Following 2022’s excellent alchemic metal and more Squeeze LP, the LA-based classically trained French horn player, singer and composer Sasami Ashworth returns with a cinematic, stylish adventure in well-crafted, mainstream-style pop, aided by producers Jenn Decilveo and Rostam. Sasami is a talented shapeshifter and this clever musical move still contains her quirky originality. “Pop music is like fuel,” she says. “It’s just invigorating,” exploring, against current trends, 2000s and 2010s pop from the peak era of Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, and Sia, but also mixed with country storytelling, a dash of Lana Del Rey, Mitski, Japanese city pop, and stadium-sized, denim-clad Springsteen anthems, as if she’s an alien persona trying on different outfits. Opener Slugger immediately hits the stride of the genre, her singing ranging from deep and breathy in verse, to high in chorus, a catchy melody of course, and some dry, self-deprecatory humour (“I'm such a Cancer/ I wish I had the answer, baby/ I'm quite a mess now/ It takes me all day to get dressed now”). Just Be Friends is smooth, slow, beautiful, melancholy love song, and a little like the big, elemental sound of Honeycrash, or Nothing But A Sad Face, is also at times reminiscent of Del Rey/Mitski. Another standout, here joined by the fabulous Clairo, is the delicate electro-pop of In Love With Memory with more soaring vocal harmonies. Possessed is a restlessly energetic, but tight, beat-driven number, and For The Weekend opens up the rock guitar with a hugely exploding chorus. Strong closing track The Seed intriguing builds from gentle string arpeggios with series of metaphors (“Love, it's a fire that burns within / Pain, it's the fuel that makes it spin”) into powerful, dynamic full rock and then minimises back again. It’s big stadium pop in some ways with the flavour of, and ideally also huge hits, but still very much with the SASAMI eclectic, original touch. Out on Domino Records.
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