Photos by Dylan Simmons
While touring as an opener for beabadoobee this spring, NYC-based rock band Pretty Sick made a pit stop in California for three headlining shows. Pretty Sick was formed around 2014 by singer-songwriter/bassist/fashion designer/model Sabrina Fuentes — a prolific multihyphenate at just 25. The project was co-founded by her best friend (and drummer) Eva Kaufman, with the later addition of guitarist Ben Arauz. Ahead of their set at the Constellation Room in Santa Ana, Isabel and I met up with the band backstage for an interview about their latest EP, living in London, and the new album.
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Dylan Simmons: How are you feeling? This is [your] first time playing in California in a minute, right?
Sabrina Fuentes: Yeah, it’s our first time playing in California in ages. We’re super happy to be here! We’ve played [at the Constellation Room] before; it was our favorite show on our last headline tour, and we’re excited to be back and playing again.
Dylan: That’s good to hear, ‘cause I was actually here in 2022 at this venue, so this is so full circle. That was your last headlining tour, for Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile, right?
Sabrina: Yeah, and there was a co-headline [tour] with Yves Tumor.
Dylan: What have you been up to these past few years?
Sabrina: We’re writing, all the time, constantly.
Eva Kaufman: Never ends!
Sabrina: Never ends, really. It’s just always more ideas for songs that exist in your head and you have to put them down on paper.
Dylan: Is it just you two as the writers mainly?
Sabrina: I write most of the lyrics and melodies, and then Eva does all the drums, Ben does all the guitars. And then we have producers who will do different production stuff; obviously our last EP [Streetwise] was electronic, so Woesum did all the beats. And then we write a lot of different ways. Sometimes we’ll start with someone’s beat and then add to it, other times we have a whole idea before we go in the studio. It varies.
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Dylan: You mentioned how Streetwise is definitely more electronic, which feels like a bit of a departure from your earlier just straight up instrumental rock sound. There’s obviously a couple years in between Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile and Streetwise; how do those two feel different to you? Do you feel like there’s different influences you could point to that shaped Streetwise?
Sabrina: I mean, honestly, they were kind of recorded back to back. Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile was coming out while I was recording Streetwise, and the turnaround on it was pretty fast. [As for] the influences, I just met Woesum. Like, we didn’t plan to do an electronic album. My manager was like, “I think you guys would get along. You have the same birthday.” And I was like, “Okay, that’s a vibe.” I think that me and him actually both went into the session not thinking that we would like each other, because I make rock music and he makes electronic music, but we just immediately clicked, and we were both kind of pleasantly surprised by how fun it was writing together. So we ended up making that EP, and it was really fun. The influences were all over the place, because I didn’t expect or plan to make something like that. As opposed to going in with an idea or references beforehand, we were really just starting from scratch and messing around.
Dylan: That’s interesting. I feel like your influences meshed really well. Do you think there’s gonna be any electronic on [the next record]?
Sabrina: Again, we didn’t go in with a plan. I think we generally wanted to do something that was a mix between the Streetwise stuff and the Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile stuff. But that was a very loose idea. We went and we did a bunch of songs over a bunch of different genres, and we’ve been trying to hone down what that story and what the sonic world of it is. It started pretty lo-fi, though, and now it’s becoming more and more produced. But we’ll see. We have a couple electronic ones.
Eva: Then we have, like, straight up, just rock.
Sabrina: So we’re trying to figure out a way for them to coexist that feels natural.
Dylan: Yeah. I feel like listening to Streetwise, compared to your earlier stuff, the through line is definitely there. It’s definitely like, this is still Pretty Sick, even though it’s Pretty Sick with, like, a different flavor. It makes sense to me. I feel like it’ll piece its way together.
Sabrina: I hope!
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Dylan: You’ve lived in London for a few years, right?
Sabrina: I moved back to New York a year ago, but I lived in London for five years, almost six years.
Dylan: Are there any specific things about the New York music scene versus the London music scene that are influencing this record versus the last one?
Sabrina: Makes Me Sick, Makes Me Smile is about being a teenager in New York, and then the last EP was about my experiences in London. And this one is just about growing up, for the most part. It’s a bit more abstract. There’s not really a storyline through, or an isolated time in my life that it’s about. Obviously, when I was growing up in New York, the scene I was in was mostly rock or rap. There wasn’t a huge electronic scene when we were kids. There wasn’t even really a techno scene yet. So we would go to see MIKE, or Show Me the Body, or RATKING. All the local bands were rock or rap, and even MIKE and RATKING skew rock. So it was all super rock vibes, and then London is super electronic, where like all we do is rave. All of my friends, even if they make rock music, they also make electronic music or DJ, and they coexist a lot more seamlessly. Like, all my friends in London would start their night at their friend’s rock show, and then go to their other friend’s DJ set at a rave afterwards.
Isabel Parmenter: The jerk rap scene is really interesting in London, and like drill rap in South London. [Do you] draw comparisons from your rap experiences in New York versus [London]?
Sabrina: I like the rap scene in both cities because they both feel super organic, especially because there isn’t a huge pop rap industry in either city. Obviously grime is huge in the UK, but there’s so much underground rap. And in New York, there’s so few New York rappers that make it big time. It’s cool that there’s such a vibrant underground scene in cities where people don’t always make it big time in that genre, but [they’re] still like local legends to everybody there.
