Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Goth rock?.. No, just a very good pop group
Manchester four won’t Pale into insignificance with these tunes
Don’t be fooled by the eyeshadow, black lippy and indierock stylings: Pale Waves are no more a goth band than they are a string quartet.
The Manchester based four-piece are unabashedly pop – and in these days of anything-goes-as-long-as-it’s-good then who cares? The guys, founded by singerguitarist Heather Baron-gracie and drummer Ciara Doran while at uni and later joined by guitarist Hugo Silvani and bassist Charlie Wood, have been polishing their sound since 2014.
The result is a shift from debut album My Mind Makes Noises which took its cue from 80s pop, with perhaps the subtlest hints of alternative rock, to a more 90s-influenced sound for their new offering. Think Avril Lavigne meets Taylor Swift with a bit of The Cranberries thrown-in for good measure. In fact, Heather cites Dolores O’riordan (above) as a major inspiration and you can hear similar little inflections in her voice throughout Who Am I? though, thankfully, rarely as pronounced as those for which the tragic Limerick star was famed.
And like Dolores, Heather is a strong woman who is keen to speak her mind. The album’s second single You Don’t Own Me, released this week, was a kind-of statement of intent. “It’s is a song for women about what it’s like to be a woman in this world. How society depicts, judges and criticises women on a daily basis,” she says. “This song is incredibly important to me and I wanted to represent my own experiences. I also wanted to say a f*** you to everyone that plays by these fake delusional rules that women and gender need to fit inside a specific box.”
Pale Waves were tipped to become huge from early on – especially after The 1975’s Matty Healy took them under his wing and on tour – and after the debut album went into the UK charts at No8 it seemed like they were firm on track. Coronavirus changed everything for everyone, of course, so the momentum slowed a bit. But despite the crazy situation, they were still able to complete Who Am I? albeit with Heather and Ciara in the US while the lads did their guitar parts back in Blighty.
Heather says she didn’t let any such separation seep into the tunes though. “For me, music and art is for people not to feel so alone and isolated,” she added. “I want to be that person my fans look up to and find comfort in.”
Who Am I? by Pale Waves is out today. They play Limelight 2, Belfast, on Saturday, February 19, 2022.
Gregory Porter reached for the stars after his mother, on her very deathbed, urged him, “Sing, baby sing.” The Grammy winner’s remarkable story of overcoming so many insurmountable challenges to find fame at a relatively late-ish age is truly out of this world.
So, it was nice to hear he was over the moon with how his inspiring tale was presented in our last interview conducted in summer 2020 for the Irish Mirror.
It included a far out snap of the affable musician dressed like an astronaut next to his seven-year-old son Demyan.
The American singer-songwriter looked like a fish out of water not being his usual debonair self in a three-piece suit.
Gregory – the perfect fit when the streaming music giant Deezer was looking for someone to front their “Black History Month” during February – had donned the spacesuit to promote the single Concorde that was written as an ode to space exploration.
He even performed it at an official NASA ceremony to mark the launch of a rover to search for signs of life on Mars.
Seeing as he’s one of the hottest acts on the planet these days, I’d reckoned there was more chance of NASA discovering ET than Gregory Porter remembering an interview done many moons ago with an Irish journalist!
So, I took the wee liberty of emailing him a PDF of the Irish Mirror’s article before our latest Zoom chat.
“It was beautiful. I saw a picture of my son looking quite proud, standing next to me,” he said.
It was funny how Gregory still managed to squeeze his trademark Kangol hat on under that spacesuit’s helmet.
“This has become my style. When I’m at home, no, I don’t wear a hat – but sometimes I do,” he said, laughing.
There’s a bunch of theories as to why Gregory first started wearing a Kangol back in 2005. But he’s happy to clear it up once and for all.
“There was even an online rumour that I got shot! Or cut! A whole bunch of crazy stuff. But no, there was no accident – it was a skin condition,” he explained.
Sanguine about it all, Gregory is clearly comfortable in his own skin – or rather, cool hat.
“Yes, there was a time – and you can find pictures online – before I had scars. Do I wish I could go and show my dreadlocks sometimes? Yes, I do. But it’s not even a problem for me,” he said
“I don’t even know how something comes about – but it became part of my presentation to the world as the internationallyknown artist Gregory Porter. I’ve never sang without my black Kangol. It’s just part of me.” Gregory’s meteoric rise was all the more remarkable considering his tough upbringing and, worse still, the racism he had to endure.
The 49-year-old was one of eight children raised single-handedly by his mother who was a church minister.
Yes, Gregory was quite literally, like the Dusty Sprinfield song goes, the son of a preacher (wo)man.
As a child, Gregory once woke up to find a burning Kkk-style cross on his front lawn.
And this was not in the Deep South either – but the supposedly more tolerable LA.
Gregory remembers a horrible encounter with LA’S Finest on the very day he moved into that family home.
“My brother and I were little boys, maybe eight and nine years old. We were running on the side of my house,” he recalled.
“And a policeman was driving by – and he slammed on his brakes. He reversed really quick.”
The house might’ve been on the fashionable Christmas Tree Lane, but this cop wasn’t coming with any housewarming gift.
