What are your names?
Torin Craig (guitar/vocals), Eliot Rossi (guitar), Will Macquarrie (bass), Brian Heyes (keys),Morgan Zych (drums).
What is the bands name?
PRETTY
How did you come up with the band’s name?
Torin: When the band first formed around 2015 we couldn’t figure out the name, at the time we were a really shitty, grungy punk band so we came up with “Pretty” as a sort of a joke because we sounded absolutely terrible. Eliot: I think the joke still holds up because the music is distressing and abrasive as often as it is actually pretty.
What is your genre of music?
Psychedelic rock.
Give us a little bio about you.
PRETTY are people who appear onstage with lots of noise and then leave. This half-silly, half-serious sentencesummarizes the band’s ethic and sound, from their early inspiration by Toronto’s 2010s-era DIY punk scene, totheir current fascination with psychedelic sound and culture, elements that fuse into a highly distinctive, dark and frenzied sonic landscape. The Torontonian band had a busy 2022, recording their second EP and follow-up to their debut album Sertraline Dream (2020); playing headline sets to increasingly large and enthusiastic crowds and being featured acts for Exclaim! Magazine’s Class of 2022, Canadian Music Week and Sarnia’s EmptyFest. If you dig getting warped and discovering another side of yourself, you won’t want to miss Pretty.
What made you go into music?
Torin: School of Rock! Discovering rock and roll music existed and thinking “this is the coolest thing ever, I want to do this.” Morgan: Also School of Rock, and just generally wanting to do somethingthat would make me feel superior to the other children.
Eliot: All of my relatives are musicians. Some of them even played for a living. They got me I was young.
Who are your influences?
Torin: Jimi Hendrix, Ty Segall, Kikagaku Moyo, Skip Spence, Donovan…?
Eliot:For guitar: Mark Knopfler, Richard Lloyd, Nels Cline and the guys from Interpol. Morgan: Mitch Mitchell, FelaKuti, Speedy Ortiz
Are you a signed?
Pretty is independent!
You are set to release your new single ‘Wait for the Sun’, tell us more about the single and what was the writing and recording process like?
Torin: wrote it incredibly zonked out during a COVID lockdown in my terrible apartment and refined it from a slow, very 60’s type song into something more upbeat and poppy
Eliot: Once that was done we just got the whole band in a room and hacked away at it until it became coherent and presentable.
Torin: The recording process wasinteresting, we experimented with a lot of different techniques we hadn’t used since before our last recording.
Eliot: We ended up doing a more “modern” production workflow with this one, usually we just get the whole band in a room and record the band playing but this time we tried to split the difference and domore overdubs but still keep the “live” feel. We also ended up having to re-learn the DIY approach from before Morgan was in the band, our previous drummer had his own studio and we did a lot of work in there.
Describe the track in two words.
Torin: Day-glo depression
Who did you work with on the single?
Torin: A lot of the recording was done by Josh Korody at Candle Recording in Toronto. The track (as well as the rest of the EP) was mixed by Asher Gould-Murtagh and mixed byJoe Carra at Crystal Mastering in Melbourne.
Will we see a music video for ‘Wait for the Sun’, if so tell us more about the creative process from the planning to shooting.
Torin: Yes, I’ve had an idea bouncing around my head for a long time where we have a room that’s all covered in aluminum foil or some other reflective material, there’s astroturf on the ground and a bunch of fake plants everywhere and we do a video or a photoshoot in it, we were actually able to pull that off for Wait For The Sun.
Morgan: The video was shot and edited by my/our friend Sarah Bauman, she’s a really talented photographer who up until this point made experimental short films, so we brought her in to shoot the video on VHS.
Eliot: We really wanted to avoid the uncanny-valley look of HD video and make something a lot more trippyand she pulled that off really well for us.
Can we expect an EP or Album and if so, what can we expect from it.
Eliot: Wait For The Sun is the first single off our new EP Citrus Magic which comes out July 28th of this year. It’s gonna be a journey, there are only four songs but they all sound different and have their own distinct energy but at the same time are very coherent andconsistent somehow.
Do you have any live shows coming up and if so where?
June 3 @ Two Doors Down, Brantford
July 28 @ Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto:Citrus Magic EP release
What else can we expect in early 2023?
Eliot: We’ll have the second single from the EP. Food For The Moon,released sometime in early June along with its own music video.
Where do you see yourself now in 5 Years?
Torin: Having all my limbs, and hopefully both kidneys.
Eliot: Dropping out of society and living out the rest of my days on a small sailboat.
Morgan: Continue to do things thatmake me feel superior to the other children. Hopefully have my PhD by then.
What quote or saying do you always stick by?
Torin: You never blow yr trip forever.
Eliot: Keep it simple, stupid.
Morgan: Things can always get worse!
When you are at a gig, what are 5 things you cannot forget?
Torin: To put on our makeup
Eliot: How the songs go. That’s more like 8-10 things depending on the gig.
Morgan: Nothing really, a gig is a gig.
Do you have social media accounts so your fans can follow you?
Facebook
Instagram
Spotify
Youtube
