Ahead of McAllen show, genre-bender SASAMI talks modern love inspiring new album

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When I first listened to Sasami Ashworth’s self-titled debut in 2019, it caught me during a tumultuous time in my life following graduating from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and dealing with intense feelings. I like to blame that on the fact that my frontal lobe had not developed quite yet since I was 21 at the time.

There was something deeply special about the intimate, shoegaze indie rock record that tackled the themes of regret and jealousy that spoke to me and led to following Sasami’s music.

Then in 2022, Sasami embraced volume and control in her sophomore nu-metal record “Squeeze.” If I had to describe it, listening to “Squeeze” was like expressing anger in a safe space, which she has described similarly.

While the change of sound between the two records personally took me by surprise, it’s actually something one should expect with Sasami. Because here’s the thing.

There are actually two Sasamis, and they both exist in harmony. One is Sasami Ashworth, the conservatory-trained classical French horn player, producer and composer; and SASAMI, the fearless performer and protagonist of her albums.

Moreover, the thing you should know about Sasami is the fact that she is a daring, genre-bending musician with a studious approach to craft. This couldn’t ring any truer as she tackles something she had never done before: making a pop record about love in her highly anticipated upcoming album “Blood On the Silver Screen.”

The Monitor caught up with Sasami, who was traveling from Chicago to Ohio ahead of the Columbus show on Nov. 7, to speak about the new record as well as visiting McAllen. When asked how touring has been so far, Sasami said “pretty gnarly” due to the fact that she had food poisoning before the first show and continues to be in survival mode, but great nevertheless.

She joined Sacramento’s punk rockers Destroy Boys for their latest tour on Nov. 6, and will finish with a stop at our very own McAllen’s Cine El Rey, which will also feature regional femme-fronted punk band BRAG!

Though “Blood On the Silver Screen” is set for release on March 7, 2025 via British independent label Domino, Sasami actually finished the album last December and has been sitting on it for a while now.

“We are like a frog in boiling water where we don’t feel how drastic the changes are, at least for myself … because I’m working through them like years at a time,” Sasami said when asked what the process was like undertaking the task of making a pop record. “I’ve been living in that sound for a couple of years before it gets released, so I definitely feel like I’ve been putting a lot of time in to understand the new sound.”

In preparation, Sasami says she spent hours listening to pop music to understand the structure but still believes there’s so much more to learn. She gravitated towards the late aughts and 2010s pop music, specifically citing Britney Spears’ “Femme Fatale” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” in addition to Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry and Sia as inspirations.

There are many misconceptions that surround the pop genre, which also gets frequently disrespected as many believe it’s the easiest music to make.

“In reality, the reason why it’s so accessible and popular is because it’s actually so difficult to do — not anyone can do it. It took a lot of studying and trial and error and obsessive listening, like way too many hours of listening to pop music,” Sasami explains. “I only have respect for the genre.”

Right before writing the album, Sasami moved to a rural town on the coast in northern California, leaving Los Angeles where she was raised.

“It’s kind of funny because I ended up writing this very dramatic, cinematic, almost like city club more leaning record than my other ones but in a very rural place,” she said, adding that various songs were written while on hikes or sitting near the ocean. “Even though there’s not a super peaceful nature energy in the album, that’s actually the energy I was surrounded by when writing it.”

When listening to “Blood On the Silver Screen,” which narrates the ecstasies and agonies of being a modern lover, one wouldn’t have guessed that its sound was born out of the tranquil stillness that comes from rural living.

“Sometimes when you’re in the spec of dating and romance and being in the city and being out, you don’t even really have the time to process it,” Sasami said. “But when you are in a quieter place, then you’re able to sit in the rocking chair and look back at your life.”

Since she writes from quite a cinematic, narrative viewpoint that’s not always completely autobiographical, having the silence and the space allows her mind to have a lot of room to build worlds and reflect on her experiences then expand on them in a cinematic way, she explained.

Through her music, Sasami says she’s able to explore differing characters with “Blood On the Silver Screen” specifically tackling distinct film genres in every song to view the world, love and experiences in different perspectives. For example, in the song “Possessed,” Sasami imagines Halle Berry’s character in the 2004 film “Catwoman” at the club in her iconic suit while on the prowl.

“Even though I’ve never necessarily been in that exact situation, I think that’s what’s cool about art is that you get to embody characters that you might not actually technically embody in the real world,” she said, which is something she did in her previous album “Squeeze,” where she wanted to explore aggression and violence without actually harming anyone.

Another character she celebrates in a narrative between the songs “Smoke (Banished from Eden)” and “Nothing But a Sad Face” is the first woman according to the biblical story in the Book of Genesis: Eve.

