Pale Waves’ lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie talks to Atwood about reflecting on past experiences, learning to ignore the judgment of others, and how her shifting perspective on life influenced the band’s fourth album, ‘Smitten.’

Stream: ‘Smitten’ – Pale Waves

I’m at that point now where I write music for me rather than for what people want from Pale Waves. I’m writing music to have a good time and express myself.

Pale Waves have never been a band that fits easily into any category or genre.

The band’s 2018 debut LP, My Mind Makes Noises, is full of polished, eighties-tinged pop songs, with shiny guitars and synths throughout. But their subsequent albums, 2021’s Who Am I? and their 2022 record Unwanted, lean into more of a pop-punk sound characterized by distortion-soaked electric guitars and the powerful, emotive vocal delivery of lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie.

So as they approached their fourth album, the band had a question to answer – what does Pale Waves sound like in 2024? The end result of that exploration is Smitten, the band’s new record just released via Dirty Hit, their long-time label. The album is an energetic journey through upbeat anthems and introspective ballads, with unforgettable hooks around every corner.

But the answer to the band’s existential question of how to approach their fourth record didn’t come right away.

“It took us a while to get there,” Baron-Gracie tells Atwood Magazine. “I think we felt the freedom to have fun with it and try out whatever we wanted to. I wrote a lot of songs for this record, and after about half a year, I still didn’t feel like I had the start of the fourth record yet. But then I wrote ‘Seeing Stars,’ and it kind of made sense, and everyone felt like, ‘Okay, this sounds like the fourth record for Pale Waves now.’”

Many of the sonic elements on Smitten are reminiscent of Pale Waves debut album. “We fell in love with that sound again – the jangly guitars, the big anthemic choruses,” Baron-Gracie says. “Any of the songs could soundtrack an eighties film.” But Smitten is far from a remake of the band’s debut – they’re also pulling in sounds and textures from throughout their discography.

Although “Seeing Stars” appears on the album’s back half, as the first song written for the album, it encapsulates many of these aspects Baron-Gracie mentions as representative of the album as a whole. The song begins with a shimmering guitar riff and wordless vocals before quieting down to let the drums and bass carry the verse as Baron-Gracie sings of losing confidence in love:

I’m a cynic I know just how this goes
Feeling naked dressed up head to toe
It’s been a while since I’ve been this vulnerable
And it shows, oh it shows

The song’s energy then kicks up a notch for one of the album’s many massive and infectious choruses, and Baron-Gracie’s lyrics take a turn into more positive territory as she describes the feeling of letting love in again:

She hit me so hard, I was seeing stars
Caught me off guard I could barely talk
Yeah, she hit me so hard kissing every scar
Played me so good like an old guitar

“Seeing Stars” also showcases a maturity and freedom that is apparent throughout Smitten.

When asked where that new sense of freedom comes from, Baron-Gracie points to the differences between how she approaches her career now compared to when she was just starting out.

 “The deeper you go in life, you care less and less about what people think and say and expect of you,” she says. “I’m at that point now where I write music for me rather than for what people want from Pale Waves. I’m writing music to have a good time and express myself. I’m not really thinking about if it’s going to be the biggest record ever for us. If people love it, they love it, and if they don’t, they don’t.”

Along with the creative freedom Baron-Gracie experienced also came a growing comfort in being vulnerable in her songwriting and writing about her personal life. The Pale Waves singer has been open about her queer identity, but on Smitten, she writes about queer relationships with a new directness.

“It was me growing into my own skin and learning to love it – feeling confident enough to be so open,” she says of writing about her personal life. “It’s a really weird thing to be so open to strangers. But at the same time, I think people really appreciate it, and it does more good than bad. I feel like I’m at that point in my life now where I can be comfortable expressing myself and any judgment doesn’t really bother me anymore.”

Pale Waves introduced Smitten to the world with lead single “Perfume,” which I reviewed for Atwood when it was released in June. They then followed “Perfume” with a string of three more excellent singles that successfully previewed the album’s buoyant rhythms and emotional lyrics.

