SASAMI at Turf Club (May 13, 2025)

Tour Dates

In the midst of some very summery (read: hot) weather, we had some heat of our own at the Turf Club, with SASAMI headlining a pop rock evening.

Mood Killer took the stage to open. I enjoy their self-described term, “experimental pop artist”. Mood Killer (aka Michael Zarowny) have released several EP’s, as well last year’s debut album ABRACADABRA. This is electronica pop with full recorded background musical tracks, as it was the solo performer. There were a number of vocal effects (reverb, auto tune, etc.) to contrast the songs against that electronica beat underneath. A song mid-set with the chorus “in the blink of an eye” was a pretty compelling dance song. Mood Killer turned towards that deep bass beat on the next number, Go Crazy, with a lot less singing and a more spoken word approach and significantly more dancing. The lighting effects continued to be more dramatic, with a lot of strobe and colored lights. Their song, Happy Birthday, was equal parts disturbing and ridiculous.

Mood Killer is squarely in the group of artists who believe that the performance is as important (or maybe more so) than the music. I’m on the fence about this approach, as it can quickly become more theater than concert. And sure enough, a ribbon wand baton appeared on the song Abrakadabra, with a full out twirl routine. Finishing on the obvious next song title, “What do you say after Abrakadaba?”, Alalazam leaned back into the dance beats for Mood Killer.

SASAMI (Sasami Ashworth) is a singer & songwriter playing multiple styles generally in indie pop rock. A classically trained French horn player, she initially started with the band Cherry Glazerr before establishing her solo career. Sasami has released three albums, including 2025’s Blood on the Silver Screen. She entered with only a drummer as a band mate to her guitar and vocals, although it was clear at different points that there was more backing music. As she played Figure It Out, it is perhaps the best song of the recent album and had the audience enthralled and cheering throughout. SASAMI is wildly photogenic and obviously knows it; she has a way of hitting those hand motions in stride with guitar work.

In her first banter with St. Paul (“Is that even your real name?”), SASAMI asked the audience to get into a Friday night mood. There’s a real charisma and she pulled the audience willingly into dancing along during I’ll Be Gone. An extended discussion of double kicks from the drummer Diego had the crowd going, with SASAMI asking them to mosh during Need It to Work. With Not This Time following, we got a lot more straight rock & roll than I had expected from my listens of Blood on the Silver Screen. It’s a great reminder that the order an artist arranges their music can give very different impressions of what their sound is.

The smoke machine was suddenly set to saturate, and I simply don’t know what the goal of that is. Lose It All was a fan favorite and had the audience nearly ecstatic. A cover of Avril Lavigne’s Anything but Ordinary followed, and was a solid acoustic guitar song to highlight SASAMI’s vocals. A ridiculous interlude about the Wisconsin Dells led to Just Be Friends, which had a significant portion of the crowd singing along.

Diego returned to the stage (I lost track and didn’t know he had left!), making his return an absolute crashing solo. The French horn made an appearance for an interlude that was a great transition to the final few songs. I realized SASAMI also had some performative moments to her set, but they accentuated her music rather than upstaging them. In Love With a Memory was back into that electronic pop sound. It’s a clever song to be near the end of a set, with the lyric “before we say goodnight”, and really showed how thoughtful the entire set order had been. Ending on Slugger, SASAMI ended on a hit and wrapped up her set.