Japanese Breakfast have released a music video for “Orlando In Love,” the lead single off of their highly anticipated new album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) coming out on March 21st via Dead Oceans.
Departing from the uptempo brightness of their last album, 2022’s Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast enlist the help of Grammy Award winner Blake Mills to produce their latest work. The result is a subtle but lush track suffused with melancholic poetic inspiration, creating the blueprint for the album’s visual and sonic aesthetic.
Taking inspiration from a hodgepodge of sources including classic poetry and painting, lead singer Michelle Zauner directs and stars in the new music video, once again flexing her multifaceted artistic muscles. Zauner plays the titular character, Orlando, alongside a star-studded cast which includes Mannequin Pussy‘s Missy Dabice, as well as violinist Molly Germer, who contributed to Jubilee and is also the wife of Alex G. On the leading track Zauner says:
“After writing it, it felt like the perfect thesis statement for an album that is largely about people, often men, who find themselves seduced by temptation and are duly punished for it. “
The video starts with a dream sequence, which finds Zauner’s Orlando face to face with the beautiful siren, Venus. Abruptly woken up, struck by a beautiful woman, Orlando decides that he must find Venus in real life and is so called to the sea. The shots switch between gothic corridors, misty woods, and Venus’ pure white conch shell big enough for two. For Orlando, his beautiful siren temptress can only be in his dreams. As Zauner’s quote suggests, Orlando collapses before he makes it anywhere near the sea. The video ends much as it begins, circling back to Orlando’s fantasy where he is happy with his lover in a dreamy haze.
The “Orlando In Love” music video gives us the first visual representation of an album that promises to be a mature, contemplative, and artistically visionary work matched by inspiration from baroque classics.
Watch the new music video here:
Catch Japanese Breakfast on tour later this year with additional dates added in New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, and San Francisco.
TOUR DATES:
Apr 12 & 19 – Indio, CA @ Coachella Music and Arts Festival
Apr 23 – Austin, TX @ Moody Theater (ACL Live) *
Apr 24 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom *
Apr 26 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle *
Apr 27 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore *
Apr 28 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium *
May 2 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed *
May 3 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore *
May 5 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall *
May 6 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall *
May 7 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway *
May 9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
May 10 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
May 11 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount *
May 15 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia Presented by Highmark *
May 16 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia Presented by Highmark *
Jun 21 – Milwaukee, WI @ Summerfest
Jun 24 – Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller
Jun 25 – Stockholm, SE @ Filadelfia
Jun 26 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA
Jun 29 – Manchester, UK @ Academy 1
Jun 30 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland
Jul 3 – London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton
Jul 4-6 – Ewijk, NL @ Down The Rabbit Hole 2025
Jul 8 – Paris, FR @ Le Trianon
July 10-12 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK Live
Aug 23 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Santa Barbara Bowl *
Aug 27 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic *
Aug 28 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic *
Aug 30 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater *
Sep 1 – Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theater *
Sep 6 – Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom *
Sep 9 – St Paul, MN @ The Palace Theater *
* w/ Ginger Root
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