#that way i can show how she has really great fashion sense with banger outfits such as plain tshirt and plain tank top | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eternaleve · 4 years

Text

I’ve spent the course of COVID lockdown cycling through hyperfixations while also trying to engage in some much needed therapy (lolsob), and I’ve been essentially encouraging myself to try and do more things I can enjoy without feeling shame. Anyway, that’s a short way of saying I decided to blog about all the music videos of Depeche Mode for reasons of science.

The science is that my basic premise is that most of the videos are pretty bad in ways that I find to be pretty strange. Full disclosure is that I spent my teen years being a huge Cure fan and there’s an overlap there? Of songs with very niche high-concept ideas that don’t necessarily map onto a model of popular music but found mainstream success in the rise of new wave music in the wake of the collapse of first wave punk and amplified by the creation of music videos and music video TV. And I owned all the Cure music videos and played them on my iPod Nano because I was a very strange child. But to get back to my central thesis, many of The Cure’s videos are very stylised and fun and memorable in ways that are good. And yet, despite existing in the same sphere and having an overlap of fans, the music videos for Depeche Mode mostly stay bad until the end of the eighties, a fact I will prove by watching them all.

Can you tell that I am bored because i have lost my job and my mental health is making me fixate on strange shit currently because that is absolutely the case right now

Speak & Spell

Dreaming of Me (Feb 1981)

The single art is really lovely - the red/yellow contrast is very striking against the white, and I really love the design. Hey remember when people used to go out and buy singles and you would appreciate them and the work that went into them? I don’t think I’ve bought a physical single since I was about sixteen. I used to buy them from the Woolworths music department because it was cheap and all my friends worked there, so they had a pretty lenient attitude about what exactly constituted paying for things. Woolworths policy of only hiring teenagers is probably what destroyed their business.

Anyway, Dreaming of Me did not chart super well, getting to number 57 and having no official music video - or actually getting onto the album. It wasn’t included on Speak & Spell in the UK until the 2006 re-release. So, there was no music video for me to look at…

Apart from this video I found from local TV in 1981 to promote the song. It’s a maybe-music video. Because music videos had only been around for about six years and MTV didn’t exist until later in the same year, my guess is that Mute Records were pretty cautious about putting money into a medium that might cost more than they would get in publicity. That’s only a guess. I don’t have a crystal ball for forty years ago.

Anyway, here are some children recording music.

If i was 19 and someone offered me a recording contract I would have taken it without thinking (like i took on all those student loans without thinking through any consequences wompwomp) but now I am nearly thirty I watch this and think, ‘These children shouldn’t be outside unaccompanied’. The passage of time has made a fool of me.

They go bowling and play Space Invaders which, hey, still sounds like a great night out to me, but I’m guessing that because this is very clearly aimed at teenagers the TV producers didn’t want to encourage teen drinking by showing them performing a gig at a club night.

I call it high fashion. The all-grey really sells it.

This reminds me so much of a advice column in teen magazines - when they’d have problems set out in a little faux-comic strip of still photos? ‘My best friend stole and read my diary’ ‘My crush found out about how I feel and now he’s going out with my best friend’, that sort of thing. That is also a classic carpet pattern. I think my grandma’s living room had that carpet.

The video is very naive! It’s the sort of thing we would all see now on Youtube from bands just starting out and it is wild to me that this went out on TV. It’s very un-glossy and normal, the stuff that bands put out on YouTube now because of DIYness.

New Life (June 1981)

This is also a really great piece of single art. It’s very bold and striking - it would definitely be the standout record in a sea of other 7’’ released the same week. It also doesn’t particularly match the tone of the single but eh, it looks pretty cool. New Life did much better than Dreaming of Me and got up to number 11 in the UK singles chart. Still no official music video, but the charting meant that the band got onto Top of The Pops! ToTP was cancelled when I was a wee baby teen, because the BBC decided to stop caring about yoof viewership and promoting music was circling the drain everywhere as streaming hit, but it was the place to promote music so was definitely a sign that You Had Made It.

