Pleasure Pill on Shooting for the Stars

With an eclectic Britpop-inspired sound and an infectious bravado, Pleasure Pill is on their way to resurrecting mainstream rock

PHOTO BY TALLULAH TOTTEN

The word of the day was “big.” 

“I feel like it’s natural for us to do what we do because we want to do it,” Jonah Paz, the vocalist and lyricist of the rock and roll rarity out of San Diego, Pleasure Pill, said. He went on, gazing at me with the confidence of a seer. “And [we] want to do it really big.”

I asked how big. Luke Blake, Pleasure Pill’s lead guitarist, answered, “Like biggest-band-in-the-world big.” 

“Yeah, like U2 and Queen and The Beatles,” Paz rejoined. “Like Nirvana.”

Paz and Blake, along with fellow Pleasure Pill members, Ethan Paz (Jonah Paz’s younger brother) on rhythm guitar, Ivan Delgado on bass, and Dom Friedly on drums all carry this same purpose and ambition. It’s become a motif in the Pleasure Pill discography. Paz opens the 2021 track, “Favorite Color Gold,” with, “I believe in me, you’ll all see / Up with the stars is all I’m shooting to be.” The chorus of 2022’s “Get There Soon” intones, “Reach for the stars / I’ll land on the moon / But it’s not too far / The stars, I’ll get there soon.” The music exudes sincerity and prowess, but aims to fill a particular vacancy in the zeitgeist — namely, the absence of rock and roll.

“I mean, kids our age don’t really have that,” Blake said, delivering the comment more as an indictment than an opinion. 

A handful of rock veterans, like Guns N' Roses or Green Day, still manage to pack a stadium today, but very few have found success beyond that, let alone contemporary debuts. Blame it on the internet, the recession, or Spotify, but the cultural dominance of rock and roll has undoubtedly dwindled. 

This is why Pleasure Pill appeared almost atavistic to me at first. Behind their imposing persona beams a conviction so intense that it’s practically proselytizing. They fit the form of both a classic rock band and a monastic order. Because for Pleasure Pill, that conviction is a matter of fact, a matter of religion, a matter of nature. 

Not long into our conversation, I began debating whether “big” would suffice to capture it. 

PHOTO BY TALLULAH TOTTEN

By the time the first incarnation of Pleasure Pill emerged as JINX! In 2016, each member had already circulated through the San Diego punk rock scene, most of them performing at as young as thirteen. They defined the circuit as hardcore, sordid, transitory, but most of all, integral to their development as artists. Had they not dutifully played out their adolescence in dimly lit parking lots and humid basements, their current music may have never been realized. 

“When you don’t have someone standing over your shoulder telling you how to do something, you do it however you want, which is how you should be doing it in the first place,” Blake said. “It results in a lot more interesting things.”

JINX!, the byproduct of this philosophy, was certainly more interesting. 

“[JINX!] was kinda the beginning of me writing music,” Paz said. “The way I first started writing music was just out of pure creativity and not looking at doing anything too specific genre-wise.”  

Paz traces the band’s evolution out of San Diego’s indie underbelly into the more mature and visible sphere. “COVID happened and I just started developing as a songwriter and started to realize the type of songs that I wanted to write and the type of band I wanted to be in.” 

In 2022, the band rebranded as Pleasure Pill, with their music taking on a dreamy, dulcet quality that distills into scenic lyricism, anthemic choruses and cascading bridges. Paz has cited a medley of influences that informed the new sound, including everything from 1960s pop to 1970s punk to the mellifluous stylings of the 1990s and early 2000s Britpop. Despite these influences, Pleasure Pill’s music remains remarkably fresh and inspired. 

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Paz explained. “It’s just pushing what we know and what we love forward.”

PHOTO BY TALLULAH TOTTEN

Pleasure Pill has an easy, up-to-the-minute coolness that allays the weight of their confidence, which draws a listener  into heightened credulity. I found myself very willingly disarmed by Pleasure Pill and willfully moving them in my mind from a class of contenders into the realm of likely rock stars. 

Yet, they are not doctrinaires. Pleasure Pill is keenly aware that the cultural graft may not take, and their music may not resonate. But fundamentally, they are true believers. They believe not only in themselves but in the resurrection of mainstream rock altogether. In the same places a parishioner might see God, Pleasure Pill sees rock and roll. 

“I don’t really see bands being so honest with what they want out of it. I think people are really casual with what they want out of music and don’t wanna necessarily be so upfront with wanting the world with it,” Paz said. “With us, that’s all we want. That’s all we want to do.”

Their work ethic is a testament to this. Fresh off of a cross-country tour opening for El Paso indie rock band late night drive, they released an album of live performance recordings on August 23. They’re set to headline San Diego’s Music Box on August 29, and take up a five-week residency in New York City’s Heaven Can Wait beginning September 2. All the while, they’re still working on their debut album. 

Paz elaborated on the upcoming album, “This is our second time recording the album so we’ve already had a go at it and [we’re] just making sure it’s timeless. Because it’s one thing to talk the game we talk and want the things we want, but it’s a whole other thing to actually do it and you need a good debut album to do it. So we’re making sure it’s the best.”

In the end, “best” was the most fitting word.