Pale Waves: “It felt important to express the joy of queer love, because queer love is amazing”

Embracing romance and letting go of the past, Pale Waves return with their most liberating album yet.

Words: Ali Shutler.
Photos: Jennifer McCord.

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“People expect a sad record about self-hatred from Pale Waves,” says Heather Baron-Gracie. “They expect me feeling lost, confused, and like no one understands me.” 

To be fair, the band do have a history of leaning on the gloomier side of life. For all its shimmering hope, 2018 debut ‘My Mind Makes Noises’ came from a place of fear and isolation, while 2021 follow-up ‘Who Am I?’ was all uncomfortable self-discovery, and 2022’s ‘Unwanted’ was driven by a furious venom.

“I just don’t feel that way anymore,” shrugs Heather. “So I’m not going to fake it.” Instead, defiant new album ‘Smitten’ is all about love and romance. “There’s enough darkness going about that sometimes, you just want to hear songs that make you feel good.”

Each Pale Waves album has seen the band pushing back against something. Their debut had to navigate the early hype and distrust that came following arena tours with The 1975 and attention-grabbing debut singles ‘There’s A Honey’ and ‘Television Romance’, while the alt-rock flex of ‘Who Am I?’ came after the band wanted to switch things up as they looked to break out of the goth-pop box they’d found themselves in. “We had to do it for our own sanity,” says Heather. Third album ‘Unwanted’ was written after the band became obsessed with 00s pop-punk bands and wanted to add some snotty urgency to their own gigs. “We wanted to prove we could do a lot of other things,” she says of their story so far. “I feel like we’ve done that.”

It means gorgeous new album ‘Smitten’ comes under a newfound sense of freedom. “I really want it to mean something to people, and I want it to help because that’s why I make music. But at the same time, I have enough confidence now that I’m not dwelling on what people expect from me.” Instead of listening to all those voices or deliberately doing something different, ‘Smitten’ sees Heather being true to what she wanted to do. “I just didn’t care what others would think of it,” she explains. “This record is all about living in that freedom… and I feel like that is how I’m going to approach everything going forward.”

“Sometimes, you just want to hear songs that make you feel good”

A few weeks away from release, the world of ‘Smitten’ is a cohesive, lush wonderland thanks to the collaboration between Heather and her photographer girlfriend Kelsi Luck. “Having someone around you 24/7 who also wants to create something fun, interesting, and unique is amazing,” says Heather, with the flower-adorned Dork cover shoot an extension of the dreamy, cinematic ‘Smitten’ universe.

It’s not how ‘Smitten’ started life, though. Over the course of 18 months, Pale Waves wrote around 70 different songs, trying to find a spark that would ignite the vision for album four. And it wasn’t going great. “A lot of those songs were terrible, and I’ll never listen to them again,” says Heather bluntly, before softening. “I mean, they were decent enough, but something about them just didn’t feel right,” she continues. “They didn’t make me instantly fall in love.”

Heather, by her own admission, is an all-or-nothing person. “I feel very intensely about something, or I feel nothing at all,” she says, which explains the bold sonic leaps between records. “I also change my mind a lot, so fans should never trust me in terms of where I’m going to take the band next or if I say I’m never going to play a song again, because those things have a habit of coming back around,” she adds with a grin. Recently she’s fallen back in love with ‘My Mind Makes Noises’, but isn’t so keen on ‘Unwanted’. “Some of those songs are the most fun to play live, but I wouldn’t listen to it over our other records.”

The fear slowly started to creep in as self-enforced deadlines loomed, and Pale Waves still didn’t have an album. But then came ‘Seeing Stars’, a dreamy slice of head-over-heels romance that can be found nestled towards the end of ‘Smitten’. “From there, I knew where I wanted to go,” says Heather, with the majority of the record coming together in the weeks that followed. “Part of me wants to know what would have happened if we’d kept going, but you have to know when to call it,” says Heather, describing ‘Smitten’ as “probably the best Pale Waves album so far.” With everything that makes the band special dialled up to eleven, we’d have to agree.

While other albums were created in the aftermath of Pale Waves becoming engrossed in different eras of music, ‘Smitten’ sees them returning to the lush, hazy soundscapes that first inspired them. “I just wasn’t listening to that much music, and when I was, it was the bands I always turn to,” says Heather, pulling influence from The Cranberries, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and The Sundays for ‘Smitten’. “When you’re younger, part of you wants to move beyond whatever it is you’re obsessed with and embrace newer, cooler things, but it always comes back around.”

