(Dead Oceans)
Michelle Zauner addresses big themes on her band’s fourth album, but her sharp writing isn’t best served by wistful arrangements

Now probably more famous as the author of Crying in H Mart, her bestselling 2021 memoir about food, identity and grief, Michelle Zauner’s fourth album as Japanese Breakfast feels simultaneously assured and a little unsatisfying.

The sounds are largely on point. In response to the Korean American’s last outing, 2021’s bouncier, electronic-leaning Jubilee, For Melancholy Brunettes… features mid-tempo indie rock warmed by vintage organs, the sigh of steel guitar and other trappings of wistful Americana. It’s all impeccably produced by the busy Blake Mills, who can call up session stars such as drummer Jim Keltner or actor Jeff Bridges to duet with Zauner on Men in Bars. Two tracks – Orlando in Love and Mega Circuit – point in different directions meanwhile: one to elliptical pop about literature, the other towards sorrowful, barbed looks at modern masculinity.