True to the band’s name, Japanese Breakfast’s April 30 concert was a jubilant celebration of color and flavor. Dressed in a white lounge set, lead singer Michelle Zauner pranced on stage as if she were dancing in her bedroom. Chicago was an early stop for Zauner—after debuting the album at Coachella earlier in the month, the band began its tour on April 23. Zauner launched her latest album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), on March 21. At the Salt Shed, Zauner’s performance was indeed melancholic, but, rather than lulling the audience into sedation, she made them swoon into a collective catharsis.
The opener, Ginger Root (a music project led by multidisciplinary artist Cameron Lew), set an upbeat tone. In his set, Lew acted out a playful dialogue between the camera and a screen onstage. The slowed film created a sense of dreaminess, and a telephone prop brought surrealist echoes. Lew describes his music as “aggressive elevator soul,” inspired by touchstones of Japanese culture like the manga and city pop of his youth. Like Zauner, his Asian American identity plays a central role in his hybrid musical process.
Amid a cloud of fog, Zauner launched onstage in a white dress with an ethereal aura that would define her performance. Throughout the show, Zauner’s aura was dusted with a kind of oneiric sadness, which would’ve become tiresome were it not for her ability to punch through this persona with tenacious guitar solos and exuberant dance moves.
The multitalented Zauner is also known for her 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart, a New York Times nonfiction bestseller. In Zauner’s latest album, she uses Greek mythology to trace complex human relationships with dark undertones while centering female subjectivity. “Orlando in Love” describes “Venus from a shell” and the seductive allure of a siren call; “Leda,” illustrates the story of Zeus raping Leda from the woman’s perspective. She sings, “I’m thinking of all the Grecian Gods/ the men they all played to get what they want.” Meanwhile, “Mega Circuit” takes a contrasting approach to critique masculine desires for “a generation that in the absence of positive role models has found refuge in violence and bigotry,” as Zauner put it in an interview with Genius.
Zauner is at her best when she evokes the bittersweet feelings of delicate beauty and struggles in love. “Honey Water” embodies the sweet entrapment that makes it difficult to extricate oneself from a relationship, and “Here is Someone” conjures irreconcilable longing with dreamlike piano melodies. She knows her terrain well: her poetic posture and floating voice are well suited to her aesthetic, and her touring band features a silken saxophonist and an enchanting violinist. At one point, she even joked to the crowd, “We’re going to play a really sad song now.”
On April 30, the crowd was largely subdued, but that didn’t faze Japanese Breakfast. At times, it seemed that the mesmerized audience shifted into tiredness—but though we caught a few yawns, this never lasted for long. In between songs, as an appreciative and excitement-tinged quiet settled over the room, Zauner charmed with a refreshingly relaxed stage presence. Someone yelled, “Hi Michelle!”; she responded, “Hi back!” When the millennial “J-Brekkie” fans wanted nostalgia, Zauner delivered. She covered Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” and sprinkled in classics from her 2021 album Jubilee, such as “Paprika” and “Be Sweet.” She even harkened back to her first album, Psychopomp, with “The Woman That Loves You,” a slow ballad.
As concertgoers left the Salt Shed, taxis blared Zauner’s biggest hit yet: “Be Sweet.” There was no loud singing or laughing, but that’s not what the audience came for. They came to feel catharsis, and, judging by the looks of melancholy and satisfied smiles, it was clear Zauner did her job right.
