March 25, 2021Features, The Soap Deck

The Shiver of Cold Thoughts: A Conversation with Antonioni’s Sarah Pasillas

The Antonioni frontwoman discusses her band’s long-awaited debut LP and the challenges of being vulnerable to the power of your art.

Photos by Kyle Todaro.

Spring might be right around the corner, but even in a T-shirt and cotton flannel my shoulders still shake uncontrollably in the cafe. Roughly half an hour has passed since Sarah Pasillas arrived from up north to take the seat across from me, but I’ve been at this table working for much longer. The drink I ordered hours ago has long since cooled, and my fingers have begun to redden and itch as the damp air of the cloudy day seeps in through the windows. It seems I’ve wildly misplaced my judgement in clothing, blinded by my optimism for warmer weather ahead.

When Sarah notices, she immediately breaks from our discussion to ask, concernedly, if I’m okay. Though I respond in the affirmative, she starts to unzip her coat almost reflexively, as if she were about to take it off and lend it to me. It wouldn’t be surprising; as a paraeducator for elementary-school students during the day, Sarah already dedicates a good deal of her time looking out for other people.

As we talk about Antonioni and the circumstances surrounding their new record, the air continues to chill. Seattle’s weather takes a while to transform from the dour drizzle it’s famous for into something more akin to a California winter. Yet though I continue to struggle with the cold, Sarah remains comfortable. In a pastel pink coat and matching eyeshadow (paired with a striking blue mascara) her posture never wavers, her earthward gaze continually pensive.

Across our winding hour-long conversation and the myriad topics we touch on, she glides between cheeky cracks and deadpan observations, all the while weaving her opinions in with her varied musical (and extramusical) interests. We gripe about Pitchfork reviews (“I hope if we get a review there, it gets a 6.9”) and contemplate the endurance of U2 (“They’re one of the greatest bands in the world, that’s just what it is”). We talk about how time changes art and how so many musical institutions get that immutable fact wrong. We complain, as one does, about social media. Alanis Morrisette, Jewel, Kurt Cobain, The Cranberries, Halsey, Richard Hell, Kendrick Lamar and fellow labelmate Adult Mom all somehow find their way into the mix.

At one point, an allusion to the power of pattern recognition in single selection leads us to Sonic Youth’s Sonic Nurse and its surprisingly widespread appreciation in the scene. “That band is so cool that it’s not cool to say that you like them,” she jokes. “Part of what I always was drawn to about them, as a teenager, was that they obviously don’t care about what you think. Because they made so much music and so very little of it is like, “I’m just gonna pop this song on.”

The parts about S/T, her band’s new LP for Lauren Records, are kept brief in comparison. Not that she doesn’t want to go into it – “I could probably talk about my music forever”, she says – but Pasillas prefers to keep the lines open about what any of it means. “People approach art differently,” she justifies. “Sometimes people might not want to know everything. I appreciate when people want to know stuff, because I know what that’s like, but I also respect people who…you don’t have to hear what I have to say about it. You know?”

She brings up one of her favorite artists of all time, David Lynch, and his approach to artistic interpretation. “He would always say, when people would ask what such and such means, that he doesn’t have the authority to tell you. It’s not his job to tell you what something means. It’s more like, you don’t need him. You don’t need me to say anything about this for people to enjoy it, because it’s yours now.”

Regardless of how it’s perceived, S/T objectively puts a triumphant cap on years of steady rising for the Seattle rock band. Their first release, the Lullablaze EP, quickly became a scene favorite after its release on local label Den Tapes nearly four years ago. Since then they’ve worked constantly; writing, re-writing, practicing, promoting, playing, touring, supporting, displaying all the hallmarks of an ambitious local act looking to broaden their reach. Having finally been signed to a nationally-known indie label, and on the cusp of a long-awaited new record, Pasillas feels she’s achieved the kind of success that her band could only imagine upon their inception.