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Dylan: So you were in London for all of college?
Sabrina: Yeah, my program was three years, and then I got a visa afterwards for another two years.
Dylan: What was drawing you back to New York?
Sabrina: Umm, my visa ended [all laugh]. And my house had mold. I had mold poisoning, and my visa was ending, and I was like, “I don’t think I can handle both of these things at the same time, I’m gonna go home.” I still have a storage unit [in London], because if I ever feel like going back, I can regroup and do that. But I’ve been living at home with my family, and it’s been really mellow. I like having the freedom to travel, and I like being in New York and being around the band. They were coming out to see me for like six months out of the year, because they live in New York, and it was just a lot of travel for all of us. It was a lot of fun, but I think the older we’re getting, it’s just easier to be in the same place. Although I do really miss having access to my friends who make music in London, because I would love to be able to jam with them all the time, and I think they’re so talented and inspired. But, you know, no rent [versus] rent and mold… I’m gonna go with no rent, and Mom ordered pizza.
Dylan: Are there any records or artists you’ve been listening to that you feel like are shaping [the new album]?
Sabrina: I don’t know, it’s so all over. It’s still in its early stages, I guess. It feels like we have two different albums.
Eva: Every song is really different.
Sabrina: Yeah, but at the same time, I showed the producer I was working with the album, and he was like, “Oh, I don’t think it’s as random as you guys think it is. I think you’ve listened to it too much.”
Eva: I guess we’ve also been making it for like, two years.
Sabrina: Yeah. We’re just losing our minds. We’re slowly going really insane. [all laugh] But I don’t know, I think that I don’t like working off of references that much these days, because I like seeing where our collective minds and guts take us naturally. I like kind of moving intuitively. Right now, we don’t really have a reference board. Someone I showed it to said it sounds like an action movie. That I liked.
Eva: That’s fucking cool.
Dylan: Ooh, that’s interesting.
Sabrina: And I was like, “Okay, cool. Maybe we’ll keep heading in the action movie direction.”
Dylan: Yeah, it’s like, if there are any influences, it’s just more unintentional?
Sabrina: Yeah, they’re like Run Lola Run the movie, Lilya 4-ever the movie, Blade Runner, the concept of womanhood in an abstract sense, theater, Mad Men… A lot of our references are mostly visual, they’re not sonic. Maybe that’s why we’re having such a hard time making it? [laughs]
Dylan: It’s like you’re speaking a different language.
Sabrina: Yeah, we are kind of speaking different languages… We’re translating.
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Dylan: You were talking about going back and forth between New York and London; would you say that this album is a little bit more of a product of just the act of moving than being in one particular place? I feel like moving in itself is a very transformative and kind of introspective thing to deal with.
Sabrina: Yeah, I feel like, in a way, it is. A lot of it is about being alone with one’s thoughts and kind of externalizing things that you’re learning in real time, thinking about life lessons and past experiences not as good or bad, but as experiences just adding up. It’s all over the place. Even within the songs, they jump subject a lot, so it’s very abstract right now.
Dylan: I’m excited to see how it weaves together.
Sabrina: Thanks, me, too [laughs]. It’s starting to reveal itself more and more.
Eva: Yeah, it doesn’t sound that random.
Sabrina: It doesn’t, yeah, it’s feeling pretty concise now. I just think we still want to sit with it and fix things.
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Dylan: Are there any projects or anything coming up?
Sabrina: New merch drop coming up really soon that I designed with our friends who helped us make all the stuff, and also my little sister and I made a t-shirt together that we drew.
Dylan & Isabel: Cute!
Sabrina: It’s really cute.
Eva: That one rocks.
Sabrina: And we’re gonna have a bunch of bikinis and cool belts and shit. So, yeah, that’s the next thing that’s gonna come out, I guess.
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Isabel: It’s really cool that you’re from New York and you moved to London. I feel like I don’t meet Americans who move there; I feel like everyone in the UK wants to leave because, like, the UK kind of sucks.
Sabrina: Every time I’d meet someone in London, they’d be like, “Why are you here?” [all laugh] Like, what’s with the attitude, first off? I like it here.
Eva: The black mold…
Sabrina: I love the mold! [all laugh] I love the alcoholism!
Isabel: Did you like pub culture?
Sabrina: I love pub culture. I think it’s dope. I love being cozy all the time. I love hanging out under a bridge. I love that all my friends drink an entire bottle of wine on the bus ride to the party— per person. All my friends are like the funniest people I’ve ever met my entire life in London. They’re all hilarious and really talented.
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Dylan: So, we’re UCLA radio, all of our radio hosts have a DJ name; mine’s DJ Mazzy.
Isabel: Mine’s DJ Feather— My sister and I are DJs, so our DJ name is Swanage, so she’s DJ Egg and I’m DJ Feather.
Sabrina: Aww, that’s cute.
Dylan: Off the dome, do you have a DJ name you could pull out?
Sabrina: I think I’m just DJ Sicky Sab. I have a sound bite for [in a deep voice] “D-D-D-D-DJ Sicky Sab on the mic” [all laugh].
Dylan: Do you have one, Eva?
Sabrina: DJ Head.
Eva: DJ Head! [laughs]
Dylan: Okay, well, I think that’s about all I have. Is there anything else you guys want to add?
Sabrina: Thanks for having us on the show!
Listen to Pretty Sick’s latest EP, Streetwise!
