Sasami’s latest album is another natural pivot for the artist

With the album’s debut behind her, and with a new tour ahead of her, Sasami and I spoke about the delineating line where Blood on the Silver Screen and Squeeze border one another, the purpose of pop, metal, and art writ large, in bleaker times, and the importance of simply being oneself when making music.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Andy Crump: Blood on the Silver Screen is worlds apart (from Squeeze), but still relates to its sound. Did you think about how the two connect with each other?
Sasami: That's part of why I was adamant about being the sole writer on the album. I wanted there to be distinct throughlines. Also, we were adamant about recording real drums, real bass, and real guitars, and not just having everything be fully electronic, so there is still this foundation of a rock band in most of the songs. 

AC: That gives the music urgency–it feels very present, which dovetails into the way that the record relates to the pop music renaissance we're in right now. Why do you think we’re experiencing this new wave of contemporary pop?
S: I can only speak from my own experience, but after the pandemic, I was craving a super aggressive, violent, cathartic experience, which is why I made a metal-inflected album, and toured with a metal band, and Marshall half stacks.

That took a toll on me, to go to such a dark place for so long. I think there must be something similar in the zeitgeist; not that there's any excuse for taking your foot off the gas pedal now, because sh*t is as terrible as it has ever been, and maybe even worse. But I do think it's a natural human desire, when you go so hard in one direction, to need to heal before jumping back into it. That’s what my body and soul were craving: a joyful experience with people after having this performatively aggressive experience. I went hard on Squeeze, so I wanted to have fun and be a little more lighthearted. I still have djent guitars and double kick pedals, so there's still going to be a metal element to the live show.

AC: You can’t be angry all the time and you can't be optimistic all the time. It's important to find space for both. I think pop is great for that, because it’s so malleable. Was that appealing to you?
S: I feel like my job is to create something that facilitates the people who absorb it having some sort of emotional experience. To me, that's the job of an artist: to make sure that people in society are still in touch with their emotions. If we don't encounter art, we might just focus on all the darkness in the world from a logistical standpoint, and not from a spiritual, artistic standpoint. Even though I was making this uplifting music, there's still Sasami-fication of the songs, which is that they're almost all lyrically kind of sad or pathetic .

The first lyric is literally, “I’m such a cancer,” and I think anything that's outside of that vibe definitely comes from a place of fantasy. That's part of being an artist—being able to write characters doing things that you don't actually do. The other part of what I'm doing is having this fantasy experience in a world that I might not live in. It’s not an autobiographical album. It's an album that, again, hopefully just facilitates people’s emotional experience, whether rage, joy, ecstasy, or sadness.

If we don't encounter art, we might just focus on all the darkness in the world from a logistical standpoint, and not from a spiritual, artistic standpoint.

AC: You’re thinking about it more as an emotional and not necessarily  technical exercise, is what I'm taking from that.
S: It's a technical exercise because I'm the craftsperson that's building the amusement park for people to go into. “This piece of machinery hooked up to this piece of machinery will make someone sad; this piece of machinery connected to this piece of machinery will make someone excited.” There's the songwriting part and then there's the production part, which is, “this beats per minute and this drum beat will create this feeling.” So it is very technical, but what I'm trying to create is emotional. It's a mix of tapping into your emotional side and a very technical side.

AC: I like to ask this anytime I interview musicians: How do you arrive at which sound to use for which song to produce X or Y result?
S: It's a mix of experience with what has worked in the past, and what you’ve observed has worked for other songs you've heard in the past. It's the same thing as a chef. A demo is kind of like fresh produce. “Okay, this asparagus is in season, I know that I can do this with it.” Then you R&D in the kitchen. For me, that's trying a song in this style, demoing a song in this style, before deciding it works as a dance song as opposed to as a ballad. 

Most of the songs I wrote on an acoustic guitar. That was part of the ambition of the record: I wanted to have this more electronic dancey production in the recipe of the album, but I still wanted all the songs to boil down to a song that could be played on the acoustic guitar around a campfire, you know? 

AC: There’s an evolution from Squeeze to Blood on the Silver Screen, but there’s also an evolution in track progression. How do you figure out where each song fits in sequence?
S: Yeah, that's a very intuitive thing that you mess around with. It feels like a puzzle. It takes months of reordering to figure out. There definitely was an intentional move in starting with “Slugger” and ending with “The Seed.” My last album started with “Skin a Rat,” which is really aggressive and probably scared a lot of people away, and ended with “Not a Love Song,” which is much more contemplative and tender and introspective. I do the inverse on this album. “Slugger” is very vulnerable and inviting, and then ends with “The Seed,” which is sonically probably the most aggressive song.

AC: There are different sides of you not just on each track, but within each track. What did you learn about yourself through production?
S: To be honest, I wrote and recorded the record in one year. I wanted to be really present while making it, and I didn't want to overthink anything. I didn't want to take it too seriously. To me, it's a pop record, and I wanted it to feel a certain way. I didn't necessarily create it as something to be intellectually dissected; I don't think every piece of art needs to be dissected in that way. If you're just being yourself, then there's going to be complexity in it, even if you don't intend it.

I'm just one person. This is only my third album, which is a long process, because there's so much of creating assets and promoting the album, but the actual process of making the album didn't take that long. On the next album, I'll take more time with it. When you're in a band and you have more creators involved in the process, maybe that makes you slow down, and take your time on things more. But because I'm just one person and I happen to have musical ADHD, I was really eager to make something fast, and put it out and be with people quickly. I didn't want to wait five years before touring again. I wanted to make something quickly, that I can connect with people really quickly, and get out there and tour. I'm really excited about that part. I didn’t create this album as this precious artifact that will be studied by people for decades to come; I made it as a vessel for me to have connections with people in person. That's the part I'm really looking forward to.