as one of equal parts pain and wonder. Each release shines with its own distinct voice: from 2016's grief-stricken, shoe-gazing debut Psychopomp, to the moon-age extraterrestrial art-rock of 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet, to fan-favourite Jubilee in 2021, dripping in technicolour art-pop splendour.
Now in 2025, the group have released their fourth record, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). Gone is the wide-screen spectacle of Jubilee. Zauner, instead, finds herself turning to something more hushed, spindly, whimsical… acoustic, dust-land Americana and literary theatrics frolicking within a bitter-sweet recital.
On The Melancholy tour, Zauner proves, once again, that she is one of the sharpest minds in contemporary music. This time, with room for acoustic confessions and woodwind solos.
A lone lantern crackles — our first image of The Melancholy tour. It hangs above the drum kit, a metallic gong illuminated in orange also, ready to cast light over campsite storytellers. This is the space in which set-opener (and album-opener) Here Is Someone resides: a small, intimate affair, wrapped in firelight and wide-eyed wonder.
Zauner’s voice spirals across the Academy to rapturous applause — at this point, a trademark twang of longing. Acoustic guitars lilt and jangle. A wind-swept flute solo follows suit, crooning in its own reedy brand of melancholy. This is the world of Melancholy Brunettes… a world of hushed embers, and the uncovering of new musical territory.
Moreover, the band show no hesitation in taking their time living within this world. Here Is Someone blends deftly into Woolf-inspired Orlando In Love — Modernist concept-pop for the doom-scrolling generation. It’s not music you can move to, but it’s certainly music you can wrestle with your conscience to. The crowd hang their heads in an enrapt daze, travelling across the seas with Zauner and her yearning protagonist:
“The sea carries salt / And sipping milky broth / He cast his gaze towards the sea out / The Winnebago”
Next is Honey Water — my personal favourite from the new record. If Orlando In Love looks outwards on board, then Honey Water dives deep into the foam. Owing to the violent, yet dreamy, lo-fi edge of debut LP Psychopomp, the guitars cascade in My Bloody Valentine-esque glory (Zauner even takes to hand a Fender Jazzmaster, owing to Kevin Shields’ famous obsession with the instrument).
Japanese Breakfast’s knack for gut-punching hooks is ever-present here, with opening line “Why can’t you be faithful?” every bit as unflinchingly venomous as The Wedding Present’s Seamonsters (alt-rock’s own crème de la crème of bitter adultery).
From this point onwards, Japanese Breakfast ricochets through an eclectic selection of gems, blending the old with the new. It never feels jarring — even when the kraut-rock drum machine sound of Road Head sits next to the seventies-soft-rock sounds of Picture Window, a cut which Stevie Nicks wouldn’t sound out of place on.
Whilst Zauner is undeniably the beating heart of the whole affair, wonderful musicality courtesy of the rest of the band also shines through. Each instrumentalist gets their chance to soar: bassist Deven Craig weaves a melodic groove across a four-to-the-floor beat on chic-disco Slide Tackle, drummer Craig Hendrix takes the role of Jeff Bridges (yes, the Jeff Bridges) on estranged, whiskey-soaked duet Men In Bars and guitarist Peter Bradley (Zauner’s husband) sends the band’s sound out into the sublime with his crooning, swooning solo in the parting climax of Boyish. The guitar line sparkles daringly, dramatically — like something out of Ennio Morricone’s heyday.
Keyboard player Adam Schatz provides a constant palette of synthesiser watercolour, as he mouths the words to the songs between each chord. At times, he even pulls a face not too dissimilar to Ben Stiller’s Zoolander. I can’t blame him. It really does sound that good.
The set concludes with the aching strains of Posing In Bondage. Green lights soak the venue, black shadows scale the walls. Japanese Breakfast, regardless of their sonic ‘era’, have always been interested in pain: how it affects people, how one can combat it, and, as is the case here, how one can revel in it. But where other such material may maintain a certain generalised empathy, Posing In Bondage stamps out any such sentiment. This is a vitriolic art-pop piece on the binaries of pain: “When the world divides into two people… those who have felt pain and those who have yet to”.
And yet through the clouds of angst, the encore breaks into sunlight. As the orchestral swells of Paprika build in their intensity — rising, churning, breathing — Zauner, grinning, outstretches a sleek mallet. She slams it against the gong in the centre of the stage: once a piece of furniture observing the melancholy theatrics with plain indifference, now the deafening, reverberating centre-piece of cathartic transcendence.
Paprika is the sound of ambition paying off. It’s an album opener that acts as a euphoric mission statement for the group’s 2021 comeback record, flaunting a newfound sensual regality. A flag flying victory. It’s a moment so obvious, yet so satisfying, that it can only be described as Chekov’s gong.
Does this pay-off achieve heights that the silken whimsy of this year’s LP doesn’t quite reach? Perhaps. But to argue that would be missing the magic. It’s in the build-up that the echoes of the gong become all the more deserved… a deafening culmination of tired aspersions, quiet suffering and strained tenderness. An exorcism through noise.
All of Japanese Breakfast’s discography is at home in the Melancholy Tour. No, not even that. The varying records converse with each other to build towards new theatrical triumphs. I do not see it as hyperbole to claim that Japanese Breakfast are one of the greatest recording artists of the twenty-first century. The body of work speaks for itself… on the record shelf, and on the stage alike.