Pretty City

Off the back of a huge success of their debut album COLORIZE, PRETTY CITY have returned with their highly anticipated second album CANCEL THE FUTURE.
CANCEL THE FUTURE sails cohesively through the themes of rejection, competition, love, life, death, and loss while being musically richer, and glossier than the optimistic and hazy debut. With their confident swagger and a desire to keep pushing the artistic envelope Pretty City is a band with no fixed future but one they are determined to carve out for themselves.
The band has recently been in Europe on tour, being signed to Rola Music booking agency they played 21 shows to packed audiences across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and others. Following a SXSW 2018 appearance and USA and Australian releases of CANCEL THE FUTURE the band are returning to Europe for 25 dates starting in April 18th.
CANCEL THE FUTURE was 29th most added to USA college radio in its debut week with 125 stations adding it to rotation and charting on 21 stations over the course of the campaign. Every song on the album was also played showing how the band have progressed musically and are resonating deeper with their audiences.
A tumultuous time for the band, constant touring and international focus had taken a toll on the members. And pressures to outdo their last album made for creative differences to boil over. Personal relationships and lives creeping into the process only made matters worse as songs were recorded, re-recorded and scrapped again. In fact, more than a whole album was finished and scrapped all together, to be started again from scratch. Producers were fired and rehired, and for a while the band were doing everything themselves. By the end of the process, the band had come full circle musically and emotionally. The motto, CANCEL THE FUTURE, was the album title from early in the process. Taken from a lyric of a song it was meant initially to symbolise the optimism and bravado about being able to write your own future by changing your now. By the end of the year though that motto still rang true but was more of a reflection on the band’s strength to essentially “cancel their futures” by scrapping whole albums with no plan in sight, to then start again from the ground up and still enjoy music creation and performance.
CANCEL THE FUTURE is thus a combination of frustration, exuberance, confidence and introspection. And it speaks louder than the band could have realised when starting the process.
The album hits the ground running with opener Nothing Happens for Free, a reflection on the frustrations and realities of life as a musician and life in general.
Released as an advanced single in Australia it received glowing reviews.
“Pretty City cut through the shoegaze wash with a blend of middle-finger-waving bitterness, Brit-pop lager-spilling cockiness and swirling psych chaos.” Rolling Stone

“The juicy new single is packed with all the screaming, whirring guitars you could dream of, as the track progresses from jangly summer vibes to fierce, gut-punching fuzz in under four minutes.” Mushroom
The stadium swagger continues on Piece of the Puzzle, and the instantly sing along Flying before the album takes a side step into 80s new wave in the form of the anthemic Same as Before. Drawing comparisons to classic early U2 and early Muse, it too draws from a period where confusion in what you’re doing clouds your perception of the future. Everybody Misses You takes a swing back into the shoegaze-pop and garage train before the bleeding heart of Television takes a moment to remind everyone that sometimes static on a screen is all you can see. Primal Scream and Chemical Brothers would be jealous of the dark rave cave of Boots, a studio creation from Hugh that shows the creative elasticity to draw from wide influences and create something that is far from the band, yet speaks closely to them. Be Someone and Simone take the listener for another ride round the bend at full pelt but in the end, Sing Me The Song slows the pace and guides you into a calm space as the words, “Everyone here is just fucking around…” wistfully play around your head. Life is short and maybe, just maybe, if you cancel your future you will see it for what it really is.
The band’s stadium, psychedelic sound was compared from everything from Britpop, shoegaze, grunge, and Psych but the strength of the music was in their ability to not be constrained to any one genre, due in part to the varied musical backgrounds of each member.
“It’s hard to pinpoint where we all meet musically as there’s a lot of diverse musical tastes and training, yet we have been able to focus all of that into one sound that is unmistakably us.” Johnny Rock, Pretty City
“…only a few more people were fortunate enough to squeeze in when the three from Melbourne started out their set. So much energy. So much talent.” Glamglare
“The boys of Melbourne’s Pretty City combine shoegaze and britpop to create power chord-heavy anthems that wouldn’t be out of place in Manchester, 1990.” Noisy
Their debut album COLORIZE climbed the CMJ USA college radio charts for 3 months, being added to over 150 stations and peaking at 70 (July, 2016).
“Strutting up and along some hazy rainbow made of stadium riffage and ’90s glow stick big pants dance while gazing down at their kicks only long enough to take in that rainbow, this Melbourne-based band sound as brash and ready as a new band can be.” CMJ