An artist's artist

MUSIC

Mar 21

On our video call, I tell Michelle Zauner that I first discovered her music during a shitty break up. The song Road Head, to be specific. She laughs and tells me she wrote that song about a shitty break up. Zauner has always had the knack for producing things that feel like they’re just for me – first her music, by way of Soft Sounds From Another Planet, and then her book, Crying in H Mart. And, now, once more, with her latest album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) (out Friday March 21 via Dead Oceans) – for I often feel like a melancholy brunette (& sad woman).

The album as a whole (and it should be considered as such) is a comprehensive and eclectic blend of ideas and influences. Gothic, romantic, medieval – it stirs up thoughts of renaissance poets, goblets of red wine, mounds of ribbon and tulle. Pre-raphaelite women mid-swoon, a nude Kristen Dunst bathed in moonlight on a river bank, Scarlette Johanson alone in a hotel room in Tokyo, Juliette Binoche floating in a blue swimming pool. Pale skin and long, meaningful gazes out of rain-specked windows, single tears and heavy sighs. Longing, and ennui. It invites us to languish in the delicious feeling of being melancholy for melancholy's sake (but just for a little while.) The first single, Orlando in Love, is a perfect example of Zauner’s canny ability to show, not tell. Playful lyrics about a man in his Winnebago AV, who falls in love with a siren and then drowns, sung in Zauner’s warm, immediately recognisable voice, supported by, at first, just a guitar, and then, the orchestral swoops of a string quartet that’ll tug on your heart strings. And, despite claims that music videos are passé, the response to Orlando in Love suggests otherwise. Fans have flooded the YouTube comments, demanding a feature-length version. If you haven’t watched it yet, the clip is a dreamy 2 minutes and 29 seconds, featuring Zauner as a booze soaked friar – inspired by Eduard von Grützner’s “The Connoisseur”, and her friend Jungle as a beautiful, pearl encrusted Birth of Venus-esque siren (sharp eyes might spot Missy Dabice from Mannequin Pussy and Molly Germer, violinist and wife of Alex G, in there, too.)

If Jubilee was celebratory, and Crying in H Mart was a sort of catharsis, this album seems like we’ve come full circle in the arena of Big Feelings. The whole album feels wonderfully theatrical, a performance of emotions played out through the exploration of the real and other worldly with more than just a hint of whimsy.

I find Zauner’s ability to write about relationships astounding. She can capture an entire history in just two and a half minutes. When I ask Zauner about expressing herself with just raw honesty and vulnerability, I realise half way through the question that it’s kind of rhetorical. Clearly this is just the way she moves through the world. During our chat, she’s incredibly open – in both her answers and her body language; but also, the fact that her screen isn’t blurred out around her and so I can see her couch and the collection of art displayed behind her, including a cartoon drawing of her and her husband (I assume) and a pomegranate – incidentally, a fruit I would also immediately associate with Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpine, a Melancholy Brunette™ if ever there was one – hung on bright yellow walls. She’s quick to answer, thoughtfully, but without thinking. She clearly knows exactly what moves and motivates her, and she’s willing to share it with me.

She agrees, it’s just how she operates in the world.

But, I wanted to know more about the emotional and creative forces behind this album. In our conversation, Zauner opened up about its evolution, her upcoming book, and the year she spent learning Korean in Seoul:

IW: For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) feels like it's going back to a really beautiful, wistful and romantic place. Tell me about how you got there.

MZ: I think after Jubilee, I wanted to go in kind of another unexpected direction. I knew I wanted to make a very guitar centric album. I knew I wanted to go for a darker palette after [Jubilee, which was a] Big Yellow album. And I at first was like I would love to make a creepy album just because I thought that that was a really interesting prompt. I wrote Mega Circuit and Honey Water and that felt very of that palette, but it was very challenging for me to write eight more songs that existed in that world, so it sort of broadened into an album that I think is quite melancholic, and has an eerie undertone.

You have such beautiful ways of curating your inspiration. Orlando feels like it's very multi-layered, in terms of influence. And then visually – the film clip I think is such an important element to it as well, to reinforce the narrative that you're going for. Are you going to do videos for more of the tracks?

Yeah, there's another music video in the can for the last single and it's quite different. I think that that was a big reason why I wanted to start with Orlando, which I think some people found confusing. But I felt like it was lyrically the most representative of the theme in a very simple and literal way. It's about a man who's seduced by a siren and dies. And I think all of the songs on this record are all about people succumbing to temptation or being tempted by something that will result in some sort of consequence. And that's why it was important for me. I had such a clear vision for what I wanted that music video to be, which was a very literal representation of that song. I knew I wanted this kind of romantic, painterly, renaissance type of visual to accompany what people thought of when they thought of the record.