So, last video was silly and made by children, but now they’re wearing see-through mesh shirts, leather trousers, and leather hats with a design that I am a little bit dubious about. I grew up on the oi/punk scene and let me tell you about how many first wave punks wear iconography of bad regimes for faux edginess reasons because I met a LOT of them in my time.

Oh boy do i have thoughts about that hat. It also looks like a Leather Daddy hat which, well, let’s leave that thought to one side. Most ToTP performances were lipsynced. Playing things live would sound weird in the studio, be picked up strangely by the audio equipment and the cameras, so 99% of performances were mimed to the single. Now, some acts would deliberately play up to the pretence and refuse to act like they were doing anything that corresponded to the song - The Jam, The Communards, and The Cure are literally the first examples that come to mind who would just… not do anything close to pretending it was real.

This is not that. It is very earnest and awkward and serious, which sort of makes it very sweet.

Just Can’t Get Enough (September 1981)

Right, that is shibari, isn’t it? I’m not blind, am I? It’s a very striking image that 99.9% of people would not recognise other than being a striking black and white image.

I don’t think I can overstate how… innocent, in a way, this point of time was? As in the general level of knowledge about non-conventional stuff in the wider public at large. As in my mother, an almost teen at this point, saw George Michael walking with his boyfriend in central London and had no idea he was gay until he came out. It’s actually the widest cultural gulf I can think of between her teen years and my teen years because I was very aware of queer people from a young age.

Anyway, moving on, I feel like it bears repeating that this song fucking slaps. It’s the last single to be written by Vince Clarke and the last single until 2006 to be written by someone other than Martin Gore. This is one of those songs that just works on every level. Can you imagine coming up with this for the first album of your band? That blows my mind. It’s so overpoweringly good that it was probably for the best that it was saved for last - coming out the gate with a guaranteed fucking banger was been the nail in the coffin for a lot of other eighties synth/electronica bands. They scored a huge hit and then nothing after that managed to be as good or meet the hype. Depeche Mode had built up a far bit of radio play and interest before dropping this which turned out to be very good in the long run!

This got to number 8 on the UK charts and the first to get a music video! It is the only one with Vince Clarke. Full disclosure in that I had this song on my iPod through downloading the video to my computer (that’s how we got songs without using stuff that would give us viruses because i got a ton using bearshare for rare cure demos) and I remember watching the video, all of sixteen years old, and thinking, ‘Man, all these people look so grown up, compared to me, I can’t wait to be an adult!’.

Twelve years have changed my view, somewhat.

Look at this little baby man. Were you in one of my A Level classes - as in, ones that I have taught, not ones that I have been in.

Vince Clarke, however, has had a significant glow up in the six months and now looks like he is the bouncer in a leather bar. This is the One Adult in the room.

Ahh, I see it’s Open Mic Night at the local leather bar. You know what I was saying about how teens in the eighties tended to be significantly more naive about what we might call certain signifiers? Because what this outfit says to me, a queer woman in 2020, is susbstanitally different than to my mum and her friends watching this when it first came out. She would read this as ‘This is totally rebellious and cool!’ while I go ‘Someone just joined the university kink club and spent all their bursary’.

I don’t remember the member of Blazin’ Squad that wore a slave harness. (Now, there’s a reference that shows my age. A Blazin’ Squad reference in the year of Our Lord 2020. Hoooo boy.)

I read somewhere (that I can’t find now because, of course I can’t) that these are the band’s girlfriends and I always remembered that because it made me think, lol, same. One of my closest friends is the Head of London, so she’s in every band in London and if she’s not in yours yet give her time, and my partner was in a locally successful metal/hardcore band for about a decade and being connected with any sort of band means you will be helping out hugely behind the scene constantly. I have held lights, moved speakers, picked up instruments, been in music videos, and have bought tearaway trousers and glowsticks for gigs. You get called in to help all the time which is a lot of fun, so that fact always just stuck with me. It also makes sense financially because then you don’t have to hire any professional backing dancers, you can rely on people who will happily do it for free (while looking pretty rad while doing it!).

Anyway, the band look like those generic raiders that you run into when randomly walking across the map in a Fallout game.

I love awkward choreography in music videos. It feeds me.

