Japanese Breakfast | The Melancholy Tour

Two-time Grammy-nominated indie pop band Japanese Breakfast is returning to the Momentary this October!
Known for their emotionally charged and sonically stunning performances—as well as Michelle Zauner’s magnetic stage presence—the band’s live arrangements bring a dynamic twist to their studio recordings.
The band’s music blends indie rock, dream pop, shoegaze, and experimental pop, creating a unique and emotionally resonant sound that’s easy to connect with.
Their latest release, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), dives deep into themes of longing and introspection, blending sweeping melodies with haunting lyricism for an electrifying live experience—equal parts cathartic and mesmerizing.
Don’t miss the chance to hear these stunning new tracks like only Japanese Breakfast can deliver.
See you there.
This concert is presented as part of the Momentary’s Live on the Green Concert Series on the Coca-Cola Stage. Held rain or shine.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
JAPANESE BREAKFAST

After a decade of 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. 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 “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 its own demise.
The lure of honey water draws you from my arms so needy
You follow in colonies to sip it from the bank
In rapturous sweet temptation you wade in past the edge and sink in
Insatiable for a nectar drinking ‘til your heart expires
”Men in Bars,” a murder ballad in the vein of “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” sung here as duet with Jeff Bridges, follows a relationship on the verge of a violent end as recollections of a happy courtship are raised wistfully and pitifully in the face of impending doom, infidelity once more ushering in destruction.
Though Zauner has experimented with science fiction on Soft Sounds from Another Planet and buoyant surrealism on Jubilee, the landscape of European Romanticism that underpins For Melancholy Brunettes and the dense tissue of classical allusion that comes with it marks new territory for a songwriter entering her artistic maturity. She credits a range of antecedents with inspiration. The forlorn café girl in Degas’ “L’absinthe”. The seascapes of Caspar David Friedrich. The passionate longing and wild, undulating moors in Wuthering Heights. Hans Castorp wrapped in his camel hair blanket, dreaming on the Berghof balcony. It is an atmosphere made palpable by the intricate, interlocking guitar arrangements that accompany much of the record, lapping like waves over the meter, often as oblique in their expression of the chord as Zauner can be in her polyvalence of feeling and insight.
But for all the record owes to the romantic imagination, the sensibility of Japanese Breakfast is too thoroughly contemporary to lapse into pastiche. Tracks like “Mega Circuit,” a ferocious minor key shuffle in which we are introduced to a gang of loitering incels, and “Winter in LA,” a tongue in cheek take on the edenic California of the Laurel Canyon era, could only have been written in our time. And for as often as Zauner assumes fictional, often male, often insidious personas on For Melancholy Brunettes, her own subjectivity cannot help but surface. “All of my ghosts are real,” she sings on “Picture Window,” a song that manifests the fear of loving someone so much you presage their loss. It is an anxiety rendered gut-wrenchingly acute when one considers Zauner’s own history of grief, the loss of her mother having been a major theme of Japanese Breakfast’s work since Psychopomp, and one which persists here, albeit faintly, as unsuspected echoes of an irredeemable sadness.
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 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, they sound most saliently on its final song, “Magic Mountain,” an engagement with Thomas Mann’s famous novel of the same name. Mann’s book is about a hapless young man, Hans Castorp, who checks in for a brief visit to a tuberculosis sanatorium and finds himself unable to leave for a period of seven years. Zauner reimagines herself as Hans and her artistic body of work as the mountain looming over her. It became a personal song, she says, “about confronting the narcissism that goes into being an artist and deciding I didn’t want it to destroy my potential for having a happy life.” For her, making any work feels like scaling a mountain, but from the perch of For Melancholy Brunettes, she surveys the future. “Bury me beside you,” she sings to her beloved, “In the shadow of my mountain.”
WHAT TO EXPECT
- Entry: Arrive early! There are three entrances to the concert:
