Rising indie-pop artist SASAMI has returned with her third full-length album, Blood on the Silver Screen, on March 7th from Domino Recording Co. It is her first album since 2022’s Squeeze.
Sasami Ashworth is a classically trained French horn musician turned popstar. Sasami was a member of Cherry Glazerr, playing synths from 2015 until her departure in 2018. During her solo career, she toured supporting Mitski, Soccer Mommy, King Tuff, and Snail Mail. Most recently, Sasami was supporting experimental artist Yeule on tour and playing guitar in their band. Now, Sasami is back as SASAMI.
Blood on the Silver Screen is a catharsis album for SASAMI. After years of almost avoiding pop music as a classical musician, SASAMI decided to lean into and embrace the power pop music holds, while challenging herself to write complex, multifaceted pieces. Themes of coming to terms with growing older, love lost and found, and realigning oneself permeate throughout, and sonically, every song is a genre grab-bag. Rock riffs with whammy bars, EDM loops, 808s, cello plucking, piano virtuosity.
“Slugger” leads the album with a melancholic admission of being out-of-sorts, “Just when I thought I had my shit together/ You made me realize it could be better.” This single is fun but painful, dealing with a heartbreak where she deserved better but still hurting. Some interesting namedrops happen too- making out to Steve Lacy, contemplating moonlight like Chopin, and “cryin’ like Dolly in 9 to 5.” Another single teasing the album is ‘“Just Be Friends,” a mellower acceptance of cutting someone out. SASAMI’s voice is at the forefront with impressive fluctuations before the song’s extended guitar outro.
http://Watch the music video for “Slugger” here
“I’ll Be Gone” is a synth-driven track about calling the shots in late-night rendezvouses and a clear standout on this solid album. It is an upbeat empowerment anthem and so much fun. If there are any songs on Silver Screen that could breach mainstream audiences, this is my pick. Following it, “Love Makes You Do Crazy Things” shifts the sound again with an alternative guitar riff. Channeling Kelly Clarkson and St. Vincent, SASMI lets her voice fly sweetly in some falsettos and careens lowly on this power ballad. Lyrically, it’s about giving a relationship full integrity, “Love Makes You Do Crazy Things that you should never do…Even when you want to give up…you want to see it through.”
“In Love with a Memory” features Clairo, the only feature on this album. The track is a glitchy EDM song dealing with nostalgia, complete with keyboard vivace a la Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca.” “All good things must come to an end,” SASAMI sings. Before the final verse, there is a canon between the guitar and vocals, creating a call-and-response. “Possessed” then succeeds and redirects us to the present moment, “I’m running with the devil/ And tonight I’m going faster/ And if this is a test, I only have wrong answers.” Some industrial glitching happens in the background as she sings of self-love thrill seeking reprisal.
SASAMI’s conviction throughout Blood is notable; either conviction in herself or in love. In “Figure it Out,” she affirms she will figure it out on a darker tune. “I will Figure it out, yeah I’ll figure it out,” sung in a daring tone and you believe her. In the final single “Honeycrash,” that conviction continues: “Honeycrash into me/ Like a storm into the sea/ Like blood on the silver screen/ We can make it through all that/ Always just remember a flood is a mirror to the sky, even just an ember can turn into a blazing fire.” And even when love has gone, “Lose it All” reminds us, “It’s worth the fight just to feel the light.” Though this is a pop album, “Lose it All” has almost gospel undertones.
The final song, “The Seed,” offers some wonderful final advice, “If love is the light that guides our way, then pain is the shadow that makes us stay/If change is a river that flows us on by, then change is the bridge that keeps us dry.” She’s in her own winter, but she’s about to blossom in a bountiful spring. “Dark is the night when losing track, but trust is the light that will bring us back.”
Love, heartbreak, rebirth, living life to the fullest, facing up to the facts of change, and embodying pain into pleasure are all over SASAMI’s Blood on the Silver Screen. SASAMI revealed she grew up in the Unification Church during her time in California, what she described as a cult that had conservative and repressive views on love, sex, and body. Blood on the Silver Screen is her answer to reclaiming that pain and emerging a Phoenix.
Buy Blood on the Silver Screen here
