Review: Sasami – Squeeze


Sasami Squeeze




An entire decade is loved and explored on Sasami’s second studio record.

Sasami is in love; maybe that’s the ‘Squeeze‘ of the album title.

Though it’s not so much of a whom, but a when that she’ in love with. And when precisely is somewhere around 1990 (give or take a year or two, depending on the track).

But unlike artists who fall in love with a particular band or specific genre, Sasami seems to love everything she found back in the day, which is tough to get your head around but great for the album.

How can you love sooo much from a specific period? And how can you turn all that into something so cohesive? Sasami never answers the first, but she sure as hell does answer the second.

What do we mean by that? We mean it’s an album that’s in love with the 90s. Not 90s this or 90s that, but all of it. And it seems almost to be the greatest hits of the 90s: encapsulating pop, indie, metal and everything in between. The only thing missing is some drum and bass loops and a guest rap from ODB, but we may find them on the B-sides.

So how far does Sasami cast the net really? Consider album opener Skin A Rat; it is lo-fi sludge meets art-metal – think Danzig played by Sonic Youth. Good fun, exhilarating, although its lo-fi production does rob it of a bit of muscle at points.

You’d think she was setting a tone with such a brazen Sonic Youth callout, and she kinda is (but more on that later), but she also not, as realised when you hit a track like Call Me Home.

Suddenly you’re waist-deep in a very 90’s pop ballad. Think Natalie Imbruglia or Eagle Eye Cherry, or even The Wallflowers. There are even hints of the poppier end of the Pixies (say hello to Here Comes Your Man).



Or you get other weird shifts in gear like The Greatest. Here Sasami sits somewhere between all of the above, like Sonic Youth (again) dueting with Shania Twain with its slight country twang, while Say It tosses you violently in another direction, and you’re faced with a Tool-meets-Rammstein-meets-Nine Inch Nails moment of badassery, only with weirdly soft vocals that make it even more disorientating than a lot of what those bands produce.

How about Tried To Understand, which hits notes from bands like The Breeders, Belly, The Lemonheads and Throwing Muses without feeling the need to copy or bow to them. Need It To Work is full-on Sonic Youth. It’s Kool Thing for a less Kool era.

All this leaves you wondering what this album is, tonally? Who can mix these things and make them work? You’re also asking why Sonic Youth comes up again and again? Because they seem to be Sasami’s muse, and their spirit is how Sasami manages to tie all these disparate strands into something exciting rather than messy.

But saying Sonic Youth over and over is doing Sasami a disservice. This isn’t some mock Youth pastiche; there are also elements of bands like Wolf Alice, not necessarily in how they sound (though there are moments), but in how they plunder a whole scene.

What’s left is a potent mixture of music that you don’t often hear anymore. It makes you wonder why it’s taken someone so long to rediscover all these dark corners of absolute majesty and start pushing them into the future.

But what’s more exciting is just how much fun and originality Sasami is injecting into sounds you knew but never knew could sound like this.


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