by Will Floyd (@Wilf_Lloyd)
At any point while listening to Squeeze you might fix your gaze to the middle distance of your mind’s eye. Who is that vague figure on the horizon, waving jubilantly in your direction, beckoning you to join her? Squint, and you’ll see it’s SASAMI, standing safely on the other side of the vibe shift.
An indie rock–metal crossover has been brewing for some time, as some of the genre’s most subdued stylists have been smuggling noisier elements into their music since the beginning of the 2020s—setting the stage for indie’s own vibe shift. Phoebe Bridgers foreshadowed heavier sounds on Punisher, with the screamo closer on “I Know the End”; Indigo De Souza dropped a gloriously hideous, noise-inflected interlude replete with blood-curdling screams in the middle of the otherwise straightforward pop punk of 2021’s “Real Pain”. Then there are hyperpop icons like Rina Sawayama and 100 Gecs who have channeled nu-metal most overtly, and are probably the clearest precedents for what SASAMI has done on Squeeze. Even top 40 titans are keying into the potential for a kind of metal renaissance; Halsey’s slept-on “If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power,” produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, at least flirted with some aspects of the genre, and Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” has already become a fan-favorite because of its curveball alt rock crescendo.
As the singer born Sasami Ashworth has made clear, the embrace of metal on her sophomore album was not incidental, it was the precise prompt from the outset. The opener “Skin A Rat” should make it clear that Squeeze is more than metal-inspired—it is metal. Her 2019 self-titled debut was a proficient indie rock, guitar-driven record that nodded to the stylings of the genre’s biggest power hitters—the evocative chord voicings of Big Thief, the inventive song structures of St Vincent, the shoegaze and pop punk tinges of Snail Mail, the prog influence of Mitski. Successfully channeling, and at times even surpassing her contemporaries might have been the precise thing delaying her breakout. She could appear at first blush to be one of many.
The stark shift in style could be a welcome development to any indieheads who have found the cruising altitude of the genre stuck somewhere frustratingly sensible, even meek. Squeeze implies that the vast middle ground between indie and pop has been thoroughly mined, looking past the concerted camp of 80s revivalism. The next bridge may be to something uglier, and potentially more alienating.
In the end the most subversive aspect of Squeeze is not the sound of metal itself, but the clashing of those sounds with the comparatively plain ones of indie—a confluence that results in a delightfully strange musical experience. The low-key grunge vibes of “The Greatest” end up sounding as jarring as the confrontational opener that precedes it, and then we’re back where we started with the NIN-inspired drum pads and trademark nu-metal chugging of “Say It”. This ends up being the album’s pattern: metal followed by palette cleanser.
Those palette cleansers—mid tempo tracks like “Call Me Home” and “Not a Love Song”—make it clear SASAMI hasn’t completely given up on the art pop balladry in which she once trafficked more heavily. The arpeggiated synths that close out the former call to mind Weyes Blood’s “Movies,” and the latter features the most profound narrative lyrics on the album, as SASAMI contemplates the nebulous borders between art and beauty. Lines like “It’s not a love song, just a beautiful, beautiful sound” leave the most cerebral moments for last.
There are also sounds that seem to nod to the ever-expanding world of UK post-punk. The driving bass line and dissonant guitar passages on “Need it to Work” is caught somewhere between Dry Cleaning and Squid, while the title track has noise rock elements that call to mind some cuts off Cavalcade. The cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Sorry Entertainer” is probably the best full-blown metal track on Squeeze, mostly thanks to SASAMI’s commitment to screaming and the quality guitar solo. The coughing fit at the end is a nice touch of candor; hearing her out of her comfort zone ends up being a stamp of originality, and part of the record’s overall charm.
Despite its slightly awkward placement in the track list, “Feminine Water Toil” is the song that has me most excited for what SASAMI does next. It’s a brooding instrumental that showcases her classical and film score background, which if incorporated into Squeeze’s indie-metal fusion, could open up her music to more epic, lush, and cinematic sounds. If we’re really good this year, maybe 2023 will see SASAMI going full-blown neoclassical metal.
In the end, whether Squeeze’s embrace of metal is more than mere pastiche may be in the eye of the beholder. We at least don’t need to wonder very long whether indieheads will take to the transition—SASAMI has upcoming shows with Haim, Mitski, and Japanese Breakfast, giving her an unprecedented platform for the most abrasive sounds of her career. Indie had a comparatively low authenticity bar to clear in the great indie pop crossover of the 2010s, foraying into a genre with no real community or gatekeepers. Metal is an entirely different story. Are we on the cusp of a brave new world where SASAMI headlines at Aftershock and opens for Billie Eilish in the same year? If we heed the lessons of the 2020s thus far, we should presume anything is possible.