Still, in a revelation of just how strong Smitten is from start to finish, the band held back one of the album’s most stunning tracks for fans to discover on release day. “Not a Love Song” is an undeniable standout that showcases Pale Waves at their absolute best.

“Not a Love Song” starts with a propulsive, staccato bass, and the song’s momentum only builds from there. Despite the song’s title, the verse contains lyrics we might expect from a conventional love song, albeit to an undeniably catchy melody:

I’ll be your muse, be your truth, and give you my time
I’ll be your cherry, cherry lipstick, wear you all night
I’ll be your lover undercover, make wrong feel right
I’ll be your dirty, dirty thoughts that you try to hide

By the time the verse ends, the listener is drawn into the love story, but then the chorus comes, the sonic universe expands, and the lyrics provide a dose of reality:

This is not a love song
We don’t end up together
It’s all about what you lost
This is not a love song
Love song

“I love the contrast the song has,” Baron-Gracie says on “Not a Love Song.” “The verses are quite tight and poppy, and then it opens up to this explosive chorus that feels very romantic and dreamy.”

“It’s about me knowing that the relationship is going nowhere, and the frustration of that,” she says of the experiences behind the song. “And it’s about this other woman not accepting her queerness, or accepting it behind closed doors, but when the door is open, I’m just a friend.”

This ability to see the relationship described in “Not a Love Song” for what it really was may come from the approach Baron-Gracie took to songwriting on Smitten.

For past albums, Baron-Gracie has primarily written songs about what was going on in her life at the present moment. But for Smitten, she allowed herself to look back at previous moments in her life, and these memories became the basis of many of the songs on the record.

“I was able to reflect back on it with clarity and with an honest view of it all,” she says. “I wanted to go back in time and have fun exploring that.”

With this emphasis on looking back on past experiences, it’s not surprising that Baron-Gracie wrote many of the songs either alone on her acoustic guitar or with a small group of other writers, creating a setting where she could slow down and reflect. The band also chose a tranquil setting for recording the album.

“We went to a little studio in Eastborne, in the south of the UK,” Baron-Gracie says. “It’s kind of a lazy seaside town, and it’s really beautiful – lots of fields and sheep, and the ocean is right there. But there’s nothing happening there. It was nice to be down there recording the album because it just felt like I could breathe.”

“I wanted this record to feel and sound very British,” she continues. “And surrounding ourselves by that British scenery enabled us to highlight that even more.”

And while Smitten is full of energetic pop songs, there are still moments where the band slows things down, like they do on the contemplative ballad “Last Train Home.” In some ways, this song reverses the roles from “Not a Love Song,” with the singer mourning the demise of a past relationship they weren’t able to commit to:

She’s the secret
I kept all along
Always waiting for it to be told
Dancing round the truth but I
Don’t wanna live in this disguise
I’ll be by the platform
She’s the last train home

The song’s chorus keeps alive the hope that the train might still be on the way, but in the song’s final moments, reality sets in:

Oh, how I wish things were different
But I let her slip through my fingers
The lights are switched off
And the station is closed
She’s miles away
The last train home

“That’s the sad moment on the record,” Baron-Gracie says of “Last Train Home.” “It’s about me not being ready. It’s the story of when I was quite young and naïve and not feeling confident enough.”

With the new album now out in the world, Pale Waves aren’t showing any signs of slowing down.

They’ll be embarking on a UK tour this fall, and they also have shows scheduled in Japan and Korea in December.

If the songs on Smitten are any indication, the upcoming Pale Waves live shows are sure to be a breathtaking emotional journey. Baron-Gracie sees the album as an exploration of all of the diverse feelings romantic relationships can bring. The themes and ideas are universal, but she’s also writing from her specific experience as a queer women navigating relationships.

“It’s an album that celebrates queer love,” Baron-Gracie says to summarize the themes of Smitten. “It’s about the kind of emotions that you go through and the highs and lows of it all.”

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 © Kelsi Luck

Smitten

an album by Pale Waves