“He made us stand facing the street and give our house address. He made us prove that we lived there,” he recalled.
“The police officer saw our black faces and he said, ‘There’s a crime being committed!’
“Because there was no way that a black family could live in this house in an all-white neighbourhood in Bakersfield, California!
“Without question, he treated us like criminals. But in my mind: What was he thinking? That an entire family would go to rob a house? That two little children would be involved in robbing a house!”
Gregory added: “And then my uncle came out and confronted the police. And it turned into this big thing.
“And that happened many, many, many, many, many times.”
Gregory – easily one of the nicest guys you’ll come across – was subjected to an “enormous amount”
I try not to wear the burden of my blackness always because I have a lot of joy in my life as well.
of racism by cops.
“We focus on these cases that we know about, but there’s so much that nobody ever talked about,” he said.
“By the time I was a freshman in college I had been stopped and frisked, felony stops, about 18 times. I had so many guns pulled on me by the police.”
It all must leave emotional scars… “I’m not saying this just to be romantic, I think of Irish writers and the scars of their life – of food and security, and political violence, maybe struggles with the Church,” he said.
“You know, all of the things that came to be known about the characteristics of Irish art.
“But from that comes this extraordinary strength of spirit, and almost a revival and resurrection spirit – this is the African-american spirit as well.
“It gives you strength that you can draw from and it comes out in your art.
“I try not to wear the burden of my blackness always because I have a lot of joy in my life as well.
“I’m an optimistic person. I believe in my country. I’m even a patriotic person. I like that we have a set of rules and laws in which to try to achieve this idea of equality.
“We’re not there. We have not reached it. It’s still a journey that we’re trying to get to.
“But I like that there’s a focus and understanding that there is a problem. The world was moved when George Floyd lost his life.”
Sadly, Gregory has also experienced racism through his interracial marriage to his Russian wife Victoria (circled). The happy couple first met when he played at a Moscow club in 2004.
“That finds it way into our lives without question,” he said.
“Some people feel more comfortable communicating with her then they do with me when we’re together!
“I’ve developed devices that help me deal with all of this stuff. I have to keep my day positive. I don’t have time to get upset and be thrown off track by these small micro aggressions. These small micro racisms.”
He continued: “My wife wasn’t aware of it before and then when I had more time at home, coming off the road, and we would spend time together and go to restaurants, go to stores – she saw it herself.
“She’s like, ‘What is this?’ And I was like, ‘This is the American way!’”
We talked about how in 1950s London there were window signs that stated: “No Irish. No Blacks. No Dogs.” Sex Pistol star John Lydon aka Johnny
Rotten whose parents both hailed from Ireland – even used it as the title of his memoir.
“That’s extraordinary. Shocking. But you realise nothing is new. And unless that period is talked about, it can happen again. This kind of thing can be made OK again,” he said.
“People think, ‘Oh, you’re trying to make people feel bad…’ No! This idea that a fool is born every day exists in everything,” Gregory added.
“We have to teach people about the music from the past. We have to talk about the past as well in order to keep this renewed society, this modern society that we live in.”
Gregory was delighted with the opportunity to shine a light on this very theme in the shape of Deezer’s new “Black History Month”.
As part of its ongoing support for Black artists worldwide, Deezer has put together a new collection of special live performances from Gregory himself, along with Fatoumata Diawara, Rhiannon Giddens, and Kalash Criminel.
In addition, there’s new curated playlists by John Legend, Megan Thee Stallion and Mr Eazi.
In the exclusive Deezer Sessions, each artist performs a live cover version of an iconic song from their favourite Black artist, as well as an acoustic cover of one of their own tracks.
Gregory kicks off the series with a beautiful cover of Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come and also treats fans to a new rendition of his own tune When Love Was King. “Sam Cooke was a trailblazer – starting his own record company, being fearless about some of the music he would record,” Gregory said.
“A Change Is Gonna Come is as strong and as provocative as Strange Fruit. It tells the story of pain but it’s optimistic in the end.
“If I write a song like No Love Dying, or Painted On Canvass, that’s about being lifted up out of a history of discrimination – then it comes from a song like Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come. Without question.”
Gregory thinks of his own music as being time capsules for his son, who appeared at age only three in his music pop video for Don’t Loose Your Steam and even got to sing the final notes of a song on the All Rise album. He wants Demyan to be able to turn to his music whenever he wonders, “What did dad think?” – whether it’s about love, “other people, fairness and equality”.
“I feel like I’m trying to say something to my son on every record since he was born,” he said.
“When I’m dead and gone I want him to have something. I want him to listen to something that is me. I have nothing of my father and so I’m leaving him something.
“The record is for everybody, but it’s also for him. I want him to know who I am.
“So if my songs sound preachy sometimes or that they have a moral message – that’s the intention!” He paused to laugh before concluding: “If I don’t get to say it all to him, I want there to be some record of it.”
Gregory’s star will no doubt shine even brighter after his next couple of records. Watch this space….
Gregory Porter’s ‘Black History Month’ Originals Session is available exclusively on Deezer at www.deezer. com. Join now for 3 months free.