CONCERT CAPSULE: SASAMI

Photo By Ian Henriquez

A smoking review of the opening night for the “Blood On The Silver Screen Tour” at the Los Angeles Lodge Room.

Stepping into a Sasami show means surrendering yourself to a spectrum of emotions you didn’t know you needed to feel, or at least I didn’t. Last Saturday, I had the honor of witnessing Sasami pour her heart out all over the Lodge Room hall, guiding us through heartbreak, rage, nostalgia, and self-reclamation with fearless vulnerability and electric energy.

Opening her set with “Honeycrash,” a track that drips with emotional vulnerability while still managing to ignite the room like a spark to gasoline. Drenched in a white metallic buttoned vest, matching shorts, and fur-lined leg warmers, Sasami stepped UP, ready to bat.

As the first chords of Honeycrash hit, her black and white electric guitar became an extension of her voice, slicing through the air with just as much intensity as her lyrics. “Sometimes when I get a little lonely / Think about all the nights you used to hold me,” she sang, tugging the room into her orbit with soft, aching honesty. In particular, the line “And who can love you like I do right now?” cut deep, with her delivery of the lyrics maximizing its impact. From the jump, Sasami set the tone for an intimate yet explosive night.

Without missing a beat, SASAMI launched into “For the Weekend,” a track that crackles with sarcasm and sonic punch. If Honeycrash exposed the ache of longing, For the Weekend had the answer.

“Is it fucked up or can we just pretend? Cause I’m only in love for the weekend.” Once that lyric hit the speakers, the energy in the room flipped. The track detonated like a firecracker, pulling the audience into its whirlwind of romantic contradiction. Playing with a pull and a push, narrating the duality of love. Sasami captures the modern emotional detachment so many of us wrestle with, especially when vulnerability has come back to bite.

For me, this song hits a little too close, fearing the feeling of feeling too much, too fast, and the armor you build when your heart’s been chewed up one too many times. Lyric, “You want a relationship but I just wanna relate then dip” landed like a joke that still eternally resonated with me. SASAMI leaned into the line with a mischievous grin, her delivery making it feel like a snarky promise.

Then came the emotional gut-punch dressed in a dance track, “I’ll Be Gone.” As soon as the beat dropped, the dance floor transformed into a writhing sea of bodies. SASAMI was in full command, roaming the stage with an electric presence that matched the song’s hypnotic pulse. Beneath the pulsing rhythm was a story so familiar it almost hurt: going back to someone who’s bad for you, craving their comfort even when you know better.

Her voice wrapped around lyrics like, “Addicted to the burning, there’s a pleasure in the pain,” and it felt like everyone in the room exhaled at once, maybe thinking of their own version of that person. The line, “When you wake up in the morning, I’ll be gone,” echoed like a warning and a wish at the same time. There’s this tragicomic beauty in the way she confesses it, as if she were gifting me and the entire crowd the permission to let go of everything holding us back.

When SASAMI launched into Love Makes You Do Crazy Things, I myself went slightly crazy; this is myyyyyyy song, a song that makes sense of all the reckless choices and sleepless nights in the name of love. The crowd matched my energy, from the first beat drop, the Lodge Room lit up like a collective pulse.

She sang “Drop bombs on my heart, I’ll pick it up if we fall apart” with such explosive intensity, paired with a beat switch so delicious it felt like my ribs were vibrating. I swear, hearing it live healed something that had been aching inside of me for a while, like she found the exact words for that messy, unreliable kind of love and then set them to a rhythm we could all move through together.

Just when we thought we’d caught our breath, Sasami slammed the energy into overdrive with “Need It to Work,” throwing the Lodge Room headfirst into full metal mayhem. The vibe shifted fast, from dreamy dancefloor to pure catharsis. Sasami reminisced about a past show that erupted into a mosh pit, and the crowd was more than ready to live up to that legacy. She even quoted her drummer: “I’ll only go on tour if there’s a mosh every night.” And sure enough, the pit broke open in unison.

I didn’t jump in myself (front row was my haven), but watching it all unfold was absolutely riotous, a beautiful chaos. The song’s gritty distortion and primal urgency hit differently live, giving voice to every feeling you’ve ever screamed into a pillow. This track was a time! A visceral switch-up that reminded us just how many layers Sasami can peel back, the effortless switch-up she is capable of from taking the crowd from heartbreak to headbang.

As the intensity of the night mellowed for a moment, SASAMI reached into her earlier catalog with “Not the Time,” a track I admittedly hadn’t spent much time with before this show. However, after hearing it live, it became a gateway into a project I couldn’t be more excited to dig deeper into. The performance felt like a soft spotlight on her roots, an invitation to explore the emotional DNA that’s been woven into her work.

The lyric “One of these nights I’m gonna hear your song again” especially pierced through. As someone who lives and breathes music, I often associate certain songs with the people who drift in and out of my life. It’s a strange kind of haunting, how a song tied to a person can suddenly appear while you’re out and about, and without warning, you’re back in that memory. A quiet hope that maybe, someday, things will align for you somehow. Even though “Not The Time” wasn’t a song I came into the show knowing well, it’s one I walked away treasuring.

Then came “Lose It All,” and this is where I’ll admit it: I shed maybe a tear or two at first. Sasami has a way of holding space for grief and vulnerability without asking you to hide it, and this track was a mirror I didn’t expect to look into.

