SASAMI – Squeeze

SASAMI is dragging rock’n’roll by the scruff of its neck into a bright new future. Squeeze is a no-brakes theatrical epic that twists together industrial grit with country-pop heartbreak, landing somewhere between Nine Inch Nails and Sheryl Crow. The gulf between the first two tracks alone – the lurid and bloody Skin a Rat and twangy, steely-eyed love song The Greatest – is enough to make your stomach turn, but SASAMI’s rich authority holds together an album that’s pulling apart at the seams.

After leaving LA band Cherry Glazerr in 2018, Sasami Ashworth released a simmering shoegaze debut. Squeeze has the same cleverness and heart, but it supersizes Ashworth’s vision. Every track is enormous, from Say It’s grizzly, dystopian verses to the private hurricane of Call Me Home, a dizzying spin of a song about trying to find centre. And through it all, the same question returns: how do you bridge a chasm of miscommunication? Or, as she puts it on the fidgety, frustrated Make It Right, 'What do you say when there’s nothing left to say?' Not a Love Song, the record’s sweeping finale, finds an answer in the unspoken, swapping out difficult conversation for a 'beautiful, beautiful sound'.

Listen to: Say It, Call Me Home, Sorry Entertainer