Some days we feel mellow and reserved, other days we just want to kick and scream until we pass out. After touring two albums that reflect both of these feelings, Los Angeles born Sasami Ashworth is ready for a new feeling. On her new album as SASAMI, Blood on the Silver Screen, the multi-instrumentalist finds herself in pop territory, delivering her most playful and fun release to date. Before she swings through Boston for a night at the Paradise Rock Club, the “Slugger” singer chatted with us about the transition between releases, the challenges of being a solo artist and having her mind blown by pimento cheese in Georgia.
Allston Pudding: Your first album, Sasami was more introspective and meditative, and you had credited the lockdown as part of the inspiration for the shift to dark metal for your second album. What was the driving force between Squeeze and Blood on the Silver Screen?
SASAMI: When I toured my first album back in 2018 we were still having a lot of older boomer-generation front of house engineers that were always telling me that my voice was too quiet, my guitar amp was too loud and obviously that just resulted in me making my amps much louder and getting into even louder guitar music. My first album was pretty mellow, but it was just getting heavier and heavier and I was adding more and more distortion, making my drummer play harder beats and then I was like “oh maybe there’s something here”. That was how Squeeze ended up being inspired by nu metal. With Squeeze, there’s so many moments where I would put screaming vocals in my backing track trying to keep myself from screaming so much live, but the second I hear a double kick pedal I just become possessed and generally start screaming anyway. By the end of tour, my voice was so fucked and I got scared that I had polyps or nodules. There’s a way you’re supposed to scream and then there’s screaming like someone’s murdering you and I only scream like someone’s murdering me. I was like “Oh, I should probably write a record that doesn’t make me wanna scream so much if I wanna have a long career in singing.” So I was very intentional about making a song based record. I just wanted to make something that was a bit more lighthearted and fun and playful.
AP: As an artist who has found success moving between genres and sounds, how much of that process is freeing and, if it all, do you feel any pressure moving ahead to keep shifting?
S: I think there’s definitely two sides to the coin being a solo artist. One, I can literally do whatever the fuck I want, because I only have to answer to myself, which is awesome because I get really controlling and I get a lot of ideas. Then sometimes I just find really amazing musicians and collaborators that I wanna work with and it’s in a different style. But having to do all the interviews by myself and be creatively in charge of so many different things can be really exhausting. When I had been in a band, we were like soldiers together and you feel a little bit more invincible because there’s a team there. You can hype each other up a lot but with my job, I have to hype myself up all the time and I have to tell myself that what I’m doing is worth putting all of my energy into. I only do this job so I don’t have to do any other job to be honest. I don’t think I was born needing to do this but I am the type of person that if I’m gonna do something I put my whole ass into it, just like if I was a preschool teacher, I would put my whole ass into arts and crafts.
AP: In the effort of putting your whole ass into everything and especially your live performances, do you have any trustworthy vocal warm-ups or remedies that you’ve adopted?
S: Yeah, I definitely use a vaporizer, like a steam inhaler. That’s a game changer. Which I didn’t get to use it last night and I really need to get to the venue early enough to use it today. And I do the classic Jacob‘s Vocal Academy warm-up exercises, those really get the job done. But the other thing I have to mention are warm downs, because that’s the other side of things I always have to remember.
AP: You’ve mentioned your family and upbringing being a source of inspiration, has there been any notable reactions from your family to your music?
S: Yeah, my dad was pretty disturbed by the concept of Squeeze early on, and I had to really explain to him. He is a boomer and went to Altamont and Woodstock and saw the Hells Angels beating up hippies, so he’s not for music that incites violence at all. So he was pretty disturbed that I was making an album that was very intentionally drawing on violent imagery and making an outlet for having a cathartic experience that’s tied to violence and rage. It just took me kind of explaining to him the way that art functions, that we can have this expressive experience without actually harming anyone. It’s just part of human nature, we have violence and rage inside us but there’s a way to release those expressions in a way that’s not harmful. I always thought that going to punk or metal shows, or seeing horror films, doing laser tag, humans have found lots of non-violent ways to scratch those itches. To me, Squeeze was creating a physical space for people to express those feelings of rage.
AP: Similarly, how were the crowd reactions when you were opening for artists like Mitski or HAIM?
