ALBUM REVIEW: My Mind Makes Noises - Pale Waves

My Mind Makes Noises - Pale Waves

We're all aware of it.

My love of Dirty Hit Records.

I think this love stems from the fact that my favorite band, The 1975, was the first artist signed to Dirty Hit. No, I'm certain that's where it stems from.

Because I love Dirty Hit and so many of their artists (beebadoobee, Bonnie Kemplay, Wolf Alice), I wanted to give Pale Waves a chance. They were one of the only artists on the Dirty Hit roster that I had never heard before. I wanted to fall in love with whatever Pale Waves album I reviewed and continue my tendency of loving everything anyone's released on Dirty Hit ever.

I wanted to. So bad. And I really did try.

It just didn't turn out that way.

BACKGROUND

Like seemingly every other artist I review on this blog, Pale Waves hails from the United Kingdom. Started in Manchester in 2014 when lead singer and guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie met drummer Ciara Doran while attending university, the line-up originally had a different bassist and second guitarist before they were replaced by Charlie Wood and Hugo Silvani.

They signed to Dirty Hit and toured the U.S. with The 1975 in 2017, and released their debut EP, All the Things I Never Said, in February 2018. Their debut album, this one, My Mind Makes Noises, released in September of 2018.

After initially saying they would release another EP, Pale Waves backtracked and decided to focus on making their second album. The album, Who Am I?, was made during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the artists working remotely to finish it. It was released in February 2021. Their third album, Unwanted, quickly followed and was released in August 2022.

OVERALL SCORE: 6.89

Okay. Yeah. I know. This is the lowest score yet. But I have to be honest about what I like.

Sorry.

TRACKLIST RANKING

1. When Did I Lose It All

2. Karl

3. Loveless Girl

4. She

5. Came In Close

6. There's A Honey

7. Red

8. Television Romance

9. One More Time

10. Noises

11. Eighteen

12. Black

13. Drive

14. Kiss

THE GOOD

BOMBASTIC PRODUCTION

Pale Waves had a sound that was much more pop than I imagined. The unexpected synths, the surprising dubs, and the punk-rock guitars all work so well together. Especially on "She".

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't production like this.

LYRICS THAT MAKE ME WANT TO CALL A THERAPIST

I'm not kidding.

"Came In Close", "Loveless Girl", "When Did I Lost It All", and "Karl" hurt a little too good. The lyrics on these tracks are some of the most heartbreaking I've ever heard. The line "Is it really me that you want?" on "Came In Close" made me drop my jaw and pause the song. The lyrics on this album are just so freaking sad.

THE BAD

FORGETTABLE TRACKS

"Drive" and "Kiss" are pretty forgettable tracks. Honestly, I can't remember a single thing about them. There's nothing that really stands out on this album.

DEFINITELY A DEBUT ALBUM

I talked about it in my review of Cuts and Bruises by Inhaler. Bands spend so much time making their debut album. Because of the long amount of time they spend making the album, the sound of the band changes. The end result is a debut album that has tracks written by immature and unexperienced writers that don't match their current sound and musical influences from every genre under the sun. It's a hodgepodge of tracks that (sometimes) don't connect with each other.

I'm not holding it against Pale Waves. Every artist has to have a debut album. On this one, though, there's just no sense of identity. At all. Is Pale Waves an indie-pop band that gives out synths like candy? Are they a pop-punk group that blazes their own trail? We don't know. They don't know either.

The album starts incredibly pop. "Eighteen", "There's A Honey", and "Noises" are all undeniably pop music. As we get into tracks like "Drive", "When Did I Lose It All", and "She", that genre label fades away. It gets confusing. We end this album with more questions than answers about who Pale Waves is.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I wanted to love this album. I really did.

It just didn't land with me. And that's saying something, because I have a tendency to love debut albums (ex. Dayglow's debut album Fuzzybrain is better than his second and third albums Harmony House and People In Motion).

I don't know if it was the slow decay of the genre or if it was the very skippable tracks, but I couldn't get into this album.

Maybe I'll give the other Pale Waves albums a try. I'm crossing my fingers that I like those ones more than I liked this.