NYC Scene Report – Scotia Rose, Pretty Sick, & Rachael Sage & The Sequins

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Scotia Rose wanting to “Be Your Baby,” Pretty Sick ruminating on life as a “Star,” and Rachael Sage & The Sequins looking to “Kill The Clock.”

* Consisting of NYC musicians who’d been playing in cover bands, Scotia Rose is now bringing Good Times with their own original tunes, the latest of which is the single “Be Your Baby,” off their debut EP, Good Times.

Discussing the song in a statement, Scotia Rose’s frontman Jeff Weiss said, “I wrote ‘Be Your Baby’ the day after a cover band gig in 2022. It’s a very literal story. We were playing A LOT of Taylor Swift songs at the time. I think this was my attempt at ‘Wildest Dreams.’”

With a strong ‘90s pop-rock feel, “Be Your Baby” could easily fit into a playlist that includes anyone from Counting Crows, to Matchbox Twenty, and that sounds like some Good Times to me!

* Over the past half decade I’ve featured Pretty Sick here a number of times, and while I’ve loved the band’s previous work (obviously, or I wouldn’t have been writing about it), I’m also really enjoying hearing how Sabrina Fuentes and crew are evolving musically.

Earlier this month Pretty Sick released a new single titled “Star,” and while the band previously leaned into a grunge sound, “Star” has elements of shoegaze, and features Fuentes ruminating on fame.

Lamenting on how she’s supposed to feel, and how drugs mask her reality, the song culminates with Fuentes singing, “Nothing ever hurts anymore now that you’re a star you’re adored nothing ever hurts anymore.”

It sounds like this might be the next chapter in the evolution of Pretty Sick, and while there’s no doubt Fuentes is a “Star,” it seems like she’s a star that might be dealing with a few doubts.

* Rachael Sage & The Sequins are looking to “Kill The Clock.”

No, they aren’t a football team out of timeouts; in this case, “Kill The Clock” is a reference to taking a break from the daily hustle and bustle we can find ourselves lost in.

The song was originally on a demo Sage made as a teenager. Her mother rediscovered it a few years ago while cleaning out the basement, and with The Sequins it has now been given a new life.

Discussing the song in a statement, Sage said, “While the lyrics are a bit abstract and cryptic compared to how I’ve been writing more recently, I believe I understand the meaning of them more now than I did when I first composed it. It’s about cultural and personal alienation, and feeling like everyone and everything around you is geared toward some incomprehensible rat-race, to be more, to own more, to do more … it’s very ’80s greed’ inspired.”

She continued, adding, “It’s essentially about corruption, written from a child’s perspective.”

Appearing on the band’s new album Canopy, when life is moving too fast, and it feel like you don’t have a timeout left, you can “Kill The Clock” with Rachael Sage & The Sequins.

For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.