“When I started the band, my bandmates at the time were asking what are goals is, or what’s the vision, or what you would want,” says Pasillas. “And for me, all I knew is I wanted to make music for the rest of my life forever and ever, and I’d love to tour, and you know part of that is if you could get signed to an indie label you have a better chance of doing those things.”

Of all the labels to which her band could be signed, she says, she’s glad they signed to Lauren. “Lauren feels like a natural fit because it’s one person – Aaron – and he has a cat and the cat’s part of the label. There’s tie-ins where I think of, you know, Kay from Den Tapes and her cats, and I love cats. It still feels DIY to me, whatever that means, I know a lot of people differ on what DIY mean nowadays. I don’t feel like a sellout; it feels super comfortable and natural, with this one person who listens to us and has dealt with all this shit that was starting.”

She refers, of course, to the start of the COVID pandemic and the havoc it wreaked on the working lives of virtually every person associated with a musical act. The inauspiciousness of its arrival proved devastating. “It was literally right as this shit was starting,” she says about the time of their signing, “and we were just shopping around and figured like, “Cool, we’re on lockdown now and it’ll just be a couple weeks and all of this was just starting, so for Aaron to have gone through with us what we’ve been through…it’s just been very natural and really, really positive.”

“Once it’s out there, it’s not yours anymore. It doesn’t belong to you. You made it, but you can’t dictate what it means anymore.“

Underneath the frankness and ease with which she talks during our chat, a certain guardedness persists, particularly in the exacting way she chooses her words. This, to be honest, is a valid approach if you’re an underground artist operating in today’s frenzied, precipitous online social climate. Whereas some people have no qualms sharing every thought that runs through their minds, Pasillas shudders at the idea of hers becoming farrago to an audience of unceasing voices.

“How I usually put it is, when I engage in social media, I feel like I’m crowded,” she says, leaning in. “I don’t like to feel like I’m walking into a crowded room where people are yelling, and that’s what it feels like. I think a lot of people, no offense, but they need to get diaries and journals or…a lot of this stuff is like, why are you putting it out there? We’re not meant to know what everyone else is thinking at all times of the day, let alone to be having that…thrown at you.”

The irony is that S/T bears the reflectional qualities of a diary or journal. While sonically the record combines contemporary indie breeziness (a la Jay Som or Japanese Breakfast, two acts she’s found huge influence in) with the eclectic rock ethos of older bands like They Might Be Giants, its lyrics tend to bend inward. On the page, they’re pure verse that feel written with a thoughtful, experienced hand.

That’s not a coincidence. Years ago, Sarah completed a major in Poetry (the full title is “Creative Writing with Emphasis in Poetry”) at Western Washington University up in Bellingham. Though she cringes at the title, she feels gratitude at the opportunity to pursue a deep-rooted passion. “I’m very lucky I got to go to school. That was just very important to my parents. My mom didn’t go to college; my dad is an immigrant from Mexico, he didn’t even finish high school; and my brother didn’t go to college, so to them it was really important that I be the first one to get a college degree.”

The coursework, she asserts, drilled into her not only a lyricist’s ear but a directive to remove her sense of self-importance from her writing. “When you’re in a writing program,” she says, her eyes closed and fingers pressed together as she finds the right words, “you learn pretty quickly about ego. It took me years to break mine down. Because you have to listen to criticism, you have to listen to what people are taking from your poetry, you have to be willing to bend on things and “kill your babies”; you hear that all the time. And you also see people who are so full of themselves and you’re like, ‘Am I that way?’ Well, yeah, you probably are, or were.”

Killing the ego may explain how Pasillas managed to shield herself from her own verses. Underneath S/T’s layered jangle is unfiltered, courageous honesty: honesty about herself, and the sharp thorns that wrap around her soul. Themes of self-loathing, depression and codependency course through these songs like tributaries into a dark green river, to the extent where its empowering moments (“Mouth Breather“ and “Nothing In The Dark” among them) are nearly overwhelmed by its devastating ones.