Actually the first video I shot is the one that is going to come out last. And that is more of me wanting to direct more and be less in front of the camera. It’s kind of a short film that's set in Seoul, with a fictional couple that's kind of … sort of representative of how I feel emotionally. Not [about] my relationship. I think it's about a relationship where one partner is boldly wanting to just move forward, and one partner is a little bit more hesitant. That sort of push and pull in a relationship where one person has more anxiety than the other and needs a little bit more time to find their way, and one person is just ready to move forward. That video is quite different, which is why I liked the idea of it coming out later because I wanted Orlando in Love to set the scene.

You write about relationships in such an incredible way, in your music but I also adore your book. I think the way that you write about relationships is so honest. It's also, I think, why your music deserves a couple of listens – because at first it's just a beautiful song and then if you kind of unpick it a little bit, the narrative is really powerful. How do you access that vulnerability when you're writing about those relationships? Or is it just how you operate in the world?

I think it's how I operate in the world, and I think it's just what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in work that doesn't do that. I'm not even really interested in conversations that aren't doing that.

My husband actually gave me really wonderful advice. Every time I sort of had a moment of pause … of whether I should share something or not. Which was, to just write it – you don't have to release it, and you don't have to share it. But if you write it, you can decide after. You know, after you write the thing. That was really helpful advice. And more often than not, I think every time I wrote something that gave me pause, it ended up being something I felt really was maybe one of the more important parts of the book. I was really worried about representing my mother as a sick woman, but ultimately it was really important to me to talk about that experience because I didn't feel like I had ever read anything that prepared me for what that looks like. And I was very angry that I hadn't.

So it felt really necessary to me to talk about that experience and it's something that everyone, unfortunately, will witness in some capacity. I wrote it and revised it a lot and ultimately felt like those were the most important details to have.

I don't think anything can prepare you for it, but I think being able to see it through somebody else's eyes or through somebody else's experience is really powerful. So thank you so much for that.

You know, you go to it when you need it. I remember I felt that way when Mount Eerie came out with A Crow Looked At Me about his wife.

I knew that that album was gonna destroy me and I was gonna be able to listen to it maybe one time. And there was a moment where I wanted that feeling. I wanted to kind of poke at my own wound and it was really important and a beautiful experience. But I don't know if I need to have it again, you know.

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Sometimes once is enough.

Tell me a little bit about your year in Seoul – how was that?

So my publisher, after Crying in H Mart came out, was really interested in a second book. And I loved my experience with my publisher and it was such a great opportunity. The first thought that came to mind was, I would love to live abroad and just study the language and document the process. And, when I was younger, my mom always used to say if you lived in Korea for a year, I think you would be fluent. I think I was just so enticed by doing something completely different. Dedicating a year of my life just to one thing and seeing what came of that. And I thought that a lot of people would be interested in it too.

I think I just wanted to live a little bit slower of a life and a little bit quieter of a life. I really wanted to be close to my family and my mother's sister. And I wanted to talk to her about my mom. I wanted to get to talk about our family history before it was too late. It was an incredibly meaningful experience. I kept a diary for the year that I was there. I think this year will be about sort of rereading those diaries and finding the arc and what the narrative is, and sort of piecing that together.

It also gave me a lot of time to fall back in love with music and the idea of performing again and making the music videos I got to do with my Korean cast and crew and friends and in another language – which was a really, really wonderful experience.

What was it like working with Blake Mills? He's worked with a lot of other people that I associate with music that mixes melancholy sound with narrative storytelling, like Conor Oberst and Fiona Apple. What was that process like for you?

It was really interesting because I've never worked in a “real studio” before and I've never worked with a ‘capital P’ producer before. I've always just made records with friends. I mean, I really wanted to sign up for that experience. He's such a fantastic guitar player and a very, very interesting creative mind. It was tough at times because we butted heads a lot – because he's not a producer that is really interested in you just like, ‘recognising your vision’. He wants to find what he thinks is interesting too. And, I really wanted that, but then once I had it, it was kind of like, what is this? It was both really rewarding and really challenging.

For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is out today, March 21 via Dead Oceans.

Japanese Breakfast will perform at Vivid Live at the Sydney Opera House on June 3, and at Rising at PICA in Melbourne on June 5.