In the hallowed, wood-panelled grandeur of Auckland Town Hall, where pipe organ pipes loom like guardians of sonic reverence, Michelle Zauner and her band, Japanese Breakfast, wove a shimmering tapestry of joy, grief, and cosmic wonder that felt like both a celebration and a séance.
It’s Saturday night in the City of Sails, and I walk into Auckland’s grand old dame only to be greeted not by a blaring hype track, but the ghostly whisper of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time playing so quietly over the PA it feels like a devotional.
We haven’t entered a concert so much as a confessional. The atmosphere is thick, not with incense, but anticipation. Conversations dart between groups, but there’s a strange, subdued reverence in the air.
Welcome to the Melancholy Tour.
The irony is thick too — because for all the reverie and talk, the Grand Hall feels heartbreakingly hollow.
Punters have scattered themselves among rows built for far more, leaving the space echoing with empty grandeur. It’s not the turnout Michelle Zauner and her band deserve, but it’s the crowd she’s got. A curious patchwork of cultures and generations, from Gen Z dreamers to indie lifers clinging to the ghost of Pitchfork’s glory days.
Phoebe Rings take the stage. If you haven’t heard of her yet, you will soon.
The Auckland-based quartet offer a unique blend of Jazz harmonics, dream Pop textures, and East Asian melodic sensibilities.
Call it Jazzorean, a term no one asked for, but which now exists, according to me.
Lead singer Crystal Choi tells the crowd they’re super stoked to be here, and the sincerity is disarming.
It’s not the tightest set. Their drummer nearly topples his high tom during song two, hitting it so hard it leans precariously off its snare stand, only to be saved by a mercifully placed mic boom stand.
There’s a guitar solo, kind of. It tries to take flight but never leaves the tarmac — more paper plane than Purple Rain. Still, the crowd is with them.
There’s a song sung in Korean that draws warm applause, and though the monitor engineer looks utterly disengaged (until a shrieking blast of feedback jolts him into action), the band leave the stage having made a compelling case for themselves.
The merch line is inexplicably long. A single snaking queue that twists and turns out of the designated merch area like a Tolkienesque riddle. For a crowd this size, it’s frankly insane. The capitalism of sadness? Maybe. Or just great T-shirt designs.
Then darkness. Enter stage right and Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner, cradling an unlit red lantern.
She crosses to centre stage, then pauses and clicks a lighter, and the lantern flickers to life. It’s a quiet yet symbolic act, setting the tone for a theatrical, immersive performance where the lantern becomes a recurring central motif.
Japanese Breakfast’s signature theatrical flourish begins. Zauner looking like a high priestess, positioning the lantern on the floor beside her. An image equal parts whimsical and symbolic. Light pours outward, washing over the band, and for a moment, the emptiness of the venue falls away.
We are here. We are in it.
Zauner took her place at the emotional centre of it all, flanked by longtime collaborators Peter Bradley (guitar), Deven Craige (bass), and Craig Hendrix (drums, synths), along with violinist Lauren Baba and saxophonist Adam Schatz.
Together they conjured a sound somewhere between Sigur Rós in a lo-fi mood and Sade trapped in a Twin Peaks subplot.
Unfortunately, whatever magic the band conjured was often lost to a clumsy PA. The mix was a muddy soup of reverb and guesswork, with Zauner’s vocals frequently buried beneath synth pads and guitar layers.
The violin, meant to cut through with mournful clarity, sounded more like a drone struggling to take flight. The sax was more suggestive than soulful.
Zauner doesn’t just perform songs, she curates moods.
Orlando in Love lifts the room immediately, as Zauner strikes a gong with balletic grace.
Picture Window grooves with all the effervescence of an unreleased Carly Rae Jepsen hit — joyous, vulnerable, precise. The band is tight, the visuals transportive, the melancholy radiant.
The setlist was a meticulous journey through the band’s discography, anchored by highlights from the critically adored Jubilee.
Be Sweet bounced like a late-summer fever dream, its New Wave hooks lighting up the neo-gothic ceiling beams.
Zauner has always lived at the intersection of grief and grandeur, and tonight is no different.
Whether she’s invoking her late mother, celebrating Korean American identity, or dancing like no one’s watching (despite being projected onto the imaginations of thousands via her Crying in H Mart memoir), the set feels less like a show and more like a séance for the self.
The night winds down gently, and Zauner thanks Auckland, revealing she’s off to visit Hobbiton tomorrow.
Gonna find some elves she laughs. And just like that, the spell breaks. The lantern dims. The melancholia, like the audience, quietly files out.
Japanese Breakfast’s Auckland debut was a dream wrapped in static.
When it soared, it felt like starlight. When it stumbled, it reminded us that beauty is often imperfect. Zauner delivered grace through the chaos, even if the mix didn’t always return the favour.
For those who made the journey—drizzle, distractions, and dodgy mixes be damned—it was a night that still shimmered with something worth remembering.
Paul Marshall
Photography by Azrie Azizi
Japanese Breakfast
Phoebe Rings