Pasillas keeps the language (and its substance) impressionistic enough for several degrees of separation; it’s enough for the consonance of her words to simply play mellifluously on the ears. That doesn’t stop their withering power, however, from affecting her long after they’ve been laid to tape. So white-hot does it burn with exhuming potency that, at times, Pasillas couldn’t bear to listen back during mixing. “I was like, Austin [Dean, guitarist], you have to listen to this because there’s no fucking way I’m gonna sit down and listen to myself talk about all this shit that I don’t want to think about right now…there’s times where I have to get a distance if I’m even gonna listen to it – or play it, that’s a different story.”

Such incidence is not uncommon to Pasillas, whose been aware of her sensitivity for almost her entire life. “I’ve always been this way,” she confesses. “My parents kept this preschool grade report that I got that said on it, ‘Sarah runs away by herself and cries in the corner, and when I ask her what’s wrong, she won’t say.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m still like that! I can’t believe I was always like that!’ I always would rather just go by myself and cry.”

“I get extremely, extremely, extremely terrified of putting myself out there,” she concludes with a deadly seriousness. Then she concedes, “Even though I kind of…do that. As an artist.”

The cafe we’re sitting in is a block away from a couple of notable places. Two streets down lay the offices of KEXP, the radio station that’s known nationally for its benevolent coverage of artists both large and small. Behind it is the Seattle Center, where the looming shadow of the Space Needle asserts its inchoate presence over the tourists, the throngs of which are still diluted from the pandemic. That monolith, and the organizations that borrow its iconic image, has come to represent an increasingly strained relationship with the city and its underground artists.

Over the last few years, Seattle has seen a rush of transplants from all parts of the world, owing as much to its newfound tech-haven status as its storied place in America’s music history. Unlike these people, Sarah is a native to the area, having been raised in a suburb north of the city. Resultantly Antonioni considers itself a ‘Seattle’ band, and Pasillas takes pride in contributing to its legacy, however it arises.

She’s currently writing an article for legendary Fremont record store Sonic Boom, on which she plans to rhapsodize about the local acts she finds inspiration in (Black Ends and Racoma chief among them). And in regards to the bureaucratic wardens of Seattle’s music scene, her band’s relationship is strong; the first time I saw Antonioni live was at a KEXP-sponsored event, where they opened for Cherry Glazerr against the backdrop of the Seattle Center’s giant mosaic mural.

On the city’s underground, she has overwhelming positive things to say. “I think the talent is incredible. It’s beyond belief for me. You can go out and find amazing musicians every night – well, not right now, you know, before,” she chuckles. “And I know part of that is people who have moved here just to do music, and then I know a lot of it too is a lot of us are “homegrown,” little pockets of communities that developed.”

She directs harsher words at the city itself; like many local musicians, Pasillas holds reservations about how Seattle’s institutions foster its young talent. “You have places and people that are stuck in their ways…even down the street, 107.7 The End,” she says, referring to the local rock radio station, “They took down their locals’ show and replaced it with an emo night. It’s just out of touch, in my opinion. It’s kind of sad.”

Her grievances reflect the growing wariness towards Seattle’s transformation into a host for the Amazon parasite, along with the wasted potential that resulted, considering its new elevated platform. “It really, really sucks because… in a million ways and more it could have been doing more for its scene, a hundred percent,” she continues. “For who was being supported, who’s being showcased, who’s getting to talk at these speeches about the music industry, who’s being uplifted…it wasn’t the right people. To see anyone being uplifted was kind of a win, but like, why couldn’t we do more?”

“Talking to myself is one hundred percent what I’m doing when I write.“

Thirty minutes before Sarah’s parking pass is set to expire, I feel like I’ve become one with the cold, the air having seeped into my bones. We’ve finally arrived at the record itself, which at the time of the interview is scheduled to release in just under a week. At one point she dons her mask (a black cloth peppered with red flowers) and zips up her jacket as if she were ready to take off, but she stays put and our conversation continues.