Describing her roots as “very religious,” Sasami said she grew up with a “pretty conservative way of thinking about love.” Now, there is so much feminine sexual reclamation Sasami was exploring while working on “Blood On the Silver Screen,” adding that it didn’t feel naughty but rather fun and playful to look at Eve’s narrative through a different lens.

“Instead of Eve being this innocent woman who gets tricked into making a world-shattering mistake, you know being banished from Eden, I like the idea of twisting the narrative where it’s an empowered decision. Where she wanted to eat the apple or she wanted to do whatever bad deed that got her banished,” she explained.

Sasami envisions Eve leaning on the gates of Eden smoking a cigarette, processing her choices and while she’s empowering herself, she can hear angels singing in the distance.

This imagery is also provided to the listener through the interlude “Smoke (Banished from Eden)” as it’s composed of a haunting instrumental less than 40 seconds long with faint, angelic vocals not only referenced in the sinister ballad, “Nothing But a Sad Face On,” but also return as Sasami croons: “And it breaks my heart when I hear the angels sing. But a mouth of honey is worth the sting.”

Through this narrative, Sasami says that even if Eve’s choice — eating the forbidden fruit leading to God banishing Adam and Eve from Eden — does make her lonely it’s on her own terms, which parallels encounters in love where not every choice we make leads us to a happy ending.

“There is a real grounding in living in a way where you’re standing behind your choices,” she said, adding, “I feel like Jesus always gets portrayed as this ripped dude and in my mind, I’m like ‘Eve is definitely hot.’ Can we not skip over the fact that Eve was a baddie and we’re just obsessed with Jesus’ six pack.”

When asked if she had a favorite off the new record, Sasami said “Nothing But a Sad Face On” and really enjoys playing it live since it’s the first time she brought the French horn on stage to perform, adding that it’s an angelic sounding instrument and she likes being able to tap into those skills.

“I just like that song. I think it’s kind of slutty in a way that I like,” she happily declared.

Nevertheless, in addition to navigating through this reclamation, Sasami also notes that the new record is an extension of coming into herself as part of a generation unbeholden to conventions around the nuclear family.

“Everyone feels like the main character of their life as opposed to just being a unit in a story told over and over again,” she elaborates, pointing to the conventional idea of romance where a man meets a woman, they get married, they have a baby and they buy a house. “Everyone’s narrative is so different and I think it’s fun to think about romance and love in its new form which is less tied to those structures.”

Especially as a femme person, Sasami explains that there hasn’t always been a narrative of discovery, raunchiness and aggression from the woman’s side in the past as it’s traditionally been:

“Here’s this doll that’s pure and chaste until a man finds you like an object of desire and then you become this kind of mother figure,” she said.

Ultimately, Sasami guides the listener through the various experiences love can take us, such as the heartache that grows from longing, to intimacy without defining the relationship, to the things we find ourselves doing when we are in love.

“Blood On the Silver Screen” closes with the grungy ballad “The Seed” (which Sasami says is a reminder that she’s still that that b—— from “Squeeze” as it’s sonically reminiscent of a track one might hear from that album) and despite the sound being more aggressive as opposed to the intoxicating, upbeat opener “Slugger,” she says there’s actually an optimistic message there.

“Love itself is not to blame for the toxic traits that are ascribed to it. I feel like love being tied to relationships and families and all those other structures is really a projection, but love itself is just a feeling and I think that it’s the most powerful thing,” she explained. “I wanted to end the album with something that’s giving respect to the concept of love.”

With love being such a universal theme across cultures, Sasami is confident that people will find their own way of relating to the songs and finding meaning in them.

If the aim was to cut an album that makes people feel empowered and embodied, this absolutely came through for me after listening to “Blood On the Silver Screen” alone, and various songs encapsulated how I felt about a certain person as well as navigating through my own experience with love.

With three singles from the new album already out on all platforms — “Honeycrash,” “Slugger” and the recently released “Just Be Friends” — I cannot recommend enough for folks to check out the songs, especially since Sasami has been playing them on tour right now and looks forward to playing new stuff in McAllen.

Though it’ll be her first time playing in the Rio Grande Valley, Sasami has frequently played in border towns and loves doing so, specifically in Tijuana as the Mexican city borders her home state.

“I feel those spaces where two cultures are meeting so intensely are crazy energy fields, so I feel like the energy at that show and just in that town is probably really electric. I’m super, super excited,” she said. “I love connecting with Mexican fans and meeting new Mexican people, so I think it’s gonna be an amazing way to end the tour.”

To catch Sasami as well as Destroy Boys and BRAG! at Cine El Rey on Nov. 24, tickets to the show can be purchased here. But be quick, because the event page warns tickets are going fast, and trust me, this is a show you won’t want to miss.

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