SASAMI (Sasami Ashworth) has been making music in the Los Angeles area, in almost every way you can, for the last decade. From playing French horn in orchestras and studios and playing keys, bass, and guitar in local rock bands (Dirt Dress, Cherry Glazerr), to contributing vocals/string/horn arrangements to studio albums (Vagabon, Curtis Harding, Wild Nothing, Hand Habits, etc.) and producing on tracks for other respected artists (Soko), she has gained a reputation as an all-around musical badass.

After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in 2012, SASAMI spent her time scoring and making orchestral arrangements for films, commercials and studio albums, as well as being a deeply committed music teacher in Los Angeles. She spent the previous two and a half years touring the world non-stop playing synths in the band Cherry Glazerr and is now taking a turn to focus on her own music. SASAMI's first ever self-released single "Callous" was given Pitchfork's "Best New Track," and this year she has already shared bills with the likes of Japanese Breakfast, Liz Phair, The Breeders, and Blondie.

Sometimes, Mitski feels life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” she says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will shine love long after she’s gone. That’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.

“This is my most American album,” she says. The music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. Sonically Mitski’s most epic and wise album, the songs introduce wounds and then actively heal them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like light from a distant star.

It's full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything and everyone is crying out in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning and then rejecting us. To love this place, this earth, this America, this body takes work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

Nothing's Free Out Now: https://angelolsen.jagjag.co/nothings-free

New album ‘No Obligation’ out now on Epitaph Records. https://thelindalindas.ffm.to/noobligation

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