Filming a night out provides A) Great footage and B) Can be done for limited overheads, leaving more money to be put into promotion.

I always like seeing this sort of footage in music videos. I tend to see a lot of it, given the DIY punk scene, and it always charms me. I am easy to please. And all those women have the most amazing eye makeup that makes me super jealous because it all looks so good.

That hat is on point. This looks like a still image for some sort of cyberpunk big band style swing revival that, sadly, lives only in my dreams.

It took me so goddamn long to screenshot this shot probably because i was also blasting dream nails whoops

Anyway those are my reactions to Speak & Spell’s one solitary music video with some other things thrown in and this took me way too long. I make myself laugh though, that’s the main thing. I will do A Broken Frame… at some point. I think I have a bunch of vinyl for A Broken Frame? My mum actually bought all the singles for that album and I stole most of her collection years ago. I will have to search and see what I can find.

#depeche mode #speak & spell #i make myself laugh #and that's the main thing

3 notes · View notes

harryseyebrows · 6 years

Note

give me your experience in full detail about harry’s show... i need to mentally prepare myself for msg

1. there is nothing that can prepare you for the moment he first comes on stage. its indescribable. we spend so much time on here reblogging pictures and videos and interacting with content about or surrounding harry, that you can sometimes lose touch with the actual human person who its all for and about. but when you see him, its just.... amazing. theres not a strong enough word for it. and to be in a room where everyone is feeling that way? the palpable excitement and joy?? you can feel it in your blood

2. i know this point has been exhausted by anyone and everyone, but he is truly meant to be a performer. we knew this from when he was in 1d but nothing will ever touch him being on his own. you can tell that having the band up there makes him feel more comfortable, and given how much he interacts with them and makes them a part of the show, you know that him doing his ~solo stuff~ is not about trying to hog the spotlight. he’s a self-proclaimed narcissist, but dont be fooled; harry styles is a ham but he’s not selfish or arrogant. he still needs his support group, he still needs to be able to shard a bond with the people he performs with so that he can be confident and comfortable, and try to afford them the same. he works the stage like its the only thing he’ll ever do, giving it 110% with the most genuine adoration for his audience that ive seen from anyone, ever. he doesnt just wave blindly or make grand sweeping gestures. he looks at people, really looks at people, and tries to make a connection with individual people in a room full of thousands. im pretty sure if he had the time to do that with every single person, he would. he’s chatty and loves to joke, talking to people like theyre old friends, and just for a moment, he turns the dynamic between fan and celebrity on its head. he’s hardly ever still, moving and bopping along like he’s in his own little world, but that world also happens to house the audience and everyone else in the room. youre standing there, 1 of thousands of people, and you can feel like youre one-on-one with him. he’s just incredibly personable and good-natured. and then when he’s not being a professional nice young man, he’s exploding with energy and utilizing the entire stage and all of his limbs. ‘born for it’

3. he’s so funny. he’s goofy and charming and not afraid to be weird or awkward, and its just really admirable, to see him up there, clearly having a great time, laughing and smiling. i loved seeing the more ~private~ moments between him and the band, if anything can be considered private when performing. but he’s constantly grinning at them and making faces, sharing silent jokes or saying things in passing that we cant hear. and of course, you never quite know whats gonna come out of his mouth next when he spots someone or something that earns his attention from the audience. he pokes fun at people but he also pokes fun at himself. it’s just nice. comfortable, even, when he talks to people from the crowd. if youre in the back and out of range for what he can see, and he can make you feel like the only two people there, i cant even begin to imagine what it must be like when he has his laser beam focus on you, directly.

4. his voice is incredible. all of the little runs and ad-libs that he does are great. i remember reading a quote from a while ago, when he was still in 1d, and someone had said that harry has a great ear and that harmonies and other such things come really easy to him. and i always think about that when i hear him sing live, whether in concert or in a video. the tone quality of his voice is so beautiful, even when its being amplified to crazy decibels. you can tell he puts his whole heart and soul into every song he sings, whether its a slow one like mmith or the absolute banger that is kiwi. and its so fun to hear his renditions of old 1d songs -- the arrangements are so good and its so nice to hear those songs with just his voice. sott is still just That Song™ and hearing it live is something that stays with you forever.