“I change my mind a lot, fans should never trust me in terms of where I’m going to take the band next”

From the glittering start of lead single ‘Perfume’, it’s clear ‘Smitten’ occupies a similar sonic world to their debut. “It doesn’t feel like ‘My Mind Makes Noises’ part two, but we do love those jangly choruses. That music allows my vocals, which are fragile and full of this yearning, to shine in a way the rock stuff doesn’t,” says Heather. It’s also easier to sing, she laughs.

There are nods to their other records as well, though. Opening track ‘Glasgow’ echoes blink-182 at their most emo, while the closing one-two of ‘Imagination’ and ‘Slow’ are delivered with a scrappy alt-rock snarl. The whole thing feels evolved as Pale Waves embrace the old but move far beyond comfortable nostalgia. “It’s good to keep people on their toes,” says Heather. “Plus, I don’t think we could ever do the same thing twice because I’d get too bored. I need to allow myself to have new experiences constantly because that’s the fun of creating.”

Embracing the new while keeping an eye on the past is how they kickstarted this new era as well. After playing an intimate headline show at The 100 Club (their smallest London gig in over six years), they took to punk and alt-rock festival Slam Dunk for the first time.

“We really weren’t sure if people were going to turn up or if we’d get booed offstage because even though we’d released ‘Unwanted’, it’s still very much the odd one out in our discography,” says Heather. The band talked about playing the album in full and shunning their more pop-leaning tracks but ultimately decided, “fuck it, let’s just do us and see what happens”. At both Hatfield and Leeds, Pale Waves packed out their tent, with even the promoter surprised at just how warmly the band had been received. “I’d probably go back there as well,” says Heather.

She still gets asked what genre she thinks Pale Waves belong to, but isn’t sure if a bracket even exists for them. “We can just do so much; we don’t really want to be in a box.” Instead of fear, Heather finds that “super liberating”.

It’s the day after Oasis’ long-awaited reunion was first announced, and in the coming days, Morrissey will confirm that Johnny Marr ignored an extremely lucrative offer to tour together as The Smiths. Despite coming from the same city, Pale Waves’ brand of rock’n’roll is very different to a lot of what Manchester typically produces. “I’m very strong-willed and defiant, which is a very northern energy,” says Heather. “But I also love feminine and romantic energies as well. We somehow make sense of those two different worlds, but we’re definitely not four lads in a band,” she smirks. “Thank God, because there’s more than enough of those around.”

“We’re definitely not four lads in a band. Thank God, because there’s more than enough of those around”

In fact, ‘Smitten’ is by far the queerest album Pale Waves have released, with Heather drawing influence from a number of proudly queer movies and books. It inspired her to look back at her own journey, with a lot of the songs starting life on acoustic guitar, with Heather singing about past experiences that she just hadn’t felt ready to talk about before.

“It was all very natural and driven by what felt right in the moment,” she says. On their debut, Heather didn’t feel comfortable using pronouns and only came out publicly after Ciara basically dared her to. “Yes I’m Gay,” she tweeted shortly after ‘My Mind Makes Noises’ was released. Since then, questions about sexuality have been a regular occurrence in interviews, even if they tend to dwell on how difficult life can be for young queer people, while tracks like ‘She’s My Religion’ have given fans the safety to truly be themselves at Pale Waves gigs. “I want anything to do with Pale Waves to be and feel very queer because that’s what we represent as a band,” she explains. “I’ve never really sung about the queer experience until now, though.”

And while ‘Smitten’ covers the whole complicated journey, it’s a record that constantly turns to joy.

“I feel like every lesbian movie I watch, the pair never end up together because one of them either dies or goes back to a man,” says Heather, with the Bury Your Gays trope a rampant feature of modern entertainment. “While tragedy can occasionally be the reality of the situation, a majority of the time, they do end up together. They do have an amazing relationship, even if it doesn’t last forever,” says Heather. “It just felt important to express the joy of queer love because queer love is amazing. It’s made my life so much better, and it needs to be spoken about more in a positive light.”

It’s a world away from the pain of previous records, which feature songs like ‘Loveless Girl’ and ‘Unwanted’. “I’ve moved on,” says Heather. “I just have way more love than hate or anger right now. I don’t want to hang on to that anger or get on stage and pretend.”

