A deep dive with Pale Waves’ Heather Baron-Gracie

Pale Waves burst onto the airwaves and our YouTube screens in 2017 with their breakout hit Television Romance, becoming one of the most talked about young bands of the year and ushering in a new era of indie-rock from a generation brought up on Avril Lavigne and Paramore. Now in 2023 the band have come into their own and cemented their sound and place amongst the UK’s greats with their third studio album, Unwanted, garnering mainstream appeal with an accomplished and gritty sound still firmly placed in alternative rock. ANTHONY JACKSON caught up with lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie to talk about Perth beaches, life on the road and the band’s songwriting processes ahead of their first-ever Perth show next Tuesday, March 21 at Magnet House.

Thanks for joining me today, and thanks for including a Perth date on this tour.

Thank you, we are very excited.

The last time the band was in Australia was 2018 and you played two shows in Sydney and Melbourne. How did it go? What did you think of Australian crowds?

I thought they were really fun. I remember the shows being really good. They are very enthusiastic and very loud, which I like. I like the buzzing atmosphere, you know where they just shout random shit at you? I love that. I like that interaction especially in smaller venues because you can have such a good experience. 

This will be your first time in Perth. Are you much of a beach person?

I love the ocean but I’d be terrified to get into the sea in Australia because aren’t there lots of Great Whites? I’d go in a swimming pool, I’d maybe go in up to my ankles, no knee caps, then I’d say that’s probably okay. But I think, honestly I’d be too terrified to swim there. But I love a good beach day, I’ll stay safely on the sand.

Now, this Australian tour is going to be some of your first live performances for the year, with your last shows in mid-December 2022. Did you have a good break?

Yeah, 100 percent, but we’re very eager to get back on tour and to play shows. We have so much fun playing shows and meeting everyone, especially when we are coming back to a place like Australia because we haven’t been there for a few years so it’s nice to go out and see everyone again.

Will you be bringing you custom VOX Phantom guitar on the tour?

Of course I will be! I don’t go anywhere without it, that is like my baby! It’s my precious child! I don’t think that I could ever get a new guitar that would have that kind of magic for me, because the guitar was built especially for me, it’s one of a kind. So it’s like my child baby that goes everywhere with me.

I’ve read that the twelve-string VOX was given to you by Matthew Healy from The 1975 and then you had another one custom made?

Yep, the 12 string, he gave me that, it’s actually hanging up right there behind me. It’s such a nice guitar, it sounds amazing but the headstock is just so heavy that it constantly goes like ‘wooop,’ so I’m having to always pull it up. It is like I need to put weights on the back of the straps somehow to even it out, that’s the only annoying thing about it. It sounds so good recorded, my six string VOX audibly sounds quite bad but it looks amazing, so I’ll take the aesthetic over the sound.

You have had a working history with the band The 1975, who are also coming to Australia in April, how did that relationship come about?

It came about because we have the same manager. They heard some of the demos and just immediately loved them and wanted to work on those songs with us. We’re big fans of theirs, we think they are great and they are just genuinely nice guys, so we had fun just working on songs together.

Congratulations on the new album Unwanted. It’s been out since last August now, how has the reaction been with your fans to the new music? 

Incredible! I feel like the third album is a lot more alternative than the music we’d done previously, so we were a bit worried that maybe it wouldn’t go down as well, or people would be like “go back to your old sound or whatever” but everyone seems to be liking it even more. I think because it has more energy about it so it’s more fun in a live environment and we feel that as well, we have the most fun playing that album live because everyone gets to let loose, and the guitars are turned up even louder. Yeah, so the response has been really great and we are really proud and feel like we did a great job with it.

What is your favourite song off the album?

Oh god, It’s like picking a favourite child. I’d say The Hard Way is probably my favourite song because I feel really proud of that and I feel the songwriting is really strong. The message behind it is a really important message for everyone to hear.

And then I would say Jealousy because I LOVE playing that live, it’s like my moment, as soon as that riff comes in I’m in a different world.

Is that written about your current relationship?

Jealousy? Yeah, that is written about my current relationship, I am the jealous type. And it works you know, I’m the jealous type but I got a great song out of it. I’m not the crazy-crazy jealous type though, just the right amount. I would be so pissed off if my partner was just not bothered if someone was hitting on me, I’d be like.. “Hello?!” You should care! I don’t get it when people are just too casual or laid back about that stuff. It would never be for me.

I don’t want to get too heavy into the COVID thing because I feel like we’ve passed that and we want to move on, but I do want to ask about the creation of the album because you made it during that period. How was songwriting and recording process?

I feel like I wrote the album with a very tight circle, it was only me and like four other people involved in the writing process, and that’s what I like, I don’t like to jump around from other writers to other writers or producers and what not. It felt really nice because we wrote a lot of the songs in the studio that we were recording the album in, so whilst we were writing the songs we were properly recording them. A lot of the vocal takes is of the first time I’ve ever sung that song and it captures a magic and a moment that you can’t recreate again. I had the best time recording this record because I feel like it was just a super relaxed environment and that’s what I feel like I needed because I can get easily stressed out if things aren’t going the way I think they should be going.

So when it comes to writing the songs, are you the one mostly steering the ship?

Yeah definitely. Luckily the rest of the band will back me up and offer their opinions and I am very keen to listen but I tend to have the vision and then they help me create it.

When you go to create a song, do you have a process? Do you start with lyrics or do you start with chords and melody?

Honestly, it varies, from each song, I wrote a song the other day I was driving along the highway and the chorus came into my head. I had to, dangerously, and I shouldn’t be doing this, but I had to record it on a voice memo on my phone so I was like driving and was just singing it. Then I had the full chorus there, and then I brought it to a friend that I like writing with and we created a full song from that. And then it can start from just a few chords or with Jealousy it started from just a guitar riff, the main riff in it, so I like to just work in whatever feels like the most organic way.