Most of the songs on S/T have been in development for years, most of which ended up as early singles. A few, however, remained unfinished by the time the band reached Unknown Studio in Anacortes (a local favorite). One of these – the slow, circling “Strange 2 Them” – Pasillas claims as an instinctual favorite.

“I mean, for one, no one’s heard it,” she cracks. “We’ve never played it live, it’s fresh. But it’s one of the songs that I wrote entirely. The synth parts on it are all from my bedroom from when I wrote the song, so I love how it is from that sense because it feels really personal to me.” She doesn’t disclose the particulars of that connection, but the track feels weighty, with a defiance embedded in the chorus’ answer to its verse that gets the point across. “It’s one of the few guitar solos that I got to play,” she adds. “Most of what you hear when you hear the solo stuff is Austin, because he’s amazing; I think he’s the best guitar player in the world.”

Another is the album’s four-minute centerpiece “Please Make This,” which I bring up as my own personal favorite. Though structurally it’s the definition of a deep cut with its serpentine chord patterns and unconventional form, the song amalgamates several threads of thought before it; Austin Dean’s solo pulls central guitar lines from several previous songs while Pasillas combines the record’s opening lines with its most recent one. Its title evokes both the intimacy and the candor of a voice memo.

Later, she expresses that title was indeed a supplication directed at herself; with only a set of chordal repetitions, Pasillas had to push herself, literally, into completing the track. “Talking to myself is one hundred percent what I’m doing when I write.” she says. “I know, at some point, I’m gonna make something that I’m going to have to sing over and over again and I’d better make sure whatever I’m saying is what I want to be saying to myself, or repeating to myself, or surrounding myself with.”

The record is not all self-imploring: “Malcomer” is clearly directed toward the irritatingly infallible men among us, while “They Never Greatly Flew” continues that thread in bestial metaphor. But the inwardness still surfaces on “Bramble,” the record’s dream-like concession; and on the zephyr-like “Shiver” (“to reconcile/my two/competing”); and even in the liberating clarity of “Nothing In The Dark.” When Pasillas dives into the second person, detailing the shackles of her neuroses, it feels as if she’s explaining them to herself in real time. The relationship she wishes to leave at the abrupt end of “Mary Bell” could very well be with herself.

It’s naturally tempting to wrestle an exact message from these songs, because they’re good songs. But Sarah, again, shakes off any viable notion of exegesis, her instinct to keep the finer details out of the spotlight. “Sometimes you might obscure the way someone interprets your art by saying too much,” she reiterates. “That’s one of my least favorite things, when [the author of the piece] gives too much explanation. Once it’s out there, it’s not yours anymore. It doesn’t belong to you. You made it, but you can’t dictate what it means anymore.”

“‘Illusion’ is a good word for it,” she later muses about the space between self-critique and objectivity. “There is a kind of mystery that comes from the distance.” When I bring up the current phenomenon of mystery artists exploding on the strength of their anonymity, she comments on how the more common practice – creating an excess of exposure – is inversely related.

“I feel like we’re overfed now,” she says. “I don’t mean to sound old, but when I was growing up you didn’t hear what celebrities had to say unless you sought it out. When I was in high school, it’s not like I knew what Modest Mouse was saying, it’s not like I was following them on Instagram seeing their live videos. I knew nothing about them. And they came from a city over from where I grew up! It’s just different now; now I can see what they’re eating for breakfast, you know? Like, Billie Eilish’s hair color is a trending topic now.”

That tug-of-war – between her reservations about oversharing and the intensely personal lyrics she writes for her band – underlines the paradox of today’s artist: insofar as the compulsion to dig ever deeper, in the search for some still unsaid truth, grinds against the necessity of promoting that vulnerability to an ever-saturated market of aspiring musicians. To Pasillas, it’s a lot to balance, especially when she runs the risk of being misconstrued.

“Scrutiny is my least favorite word,” she says, grasping her coffee cup with both hands, “because it’s scary.”