On April 4th last year, Pale Waves played to a smattering of curious punters in the stygian boudoir that is Dublin’s Academy 2. The audience was enthusiastic but, with the band struggling to draw the proverbial two men and a mutt, there was also an inevitable cringe factor.
Seven days later the goth-pop quartet were on stage at the 7,000-capacity Allen Event Center in suburban Dallas, Texas, performing to a room stuffed all the way to the bleachers. It was as if they'd been picked up by a whirlwind and transported to an alternate dimension.
“There weren’t an awful lot of people at that Academy show,” recalls singer Heather Baron-Gracie. “The next week we were in America, at an arena in Texas. That was pretty overwhelming.”
The fans in Texas hadn't turned out for Pale Waves, it should be pointed out. Baron-Gracie (23) and her crew were the support act, invited to tour the US by headliners The 1975 (neo-glamsters who, largely in a good way, have built an entire career on the first 30 seconds of David Bowie's Fame).
Yet their journey from a tumbleweed-filled pop dungeon in Dublin 1 to a screaming amphitheatre in the Land of the Free nonetheless speaks to the remarkable ascent of Pale Waves. They can be expected to climb another rung this month with the release of their fantastic debut album, My Mind Makes Noises (the LP is on Dirty Hit, the UK indie label that has similarly championed Wolf Alice, the aforementioned 1975 and model-turned-one-woman-indie-disco Marika Hackman).
Chart-primed outsiders
Catchy, with an eye-grabbing look and a frontperson who knows what she's about, Pale Waves are the sort of chart-primed outsiders many of us had reluctantly concluded they'd stopped making. Twenty years go, when pop meant something, they would have been on everyone's lips, with a sweep of music press covers (a feat they, in fact, achieved shortly before the internet finally gobbled the NME whole) and a Top of the Pops appearance to blow our minds.
Alas, we live in drabber times and the group, though feted after a fashion, are slogging their way to success. Not that they have an issue with hard work, as testified to by a punishing live schedule that will see them play upwards of 150 gigs in 2018, including a four-date Irish tour in October.
What’s great about Pale Waves is that, if thoroughly modern in certain aspects, they are also conversant with the ghosts of indie pop past.
Especially striking in this regard are Baron-Gracie's lyrics, a tumult of missed connections and romantic misunderstanding that orbit the John Hughes school of teen heartbreak. You wish someone would invent a time machine so they could go back and insert themselves into the Pretty in Pink soundtrack.
Another, perhaps more surprising influence, is Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries. Even before the Limerick singer's life was cut tragically short in January, a Cranberries revival had been gathering steam – and Baron-Gracie speaks admiringly both of the Shannonsider's sugarspun jangle-pop and of O'Riordan's ferocious self-possession.
“I love The Cranberries. They were amazing. I definitely looked up to Dolores O’Riordan. She has one of my favourite voices of all time. She gave off that attitude – she was totally herself. I loved her fashion sense, she was such a cool person. She was who she was and gave off that thing of, ‘if you don’t like me – I don’t really care.’”
Cookie-cutter indie urchins
Pale Waves have a strong sense of identity, too. If you listened to them without any idea of what they looked like, you may well have formed a picture of the group as cookie-cutter indie urchins. So it might come as a shock to discover Baron-Gracie dresses like Siouxsie Sioux by way of Edward Scissorhands, with drummer Ciara Doran pushing her all the way in the suburban goth walk-off.
“I never thought people would compare our image to our music,” reveals Baron-Gracie. “I’ve always been into fashion and have always dressed like this. It was never a conscious decision to be a contradiction: to play pop and dress quite goth-like. It definitely takes people by surprise, which is quite funny. I like shocking people.”
As she says, she has dressed this way since she was a teenager. Not surprisingly she used to turn heads in her native Preston (whose previous claim to pop fame rested on it being the home of the saxophone player from Simply Red). Even today, as a pop star, her fashion choices draw unwelcome second glances, she says, rolling her eyes.
“A few days ago someone called me ‘Frankenstein’. He was this 40-year-old man. I was like, ‘Why are you calling me Frankenstein? You’re 40 years old.’” She pauses to harrumph. “He had no sense of fashion anyway.”
In front of a crowd, I don't feel shy. I find it easy to take control and be that frontperson
She also empathises with the contrasts that made O’Riordan so fascinating. Off stage, the Cranberries singer was an archetypal wallflower. Under the spotlight she displayed a steeliness of which there was little previous inkling. It’s a contradiction with which Baron-Gracie is intimately familiar.
“I am definitely a person that keeps to myself,” she says. “Except on those odd occasions when I basically want everything to be about me. In front of a crowd, I don’t feel shy. I find it easy to take control and be that frontperson.”
Pop machine
With all the acclaim has come the inevitable pressure to conform – to submit to the pop machine. Gracie-Baron, though, knows her mind and if something makes her uneasy she’ll raise her hand and say so. She is nobody’s puppet.
“You just have to think about everything,” she says. “You have to consider who you want to talk to – who you want to be associated with . . . the things you want to do, the things you don’t want to do. You need to be picky. I know what I want and I know what I don’t like.”
She has also learned not to squander her energies on time-wasters and anyone not as invested as Pale Waves as she is.
“I was in a punk-pop band in college. That really put me off bands,” she says. “You have to rely on other people. That isn’t something I’m into. Especially when they’re not as motivated, not as willing to commit. I’m really driven. I put my heart and soul into it.”
Not everyone, it should be noted, is swooning at their feet. The chief beef against Pale Waves is that they are simply too catchy. As if catchiness were something to be ashamed of.
“I don’t think about it all that much,” says Baron-Gracie. “Catchy is what I’m into. I love pop music. I love songs you can sing back to yourself after hearing once or twice. My mind doesn’t really understand songs that are all over the place. I wouldn’t listen to that style of music religiously. I just love pop music.”
- My Mind Makes Noises is released this week. Pale Waves play Elmwood Hall, Belfast, October 5th, Cyprus Avenue, Cork, October 6th, Dolan’s Warehouse, Limerick October 7th, Academy, Dublin, October 8th. They will support The 1975 in 3Arena on January 10th, 2019