- Arvest Bank Courtyard Entrance, near the main entrance to the Momentary. For General Admission (GA) ticketholders and Sponsor ticketholders.
- This entrance is ADA accessible.
- 8th Street Market Entrance, beside 8th Street Market. For General Admission (GA) ticket holders.
- Note: this entry is NOT wheelchair accessible.
- North Parking Garage Entrance, on the north side of the Momentary parking garage. For Premium ticketholders and Momentary members.
- Members: you’ll need to show your digital membership card. Log in and access your card here.
- Arvest Bank Courtyard Entrance, near the main entrance to the Momentary. For General Admission (GA) ticketholders and Sponsor ticketholders.
- Run of Show: Coming Soon!
- Re-entry: No re-entry will be allowed for this show.
- Parking: Our parking garage is located next to the 8th Street Market at 701 SE 8th Street. A parking pass is required to park in the garage. Book your parking pass today.
- Note: There is an 8′ height limit for the garage.
- ADA Parking: Accessible parking is available in the garage.
- Additional free parking can be found at the Fire Station at the corner of 8th and A Street. It is approximately a thirty-minute walk to the venue from this lot. View Google Maps here.
- Bike Valet parking will be available in our gravel parking lot, near the Momentary’s main entrance off E Street.
- Seating: You’re welcome to bring folding chairs and blankets for use on the Green. There will be a dedicated standing-room-only area in front of the stage for those who prefer to stand.
- Wheelchair-accessible viewing areas are available for guests needing such accommodations. Please contact Guest Experience in advance if additional assistance or accommodations are needed by emailing BoxOffice@theMomentary.org
- Bag Policy: You can bring one clear bag into the venue that is not larger than 12” x 6” x 12”, or a single one-gallon plastic freezer bag (Ziploc bag or similar). Exceptions for diaper bags, medical devices, and media apply—learn more here.
- In addition, you can also carry a small clutch purse, no larger than 4.5” x 6.5”, with or without a handle or strap.
- Bags will be screened as you enter. Security has final say on what is and isn’t permitted.
- Fun Food and Drink: Hungry or thirsty? Enjoy the culinary creations of the Momentary Food Truck and fun beverages from the RØDE Bar before and during the show. No outside food or beverages will be allowed.
- Cashless Event: Bring your credit or debit cards as we’re 100% cashless.
- Photos and Video: Capture your favorite concert moments with a point-and-shoot camera or your phone. But please leave professional cameras, drones, selfie sticks, tripods, detachable lenses, and audio or video recording devices at home.
WHAT TO BRING AND NOT BRING TO THE CONCERT
BRING
- Valid ID and tickets to present upon entry.
- Folding chairs and blankets to use in designated areas at mid-field and beyond.
- Free water stations will be available. Empty plastic water bottles are encouraged to help stay hydrated. (No glass, metal, or opaque plastic containers.)
- Bring your credit or debit cards. The festival is 100% cash-less.
- Rain or shine, the show will go on! Come prepared with your sunscreen, hat, raincoat or a poncho.
- One clear bag no bigger than 12” x 6” x 12”, or a single one-gallon plastic freezer bag (Ziploc bag or similar). You may also carry a small clutch purse, no larger than 4.5” x 6.5”, with or without a handle or strap.
- All clear bags and clutch purses will be screened prior to entry. Security has final say on which bags will be permitted.
DON’T BRING
- No outside food and drink, large bags, coolers, or ice chests. No pop-up shade tents or umbrellas of any kind.
- No weapons or firearms of any kind are allowed, even if you have a permit. Laser pointers, glow sticks, and illuminating objects are strictly prohibited.
- No fireworks, fuel, or explosive materials of any kind.
- No skateboards, scooters, or wheeled devices other than ADA-compliant transport.
- No kites, frisbees, inflatables, or air horns.
- No illegal substances of any kind.
- No smoking or vaping will be allowed outside of designated smoking areas.
- No pets.
- No posters, signs, or promotional materials. Flyers and other promotional materials cannot be distributed on Momentary property without prior approval.
- Prohibited items will not be admitted or checked. Please leave these items at home or in your locked vehicle.
Note for Premium Ticketholders: The Premium viewing area is a “poured drinks only” zone. No outside water bottles or containers will be permitted inside the Premium ticketholder viewing area. Please leave your reusable containers at home or in your car. Water will be available inside the area for guests.
SPONSORS

Enter promo code below to gain early access to tickets for this show: