Sasami

Late last year, former Cherry Glazerr member Sasami Ashworth published a piece for the website Sungenre in which she interviewed four female audio engineers and producers about their craft. Her veneration of inclusive and passionate studio work was evident then, as it is now on her eponymous debut album, SASAMI, which includes contributions by Hand Habits guitar wiz Meg Duffy, jazz bassist Anna Butterss, and performers Soko and Devendra Banhart. Ashworth writes soft, often sad songs about communication and loss, their emotional resonance made thicker by a complex tangle of sounds. Ashworth sings in an even whisper that recalls Broadcast’s Trish Keenan, and a veneer of intimacy is applied to her vocals, guitar, and keys with reverb. The brittle shaking of a tambourine, which is the dominant instrumentation on the song “Free,” sits under caustic lyrics such as “You’ve got a lovely thing at home / So why confuse when you might lose it all?” Loamlands opens.