Squeeze

While the work may not always feel cohesive, SASAMI moves between these worlds with ease.

The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

Despite each track standing incredibly strong on its own, it sometimes feels as though Ashworth is taking on more than the album can handle. A more decisive sound and Squeeze could be one of the best albums of the year, however, Ashworth’s indecision pulls the listener from one emotion to the next without ample time for digestion.

Squeeze excels when it provides the perfect soundtrack for punching a hole in the wall, or at least fantasizing about it.

Sasami's aim is clear: she forces you to pay attention. [Mar 2022, p.35]

SASAMI’s rich authority holds together an album that’s pulling apart at the seams.

On the canyoning, Weyes Blood-sounding brooder “Not A Love Song”, she seems to find peace within her place in a corrupted world, realising the illusion that its violence inherent can be captured or neutered. Squeeze opts to bathe and contort in it with visceral theatricality.

Ashworth melds two distinctively ’90s sound worlds. Squeeze holds Korn, Disturbed, and System of a Down in one hand; Sheryl Crow, Faith Hill, and Shania Twain in the other.

Squeeze tears you down and gives you a hug at the same time, which is no doubt disorienting, but certainly as Ashworth intended. [Dec 2021 - Feb 2022, p.153]