ALBUM REVIEW: Who Am I? – Pale Waves
It’s a tale we’ve been told a thousand times. Best friends bond themselves together forever as a band, band becomes the next best thing, band implodes on the inside and blows up. You know how the story goes, you’ve heard it more times than you’ve had hot dinners. For Manchester’s goth-poppers PALE WAVES, they’ve been weaving their way through a plethora of pop-culture’s most notorious narratives since their synth-pop driven debut My Mind Makes Noises sent them stratospherically into the UK Top Ten.
Signed to Dirty Hit, the home of experimental pop’s undisputed rulers THE 1975, PALE WAVES have been paraded around town as the heirs to their throne much like Rafiki presenting Simba to Pride Rock. With two years of touring, the threads of their tapestry were tearing apart at the seams, as vocalist and guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie did ‘an OASIS’ and flew off to LA, whilst her band members ended up in a near-fatal bus crash. Funnily enough, the fractured relationships between the band that left the creative partnership between Baron-Gracie and drummer Ciara Doran all but not existent, would lead PALE WAVES to create Who Am I?, the difficult second album that’s quite possibly the best thing they’ve done yet.
Stripping off their sultry synth-pop soundscapes, PALE WAVES take a trip down memory lane to the late nineties and early noughties, giving a much-needed lick of paint to the post-grunge alt-pop that took teenage angst to a newfound spirituality. If you’re looking for a cheat sheet to Who Am I?’s musical makeup, simply sit and think about the possibility of THE 1975 writing and recording an album for ALANIS MORRISETTE and AVRIL LAVIGNE.
The new-wave jangle-pop of Run To is as akin to their labelmates lyrical and musical output as you can imagine, as well as the indie-pop bop of Bloxx whilst the creative collision of You Don’t Own Me’s percussive pop-punk pummel and glittering eary-ten’s electropop channels AVRIL LAVIGNE as much as it does PIXIE LOTT, ELLIE GOULDING and DAISY DARES YOU. Elsewhere, the atmospheric post-grunge pop-rock of Wish U Were Here sounds like a spiritual successor to mid-nineties ALANIS MORRISETTE and NATALIE IMBRUGLIA. Simply put, there’s not a single song on Who Am I? that sounds the same, and yet they’re all signature staples of PALE WAVES in 2021.
Their musical evolution is only one element of the true transformation the goth-pop quartet have undergone in the three years between their debut and sophomore efforts. Lyrically, Who Am I? is in one sense the diarised details of Heather sailing through the shores of self-discovery, learning to fall in love not only with herself, but with someone else; on the other hand, it’s a voice for the voiceless, using their platform as LGBTQ allies to normalise same-sex relationships and creating a safe space to speak up about matters important to them and their fans, from understanding your own sexuality to coming to terms with experiencing gender dysphoria. PALE WAVES ability to alchemise serious conversations into accessible radio-friendly bubblegum pop hooks highlights Who Am I?’s importance as not only an album, but as a bible for those of us who need some self-love and self-discovery. There’s something so refreshing about the fierce bark of “sexuality is not a choice, don’t let anyone say it’s wrong” on Tomorrow that primes PALE WAVES to be the voice of a generation.
Whilst Who Am I? could’ve been the up-and-comer car crash of the century, PALE WAVES have slipped into the stream of self-discovery and love, finding solace in the sounds of a thousand unheard voices, throwing them together and coming out the other end with a far better understanding of who they are, and who they always will be. Simply put, PALE WAVES aren’t the heirs to THE 1975’s throne, because they’re already the rulers of their very own goth-pop kingdom.
Rating: 9/10
Who Am I? is set for release on February 12th via Dirty Hit.
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