S: Those two in specific were so different. The Mitski crowds were younger, she had a lot of TikTok fans at the time. I could sense that they had never even seen a metal band in their life. A lot of those people were having a double kick pedal awakening, which was super exciting and electrifying to be a part of. I don’t think any of them had seen an Asian woman with a metal band behind them before. Additionally, the Mitski shows were indoor venues that were really dark with lighting, whereas the HAIM shows were in stadiums where I was sometimes performing in daylight. It was a little bit of a harder sell. The Mitski crowds are very emotional no matter what the emotion is, and HAIM’s crowds were a little bit more laid-back. But that was really fun too cause I definitely think there were a lot of people in the crowd that had never seen the type of music that we were playing. The HAIM crowd took a little bit longer scratching their heads, whereas the Mitski crowd skipped scratching their heads and went straight into screaming.
AP: Just got fully into it, I love that.
S: I fucking love the youth. I hate a 21+ show because, we remember when we were teenagers, those shows changed our lives. When you’re a kid and you go to a show, it really changes your outlook. Not that you can’t do that when you’re older, but everything kind of shakes you differently when you’re a teenager.
AP: What song on Blood on the Silver Screen are you most excited to perform live?
S: I’ve started playing those songs a lot already and I really love playing “Smoke” and “Nothing But A Sad Face On.” This is the first time I’ve ever brought my French horn on tour. Obviously, I play guitar and drums, but the French horn is kind of my one true love, but I’ve always been nervous because it’s such a delicate instrument. I’m getting better about being organized and having trustworthy bandmates that help on the road, so it’s been fun having my baby with me.
AP: I’m excited to see that live because “Nothing But A Sad Face On” is one of my favorites on your new album, so that’s great to hear as a fan & listener.
S: Amazing! I love hearing that.
AP: As a Bostonian as well, I was curious how did you come to work with Clairo?
S: Claire and I are just fans of each other and have a bunch of mutual friends. We both worked with Rostam and Dave Fridmann, so we have a lot of mutual collaborators and mutual respect. I think with Claire also being in her woodwind era and me forever being a French horn girly, there’s kind of this nerdy girl connection and I just think the world of her, she’s so talented.
AP: I had read that you grew up singing karaoke with your family and you had mentioned Britney Spears, so I was curious what’s your favorite Britney song to sing?
S: It’s interesting because, being a professional performer doing karaoke, I kind of hate doing it now. I perform all the time and so, if I do karaoke now, I like to share the mic. Usually I like to do the sing-along crowd pleasers, where we’re all screaming. I feel like I’m always doing “Toxic” or “…Baby One More Time” – one of the classics.
AP: Where is your favorite city that you’ve performed in, or what’s your favorite food you’ve had on the road?
S: Ooooh that’s a great question. This is so crazy and isn’t necessarily even my favorite food, but I had an interesting food experience in Savannah, Georgia. This kind of answers both questions because I love Savannah. It’s supposedly haunted, but I’ve always had an enlightening or electrifying experience when I’m down there and this is crazy because I’m lactose intolerant, but I had pimento cheese at this festival once and it kind of blew my mind. If anything was worth getting extremely gassy for, it’s pimento cheese. Insane. But, I don’t mean shitty grocery store pimento cheese, I mean like someone’s southern Mom made it.
AP: I feel like the lactose intolerance probably played a part in that. It’s almost like a forbidden fruit.
S: Exactly, it’s like a novel product but you know how there’s some things that get more popular as a shitty processed food, and then when you taste the homemade original, you’re like “oh, this is how it’s supposed to be.” Like the difference between having grocery store sushi and going to a restaurant. I just remember it blowing my mind.
AP: Just a fully elevated experience, I totally get that.
S: Because I’m from California, I’m always eating kale salads and quinoa. Just extremely cliché because I’m such a healthy eater. So whenever I go to the south and I try certain foods I’m like, duh chicken pot pies are insane and fried chicken is the best thing I’ve ever had. So when I’m on tour I just end up eating food I don’t normally get like “oh right, this is why people make fun of Californians for eating kale all the time.”
AP: Hey, California has the right idea, but there is something to be said for Southern comfort food.
S: Oh my God, incredible.
For more information on Sasami, click here. Check out the new album “Blood on the Silver Screen”, available on March 7th.