Unapologetic Wave-makers

Indie rockers talk sexuality, gender and self-discovery as album No.2 drops

Pale Waves crashed in at No. 3 in the UK charts with their second album Who Am I? on Friday. The indie-rock band’s style echoes the emo groups of the mid-Noughties. They formed around the nucleus of singer-guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie and drummer Ciara Doran in Manchester in 2014. They’re a product of that city’s British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM). After one bass player and another guitarist came and went Charlie Wood and Hugo Silvani respectively now fill those roles.

When I ask Heather how she and Ciara met and I refer to the drummer as “her” a correction is necessary.

‘Ciara identifies as non-binary,’ Heather tells me.

‘I do occasionally refer to Ciara as her by mistake, so I just wanted to make you aware for when you write this piece. Ciara understands, but wants people to try; that’s all that matters.’

The appropriate pronoun for someone who identifies as non-binary is not ‘he’ or ‘she’ but ‘they’ – and that is how Heather refers to Ciara throughout the interview.

‘Ciara was like me, they just wanted to be a musician and didn’t have some fallback option and in that respect, they were very like me,’ Heather says.

‘When I met Ciara, it was so refreshing to meet someone who just lived and breathed music but was prepared to put the work in to succeed.’

Heather, who in the past had identified as bisexual, has come out as lesbian and she and her girlfriend, American singer Kelsi

Luck, feature in the video for She’s My Religion. It’s the second single to be taken from Who Am I? which followed Pale Waves’ 2018 topten debut album My Mind Makes Noises.

Who Am I?, as its title suggests, finds Heather, as the band’s main lyricist, asking the big questions of herself and she is being as honest as possible with the answers.

‘We were on tour with (US electro-pop star) Halsey in Europe and one day I felt really down and physically exhausted. I locked myself in the bathroom of my hotel room and wrote the song which became Who Am I? on my acoustic guitar,’ she says. ‘We thought that title also summed up the album; it’s about wanting to grow and be the best person I can be.’

Reaction on social media to the videos for their songs reveal that Pale Waves and Heather in particular, are inspiring fierce devotion. One fan’s response on YouTube to the video for their 2017 single There’s A Honey reads: ‘I live every day where I’m barely holding on by a thread. Please just know that your music makes me not hate myself so much.’

You have to wonder how the 26year-old feels about being placed on a pedestal like that. Surely that puts undue pressure on her?

‘I do feel a sense of responsibility. I know that there are a lot of people who rely on Pale Waves to feel represented in the correct way,’ she says. ‘We are genuine as people. We don’t try to be something we’re not, and I think that is what seems to inspire people and persevere with life.’

Three very different rockers, who happen to be female, have inspired Heather musically and her attitude to the industry.

‘Although she is knocked a bit now, I liked Avril Lavigne for her songs and her look when I was younger. I was also a massive fan of The Cranberries and Dolores O’Riordan,’ she says.

‘We were in a studio working on our first album and I think it was Ciara who broke the news to me that Dolores had died. I felt personally devastated. People say they can hear their influence on what we do and that is such an incredible compliment.

‘An artist I really look up to and I know she has had her troubles is Courtney Love. She is such an unapologetic, powerful woman. I love how raw and real she is. We need more women like that.’

She contrasts the attitude Love encountered as a woman to men behaving in a similar way.

‘She is judged harshly because she is a woman. There are so many men out there who take loads of drugs and have sex all the time and it is just seen as being rock ’n’ roll whereas she just gets lambasted,’ says Heather. ‘Women who don’t take any sh*t are labelled a b*tch.’

Taking a leaf out of her female idols’ books, Heather says: ‘I know when someone isn’t delivering and I call them out. I’m not talking about my band; I’m talking about people in the industry. I’ve been labelled a b*tch because of it and I just say, “would you judge me like that if I was a man?” I have a clear, strong vision [for Pale Waves] and I won’t compromise for anyone.’

n Pale Waves – Who Am I? is out now. Pale Waves are to play The Limelight 2 in Belfast and Dublin’s The Academy, in February 2022.