Gallery: Japanese Breakfast at El Museo del Barrio

Over the weekend, Michelle Zauner brought her band Japanese Breakfast to El Museo del Barrio in New York City for a recital of her new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women). The performance was an impromptu session of stripped-back songs from the recently released record and, of course, longtime favorites from the catalog. The recital featured Zauner and her bandmates, caked in colorful makeup and donning paper crowns, dressed up like 19th century European characters. The show was separate into acts: Act I was titled “In which Orlando heeds the call…”; Act II was “In which he suffers the consequences…”; and Act III was “In which he reflects on the curious passage of time…” Act III featured cuts like “Kokomo, IN,” “This House” and “Lindsey,” a fan-favorite from Zauner’s time in Little Big League. She even added a spoken-word introduction to her new song “Leda,” in which she spoke about her estrangement from her father.

Zauner was a recent cover star for Paste. “When she made Jubilee, she stepped away from her guitar and became a frontwoman singer,” music editor Matt Mitchell wrote earlier this month. “For For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), she started from scratch and returned to her primary instrument, writing interlocking guitar parts—chords that travel without a lot of repetition—and embracing the same kind of fingerpicking she performed when she fronted Little Big League 15 years ago. She began reaching for string arrangements like she would a synthesizer (the open, symphonic textures of ‘Boyish’ spring to mind while listening to ‘Winter in LA’ and ‘Orlando in Love’), and Blake Mills put effects on fretless basses so they’d sound like flutes. ‘Baroque’ might be an apt yet overused label for these songs, and it was a palette Zauner and Mills naturally came to together without pretense. Zauner reached for deep-sounding instruments, wanting to escape the fanfare of Jubilee. She wound up making an introspective record, one that summons the quieter tensions of Tusk and the ornamental gloom of Pet Sounds.”

Our good pal Emilio Herce captured moments from Japanese Breakfast’s set. Check out his gallery below: