Michelle Zauner is no stranger to transformation. Over the past decade, she’s gone from makeshift recording spaces in warehouses and trailers to sold-out tours, a Grammy nomination, and a bestselling memoir that turned her into a literary star. Now, she’s stepping into the next phase of her evolution with For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), her most musically expansive and thematically intricate album yet.

The fourth Japanese Breakfast record marks Zauner’s first proper studio release. And it’s not just any studio. For Melancholy Brunettes was tracked at the legendary Sound City in Los Angeles, the birthplace of After The Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac, and Nevermind. If that weren’t enough, Zauner recruited Blake Mills, the low-key guitar wizard who’s worked with Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, and Alabama Shakes, to produce. The result is a record that moves away from the bright optimism of Jubilee and into darker, more contemplative waters.

If Jubilee was a celebration of desire’s highs, For Melancholy Brunettes dives into its inevitable lows. “I felt seduced by getting everything I ever wanted,” Zauner reflects. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going, I was going to die.” That Icarus moment serves as the album’s thematic anchor - the perils of longing, the cost of ambition, and the bittersweet beauty of chasing something just out of reach. Lead single “Orlando In Love” plays with these ideas through an intricate web of references. Inspired in part by John Cheever’s literary riffs on Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, the track tells the story of a wayward poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea, only to fall prey to a siren’s call. Even in her loftiest moments, Zauner can’t resist a sly bit of innuendo. After all, Boiardo’s epic was left unfinished at 68 and a half cantos. She finishes the tale with her own “69th.”

The album’s exotic sound matches its literary ambition. Where Soft Sounds From Another Planet dipped into sci-fi and Jubilee embraced technicolor pop maximalism, For Melancholy Brunettes is steeped in the rich textures of European Romanticism. The forlorn café girl in Degas’ L’absinthe. The storm-swept moors of Wuthering Heights. The brooding seascapes of Caspar David Friedrich. It’s all there, woven into the fabric of the record’s interlocking guitar arrangements and Mills’ deft production, which gives Zauner’s compositions room to breathe and brood. But in the end, this isn’t an album just drowning in sorrow, it’s able to find beauty in sadness, and clarity in reflection. For Melancholy Brunettes captures a rare kind of melancholy, the kind that understands the tragedy of life and still revels in its fleeting joy.