Pale Waves

“Feeling naked, dressed up head to toe / It’s been a while since I’ve been this vulnerable,” sings Heather Baron-Gracie – of the British alt-rock four-piece Pale Waves (Heather, Ciara Doran, Hugo Silvani, Charlie Wood) – on “Seeing Stars”, a gorgeously melodic slice of dream-pop about opening yourself up to love, heartbreak and self-discovery. In many ways, these are the themes that define their fourth album Smitten: vulnerability, love, sexuality, queerness, finding yourself, moving on, growing up. “I was reading a lot of sapphic poetry and queer films and just being ultra queer,” Heather says today. “I feel like that unlocked a lot of my past experiences with women that have been in my life, that I’ve been in relationships with and that I’ve been in love with.”

Ultimately, Smitten is Pale Waves at their realest and most grounded. The songs sparkle with an intense emotional resonance that was only possible to express from a place of relative calm. “For this fourth album, I didn’t really feel the pressure,” says Heather. “I had a lot of time to try things out for size. Me and the band figured out what works for us. Smitten is different \[from anything else we’ve done\] because you can hear the freedom that we all feel – it’s not trying to be anything. We wanted to put that into existence.”

Presented by CHALK.

This is an 14+ event