In the opening frames of her video for her new song "In Love With A Memory," SASAMI gets the song's title branded into her back. If I was going to get a song title branded into my skin, I would want that title to be short. But "In Love With A Memory" might be brandworthy, despite the existence of all those words, since it's a really good song that SASAMI made with the assistance of Rostam an the so-hot-right-now Clairo.
In a few weeks, SASAMI will release her new album Blood On The Silver Screen, the follow-up to her very good 2022 record Squeeze. We've already posted her singles "Honeycrash," "Slugger," and "Just Be Friends." Today, she drops "In Love With A Memory," which SASAMI co-produced with Rostam and which features the very-busy Clairo. (Clairo recently appeared on SahBabii's "Show Off," and she's about to appear on Hannah Cohen's new album.)
"In Love With A Memory" sounds a bit like what might happen if Lana Del Rey tried making synthpop, and it's got a sick-ass guitar solo. It's great! Here's what SASAMI says about it:
"In Love With A Memory" was actually the first song I wrote that ended up on Blood On The Silver Screen. I grew up going to Japanese or Korean "noraebang" private karaoke rooms with my mom, who was secretly the most incredible singer. Most of her go-to numbers were oooold Japanese and Korean folk songs that low-key kind of made me feel like I was in a horror film or David Lynch movie. I can picture my mom in a Julee Cruise-type setting -- single jazz lounge spotlight and cigarette smoke hanging stalely in the air -- singing one of those old songs with the most gorgeously haunting vibrato and breathtaking vocal control. That’s the feeling I was tapping into when I started writing "In Love With A Memory," and there is a very timeless but relevant crooning feeling imbued in the song that I think was perfectly reflected by the production that Rostam and I orchestrated together. Claire has been a longtime, long distance friend and dream collaborator for me, so it was such a magnificent gift for her to lend her voice to the narrative. I really imagine this track as a cinematic duet with a ghost.
Clairo isn't in the Jay Swuen-directed video for "In Love With A Memory." Instead, it's mostly SASAMI, presumably-fake song-title branding and all, road-tripping in a classic muscle car. Check it out below.
Blood On The Silver Screen is out 3/7 on Domino.