“I’ve never really sung about the queer experience until now”

‘Smitten’ is a gooey romantic album, but there’s also a lot of self-love as well. “I look back on the person that I used to be, and I feel sad,” says Heather. “The younger me was really lost, and it’s crazy to think about all the things I used to worry about that seem so insignificant now. Don’t get me wrong, I have my dark days, but they’re nothing compared to what they used to be.” Getting older and realising you only have one shell “so you might as well love it” has helped, as has finding love. “To feel accepted, to feel seen, to feel truly loved by another person is an amazing experience,” she explains, with ‘Smitten’ a promise to fans that “it really does get better. The world is a very dark place, so I feel like you need every bit of love that you can get,” she adds.

Now, ‘Smitten’ is not all rose-tinted fairytales, but there’s always a positive to be found. Songs like ‘Glasgow’ are about accepting that things don’t always work out, while ‘Miss America’ and ‘Last Train Home’ see Heather coming to terms with her own growing pains. “I wasn’t the greatest person in those situations, but I want to learn from those experiences. I’ve definitely been a shit person, but I want to continue to be better.”

Then there’s the super upfront ‘This Is Not A Love Song’, which deals with shitty young love. “It’s about me being someone’s experiment and her promising we had a future, but her refusing to commit. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it did teach me that I should always be someone’s first choice.” It’s a lesson echoed in ‘Gravity’, which sees someone choose religion over a relationship with Heather. “I guess Jesus just has more game,” she smirks.

Despite the reflective nature of the record, ‘Smitten’ doesn’t bask in the comfort of what’s already happened. “I’m not one of those people that dwells on the past. I want to learn from it,” Heather continues, unafraid of confrontation. There are songs where she can definitely be seen as the villain, and the only way she could write a lot of the tracks was to work with people she trusted. Luckily, Pale Waves are a strong, supportive gang. “Our dynamic is probably the best it’s been in years. We’ve been through so much as a band, and we’ve grown together. When we walk on stage, the four of us are a unit, which feels really special. They all make me laugh so much, which is so important because doing this can feel stressful and intense. They keep things light.”

“The older I get, the more I’m able to express exactly what I want to say rather than hiding it behind metaphor. A lot of this album is very on the nose,” Heather explains before admitting that “being this direct is terrifying.”

“It’s really not normal to walk out on stage and have all these people in front of me knowing these stories,” she continues. “I’m more nervous getting onstage now than I have been at any point in my career.” Between dying her hair back to black and replacing onstage tequila shots for mugs of lemon and ginger tea, “it feels like the OG Heather has returned,” she explains. “It’s like I’m experiencing everything for the first time all over again.”

“It feels like the OG Heather has returned.”

As revealing as ‘Smitten’ is, Heather knows it might do some good. “A lot of this record is about these really queer romantic experiences, and I would have loved to have heard someone speaking about that growing up,” she explains. “I hope this album can offer people some form of comfort.”

It comes after queer pop, a hugely influential scene that has regularly been kept off to the side of the mainstream, has well and truly taken over thanks to artists like Renée Rapp, Chappell Roan, and Billie Eilish. “It’s amazing to see,” says Heather. “It’s pushing queerness out into the world, which is important because we need more acceptance, especially in the face of the narrow-mindedness that’s out there. Having a wave of queer artists taking over mainstream radio stations and festivals is only going to push boundaries and open up people’s minds in a really positive way.”

When Heather was younger, she thought she needed Pale Waves so badly she would die without it. That outlook made every decision a life-or-death one. “Now I know I can walk away from it at any moment,” she says. Before you start panicking about the imminent end of the band, this is the happiest, healthiest being Pale Waves has ever felt. “I’m at a point where I only want to do what feels comfortable, and there’s such freedom in that,” says Heather.

“This band has been our life for ten years now, and we’ve given everything to it. But it’s also given us so much,” says Heather, with Pale Waves a playground for self-expression. “I know a lot of people give me shit for how I dress when we make such poppy songs, but this is what I feel the most comfortable and attractive in,” she continues, adjusting her leather jacket in the prickly August heat. “Pale Waves has really given all of us the freedom and the space to be who we want to be,” she says, with fans of the band probably feeling the exact same way.

Taken from the October 2024 issue of Dork. Pale Waves’ album ‘Smitten’ is out 27th September.