She opened with “One more time for the broken-hearted Caught up in the mess we started,” resembling an ache of feeling like your heart always ends up on the losing side, stuck in a cycle of loving too hard, too openly, and then breaking quietly. But what struck me even more was the line “Try to listen to the lessons I learned.” It’s such a raw reminder that even in the mess, even through the wreckage, there’s growth. Sometimes the only thing we walk away with is the wisdom to not walk back.

The lyric “When you love sometimes, you lose it all” slapped me like a harsh truth. It doesn’t diminish the love; it just acknowledges the risk that in giving your all, you might lose it, too. As she sang it repeatedly, it almost started to feel like a bittersweet necessary truth, that loving is still worth your time, sweat, worry, and tears, even if you lose it all.

Then arrived “Call Me Home,” truly a magnum opus of sorts. I full-heartedly adore this song. Though universally resonating, it feels like a piece that feels like it was written just for you and all the people who’ve ever meant something to you. Whether they’re still in your life or long gone, it’s a tether, a thread of love you’re always willing to hold out.

SASAMI opens the song with one of the most quietly devastating reflections: “Settle into a life that you like for a while Have a kid, get a pretty wife Get a real job and a fake smile.” It’s a crushing realization that we’re no longer young. Time is marching forward, and we’re expected to fall into line with the rhythms of adulthood, even if it doesn’t feel natural.

But then the chorus opens up, warm and steady like an embrace: “I want you to know I want you to know you’re not alone I want you to know you can always call me home.” That’s the kind of love I dream of being able to give and receive coherently, a settlement that no matter where life takes you, even if we grow apart, you’ll always have a place with me. The word ‘Home’ strongly plays as symbolism here, rotating if it’s a person, a feeling of safety, or a soft landing.

I tend to hold my emotions tight, guarded, but this song shattered that wall. In many ways, it’s a love letter to everyone I’ve ever cared about. Platonic, romantic, fleeting, or forever, it doesn’t matter. It’s an acknowledgement to myself that I’ll always carry a piece of them with me.

As the song reached its end, that final instrumental break exploded like a meteor shower of emotion. Call Me Home poured it all out, a cathartic, tear-streaked release, and one of the most powerful live moments I’ve ever experienced.

To follow was “In Love With a Memory,” another personal favorite of mine. Featuring Clairo on the studio version, this song digs into the exact kind of emotional limbo I’d been circling throughout the night. Not only exploring the pain of love lost or the wistfulness of a faded connection, it admits it. Acknowledging a space we sometimes choose to stay in, holding tight to a memory, even when we know we should let go. The song is a soft reckoning, a moment of clarity wrapped in dreamy vocals and a hypnotic instrumental.

One of my favorite lines, “Take me back to the open road Where the wind can blow in my hair And the sun can kiss my face I need to feel alive,” is such vivid, freeing imagery. A longing to feel something real again, away from the stagnancy of romantic nostalgia, a desperate, beautiful desire for renewal.

Then, one of the most pleasant surprises of the night, Dora Jar joined the stage to sing Clairo’s part of the song. Dora, with her own ethereal energy, slid into the moment seamlessly. Seeing two musicians I admire interact like that in real time was electric, adding such a tender depth to the performance. Hearing In Love With a Memory live, especially with the inclusion of Dora Jar, was transcendent. A song about moving on, performed in a way that made it feel like closure, even as it cracked you open.

Before starting “Slugger,” Sasami had the entire crowd in her glove…literally. She yanked down her leg warmers to reveal baseball socks, slipped on a baseball glove, and began chucking plastic eggs into the audience like she was warming up for spring training. The whole bit was camp, chaotic, and charmingly on-brand. She then leaned into the mic and asked, “Are there any water signs in the crowd?” (the cheers were instant), then “Any queers?” (I screamed), and finally, “Any baseball fans?” before wrapping it all up with “Is there anyone who’s all three?” It was the perfect prelude to Slugger, a song that captures the feeling of being an emotionally sensitive mess with a tough exterior and a killer swing.

“Slugger” is one of Sasami’s most genre-melting tracks, and this performance nailed that spirit. It’s soft and spiraling in one moment, and punching through with fuzzy angst the next. The baseball metaphor carries through in both the lyrics and the energy, the lyric “Never fucking call me slugger” felt like a reclaiming of every time someone underestimated your softness.

I especially love how she leans into vulnerability, “I’m such a Cancer, I wish I had the answer,” while still holding power in the sadness. It felt like theatrical and heartfelt crying-on-the-bathroom-floor music in the best way possible. There’s something so specific yet universally revealing in how she confesses, “Just when I thought I had my shit together You made me realize it could be better.” The song ends in a swirl of layered vocals and dizzying emotion, and by then, we were all metaphorically on the floor.

From start to finish, Sasami’s set was a masterclass in emotional range, a chaotically humorous yet gut-wrenchingly honest set all at once. Her artistry is rooted in duality: a willingness to be both brutal and soft. Throughout the night, she invited us into every crevice of her inner world, from screaming through metal anthems to quietly mourning love lost, and somehow it all felt seamlessly stitched together. She held space for us to feel everything: joy, grief, rage, desire, and never once asked us to choose just one. The show felt like an unraveling of self, stitched back together in real time through sound, performance, and sheer presence. At the end of it all, I asked one of her bandmates if I could have the setlist, and they handed it to me with a smile. Now it’s folded in my bag, a little wrinkled and worn from the night, a souvenir for a night of extreme emotion that I wish I could relive endlessly.

Buy tickets to the “Blood On The Silver Screen Tour” here.