REVIEW: Japanese Breakfast w/ Ginger Root | 4.28.25 @ The Ryman Auditorium [PHOTOS]

Japanese Breakfast
w/ Ginger Root
The Ryman Auditorium; Nashville, TN
April 28, 2025

Review and photos by Drake Boling

Japanese Breakfast’s first-ever show at The Ryman Auditorium was nothing short of continental as Michelle Zauner and co. played a set featuring their entire new album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) and many fan-favorites.

To say I was psyched for this show would be an understatement. To me, Mrs. Zauner has been a shimmering beacon of light in the indie rock world since the Little Big League days, and after putting out JB’s most mature record yet, I couldn’t wait to see how the band would bring these new songs to life. Moody, classical yet mythological… It just seems like the kind of album you’re supposed to play at The Ryman!

Mrs. Breakfast began the show by lighting a small red lantern, and sounds of a gentle storm gave way to a crackling campfire. She seated herself on the edge of a huge seashell setpiece, as her husband, guitarist Peter Bradley, sat nearby on the edge of the riser, their acoustic guitars harmonizing. The twinkling arpeggiated first notes of “Here is Someone” really drew me in, soon to be exploded into booming bursts of warm synth pads, light sax notes, and huge bass swells. A grandiose, captivating start of the show to say the least. Like a campfire in a storm, “Life is sad, but here is someone!” Simple as.

The lights went cerulean, and the gentle opening thrum of “Orlando in Love” rang out, spinning a tale of an impressionable young sailor lost at sea. Stage left, Laren Baba’s violin beautifully sewed together this song’s romantic sound. This track was so good live, it justified me immediately reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as soon as this lead single came out, just for additional insight into the new album’s themes. By now, we could see costumes in full force, from Michelle’s vibrant seashell-adorned dress to Mr. Bradley’s pirate-adjacent billowy shirt.

Next up was “Honey Water,” a swampy rocker that saw fog pour over harsh red lighting. Although I wasn’t going to get up in Mrs. Zauner ‘s face using my super wide lens (MJ Lenderman nearly smacked me a couple weeks ago at The Green Lantern 😁), I was willing to get up in tour-managing bassist Deven Craige’s business with this fish-eye.

From here, a trio of songs from Soft Sounds From Another Planet were tackled gracefully. Fan-favorites “Road Head” and “Boyish” saw most of the audience singing along, while the post-chorus synth on “The Body is A Blade” absolutely ripped. I remember the first time I saw Japanese Breakfast perform live, I was so excited to hear this specific riff, and it wasn’t quite turned up in the mix enough to fully bask in. On this very special night at The Ryman, the synth sound was full and lush, and when these sweeping broken chords kicked in I was floating about 10 inches off the ground.

Soon we were back in Melancholy territory, where the bouncy shuffle of “Mega Circuit” hit way harder live than on the recording, and the ballads “Leda” and “Little Girl” had Michelle swapping her Jazzmaster for an acoustic and reclaiming her throne upon the shell.

She then climbed up on the piano stage right, and introduced the next song, which would be a duet with their ‘Grammy-nominated drummer Craig Hendrix.’ Of course this was referring to “Men in Bars,” a track which many eagle-eared-Michelle-heads may have first known as “Ballad 0,” released under her BUMPER side project, as well as live recordings hitting streaming long before The Dude Himself, Jeff Bridges, dueted on the track with her. Backlit by a neon “The Melancholy Inn” sign, their voices entwined together beautifully, as they sang of lapsing lovers at low points. (Fun fact: in her recent Office Hours interview, Michelle mentioned that Billy Joel would have been her first choice for this duet, a fact which, whether she was joking or not, I choose to believe!)

“One Headlight” “Picture Window” proved to be a melancholy mid-set highlight, definitely one of the catchier songs on her new album, with a soaring chorus and galloping bassline. Then came the super-slick pop groove “Slide Tackle,” complete with a massive horn outro led by multi-instrumentalist Mr. Adam Shatz on the sax.

For my money (I have none), my favorite song of the evening may have been one of the older tracks of the night, “The Woman that Loves You,” which sees Michelle at her most angsty, reverb-drenched, pleading vocals and all. Yes, the only song from Psychopomp of the night immediately transported me back to my freshman year of college… I’m not sure what extra juice they sprinkled in this record but everything about the way it sounds is simply instant nostalgia.

A moment to mention stage design: When I saw the Jubilee tour at the Athenaeum in Columbus, I was blown away by the verticality of the band’s stage design, with these large balloon-type light sources pulsing to the music and giving such depth to the stage. After seeing the “Orlando” music video, I had an idea that the aesthetic for this leg of tour might be a little more subtle, perhaps theatrical, perhaps playing off of set carpentry from classical theater or something. Nothing could have prepared me for the really immersive stage design, featuring this huge shell setpiece center stage, flanked by borders of waves crashing around the band, framing the action perfectly. This design was done by Kat Borderud, and if I’m going out of my way to find her stage and lighting designer, you better believe it was a well-thought-out and dreamy display. I would say, short of her flying onstage on a glider from Sable, this is probably the coolest way to bring her music to life visually. Naturally, I failed to get a decent wide-shot of the stage design for one simple reason : I am…how you say… a fool.

Anyway… Mr. Bradley’s slide guitar solo on “Kokomo IN” warmed my damn heart, as well as a beautiful surging of strings from Mrs. Baba. Soon thereafter, Peter and Michelle both busted out (if my eyes did not deceive me) dueling 12-string guitars for “Magic Mountain,” the Thomas Mann-inspired closing track from For Melancholy Brunettes.

