It’s Thursday 3rd July and it’s another day of the heatwave in London. The clammy, monotonous heat permeates every street in Brixton, and there are many brave souls willing to queue outside in the blazing sunshine to see Japanese Breakfast, who is performing tonight at one of the city’s most loved venues, O2 Academy Brixton. 

Fronted by vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Michelle Zauner (who also wrote the phenomenally popular memoir ‘Crying In H Mart’ which chronicles her experience of losing her mother), Japanese Breakfast released a fourth, and perhaps most ambitious, record back in March, titled ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’. It’s the follow up from her wildly successful, Grammy-nominated third record ‘Jubilee’, and the fans filling the venue tonight are excited to hear both the new record and their classic favourite tracks.

We start the set with ‘Here Is Someone’, and Zauner doesn’t let her adorable bunny-ear style hat falling off her head and onto her shoulder get in her way. She shrugs and laughs, carrying on singing, ‘Measure by measure / In time with the songs we loved / Watching you from the yard / Life is sad but here is someone’. She goes into ‘Orlando In Love’, one of the singles off the new record, and the crowd’s reaction is tangible, everyone singing back with perfect timing.

The tour didn’t get off to the most successful start, with their tour bus breaking down in Sweden. Zauner pokes fun at themselves for the mishap, while their sound team fill the venue with cartoonish calamity sounds, before they play the third song of the set, ‘Honey Water’, the crowd mesmerised as she sings: ‘In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in / Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ’til your heart expires’.

The set continues with ‘Road Head’, ‘Boyish’ (from Zauner’s 2011-2014 project, Little Big League), and ‘The Body Is A Blade’, the crowd electric as we move further into the Japanese Breakfast’s discography. The set is a tailored blend of old and new songs, and it’s a testament to the strength and conviction of their sound and style that they seamlessly blend, while each song is grounded in the vibes and sound of the individual projects.

Next up is ‘Mega Circuit’, another of the singles from ‘Melancholy Women’, and then ‘Glider’ which Zauner dedicates to the ‘Sable’ creatives, with whom she worked on the soundtrack to the Sable video game. They continue on to play ‘Picture Window’, ‘Slide Tackle’ and ‘The Woman That Loves You’ as well as the new track ‘Winter In LA’ and one of the most loved tracks of third album ‘Jubilee’, ‘Kokomo, IN’.

Zauner took a moment to introduce the next song, ‘My Baby (Got Nothing At All)’, which features on the soundtrack to the upcoming film ‘Materialists’, starring Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans. It’s a fantastic tune, and around me I see people in the crowd opening up Spotify to save it to their likes and playlists. We end the main set with ‘Till Death’ (a special request), ‘Magic Mountain’ and ‘Posing In Bondage’, and time has flown so quickly we can’t quite believe it’s almost time for the show to end.

Luckily, we’re not quite at the end yet, and after a quick encore, throughout which the crowd never stopped cheering, the band returned to the stage to play ‘Paprika’, a song so popular that it has over 22 million plays on Spotify alone. The night comes to a spectacular close, Zauner spinning around the stage in a flowing white dress while singing the final two tracks, ‘Be Sweet’ and ‘Diving Woman’.

It’s an emotional end to the London segment of the ‘Melancholy Tour’, and as we head out into the warm night, the crowd are already talking about making sure they secure tickets to the next Japanese Breakfast show. We can only hope the band is back sooner rather than later.

SETLIST

Here Is Someone
Orlando In Love
Honey Water
Road Head
Boyish (Little Big League cover)
The Body Is A Blade
Mega Circuit
Glider (dedicated to the ‘Sable’ creatives)
Men In Bars
Picture Window
Slide Tackle
The Woman That Loves You
Winter In LA
Kokomo, IN
My Baby (Got Nothing At All) (Live Debut)
Till Death
Magic Mountain
Posing In Bondage
Paprika
Be Sweet
Diving Woman