Closing out their main set was the synthy and sparse “Posing in Bondage” which, around the three-minute mark, descended into jangly, clanging arps synced up to insanely bright strobes. I was blinking slow and waving my hand in front of my face as the band left the stage to rapturous applause. 

Before slide-tackling JB’s encore, I want to address the opener’s set, which was simply delightful. Ginger Root, the funky yet soulful project of Cameron Lew, performed as a trio, combining catchy hooks and Japanese city-pop.

At one point Cameron explained that Nashville was one of the first places he put himself out there doing house shows around the city. What a long shot from The Ryman! He also took time to explain that in college he wrote an essay about how significant Psychopomp was to him. As a fellow ‘Pomp Enjoyer myself, I can only imagine what an honor it is to be opening this tour with that very band. “I got a C…” he admitted.

The band continued on with their playful grooves, the percussive and highly funky “No Problems” being a surefire standout. Many times throughout his set Cameron shredded blistering synth solos on an OP-1, which any DIY synth player would be delighted to see used so powerfully in a live setting.

One impossible-to-ignore feature of Ginger Root’s set were two popup screens on the sides of the stage, receiving a full multi-cam feed from several tiny cams (Marshalls?), as well as a live feed from a red-jumpsuited camera man who stood in the middle of the action. This cinematographer was well-rehearsed: capturing the magic frantically, often darting between instruments in conversation, whip-panning from synth solos, crash-zooming into a drum fill, and landing on some insane dutch angle of a bass moment. It was tight and engaging.

Despite at times distracting from the impressive musicianship the three-piece were sharing, this cameraman’s presence really tied the set together, and offered a very kinetic perspective that brought the set to life in a cheeky, homegrown way. Mixed media, music videos and high-energy edits are an important aspect of Ginger Root’s aesthetic, and it gave the set an interesting angle, as though the whole thing was an extended music video. Combining this with Cameron’s deadpan yet silly stage presence, it was clear that Ginger Root made a lot of fans that night.

OK, NOW BACK TO JBREKKIE:

After a respectful amount of feverish applause, the band ambled back onstage to perform Jubilee’s closing track, “Posing For Cars,” a slow ballad that starts with gentle acoustic strums and ends with a blazing ‘verbed-out shred.

A floral-wrapped gong wheeled onstage foreshadowed that we were about to be treated to “Paprika,” which, to me, is one of the most perplexingly good songs of the decade. Something about the marching-band percussion, mixed with the arpeggiated synths, down to the absolutely fried lyrics really sets this song apart. “How’s it feel to be at the center of magic, to linger on tones and words?” How indeed, JB? Every time she smashed the gong, LEDs lit up all around it, making for not only a joyous instrument and stage prop, but a very cool late-set setpiece to begin the closing of the show. As excellent as “Paprika” was as an opener on the Jubilee tour, saving a song this good as a homestretch feature was wonderful as well.

As on Jubilee, next up was “Be Sweet,” which is one of the band’s most poppy and popular tracks. The glassy bass groove was sick as hell, and those shiny synths echoed all around the stained glass of The Ryman until everyone was singing “I wanna believe in you / I wanna believe in something!”

To close the show, the band opted for “Diving Woman,” a particularly jammy ditty from Soft Sounds. The last time I saw this song live, the crescendo of the outro basically exploded my ear drum and was worth it. This time was no different. This murky, trippy jam continued on as layers of Michelle and Peter’s guitars kept swirling and feeding back, creating a cathartic tangle of fuzz and jittering synth that proved to be highly climactic.

I’m going to close with a couple bullet points because I haven’t seen many concert reviews do that sort of thing and also because I’m not sure what else to say to end a reflection of such a special show. 

• It is very interesting for an album as “mature”’ as For Melancholy Brunettes to be such a successful return to music after Mrs. Zauner has become an absolute living legend of a novelist from her success with Crying in H-Mart. 

• I think it is very freakin’ cool that, outside of indie rock, Michelle has found such success in another medium. In fact, more of the world probably knows her from her autobiography than from her music… meaning realistically, she could basically do whatever she wanted with her career from this point on, and be totally fine (including wanting to direct more than just her music videos!)

• For her to go ‘off-the-grid’ in Korea for over a year, learning the language, and returning with this album cycle (although I know the record was recorded before her ‘year off’) is so inspiring. 

• In high school when I first heard some of the guitar riffs from Little Big League’s These Are Good People, I was like woah, this is something really fresh in the world of guitar rock, and tried to learn all these riffs like this was the coming of a new proper guitar hero.

• For her to have spun this into the incredible success she has seen so far, I’m just proud of her and her team. 

• Reading Crying in H-Mart makes it very difficult to not root for this person.

• Although I’m not an audio book person, there was something very intimate and sweet about hearing Michelle narrate such a personal story, so I would strongly recommend listening to the book in some ethical way.

• Michelle and Peter’s story is so beautiful and their chemistry onstage is really something else. 

• I would never want the pressure to follow up an album as good as Jubilee.

• I would love to see some really indulgent music from her in the near future.

• Way more artists should be scoring indie video games.

• Way more artists should not be afraid of instrumental tracks.

• Way more artists should be Japanese Breakfast.

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Setlist:

Here Is Someone
Orlando in Love
Honey Water
Road Head
Boyish
The Body Is a Blade
Mega Circuit
Leda
Little Girl
Men in Bars
Picture Window
Slide Tackle
The Woman That Loves You
Winter in LA
Kokomo, IN
Magic Mountain
Posing in Bondage

Posing for Cars
Paprika
Be Sweet
Diving Woman