5. THE OUTFIT. when the screen went up, i was so excited to simply see him that i wasnt even thinking about ‘oh what is he wearing’ until about 5 minutes in when i realized that i was no other than harris reed. harry has always marched to the beat of his own drum, and we’ve poked fun at his fashion sense for years, from the toe-revealing brown boots, to the double plaid button downs. and it wasnt really until the white gucci floral suit that, in my opinion, he started to really come out of his fashion shell in a big, loud, in your face way. its been so interesting to watch him experiment over the years with different trends, different styles, different vibes, etc. but now he’s still just as adventurous, if not MORE, but in a really refined and arguably more cohesive way. because while all of his outfits are different and wild, the unpredictability and diversity make up a category all on their own; they common thread among them is that they’re all so unique. and while we might not like every single look or every single suit, no one can deny that he’s going out there and putting his own stamp on the men’s fashion world. look at the number of little boys who adore him and put on printed suits to be like him. what he’s doing matters. and he looks so comfortable and so in his element when he’s on stage, wearing whatever flowy or glitter ensemble thats on the docket for that evening, prancing around and looking like he doesnt have in care in the world that his trousers are flared and he has a giant silky bow around his neck. i love that he appreciates new and adventurous designs, and it really pays tribute to his character that he supports different designers, like harris reed, whos still in school and is getting the recognition he deserves, 100% on his own merit but also because harry helped boost his platform. harry is doing his own thing, doing the whole glitz and glamour performance thing, but none of it feels cheap or over the top. its just right and really reflects his personality and style. go on with ur bad self, harry.

6. the butt. what can i say? its now an element of the show. she’s plump and proud. he worked hard to get her where she is and she deserves to be showed off. like two beautiful melons draped in fabric, whether it be a solid color, black, a print, or glitter. she does it all. and she does it well. AND shes au natural. no fat transfers here. just smooth, firm but also pleasantly supple, muscle and butt meat. surely youve heard of all you can eat buffets, but his butt takes it to a whole new level. that is a multi-course meal and then some. the glass of water you have when you wake up in the morning, parched and in need of something to help your dry mouth; breakfast, something healthy but still delicious... some thick maple and brown sugar oatmeal; lunch, a perfectly toasted grilled cheese with tomato soup; dinner, some top sirloin steak because you need some MEAT, accompanied by potatoes and another less starchy vegetable, perhaps a green bean?; dessert, cake of course. and all the snack in between. delicious.

#liz writes a concert review #someone publish this in a paper or something #my show part 1 #Anonymous

134 notes · View notes

onestowatch · 6 years

Text

Q&A: Pale Waves Guides Us Through ‘My Mind Makes Noises’ Debut Album, Track by Track

Photo: Brian Griffin Pale Waves is a bit of a contradiction, and that is just part of what makes them such a dynamic act. They look like the disciples of Gerard Way and Joy Division, but sound like the offspring of The Bangles and Carly Rae Jepsen. They’re huge fans of modern pop acts like Charli XCX, but they could have easily shared a stage with Madonna in the ‘80s. They have amassed over 25-million Spotify streams since the release of their debut single, “There’s a Honey,” in Feb. 2017 and have played huge milestone venues like Madison Square Garden. Yet, they have just released their debut full-length album, My Mind Makes Noises.

Their meteoric rise based on a collection of singles solidifies that Pale Waves has what it takes to become the next big thing, and their success comes down to one simple fact: no one else is doing what Pale Waves is right now—nor as well. Not only has Pale Waves championed the difficult task of successfully walking the line between pop and rock, but they have introduced a universe of tender emotion with their lyrics as they wear their hearts on their fishnet covered sleeves. Combining elements of different genres, decades, subcultures, and emotions, they craft dream-like pop that still has two feet firmly planted on the ground. With their dichotomous existence and evocative lyrics, Pale Waves’ success ushers in the return of female-fronted pop-rock in an era that’s sorely lacking thereof.

After a year and a half of cultivating their rapidly rising fame, today marks the release of My Mind Makes Noises. The album is filled with enough diverse pop bangers and guitar-driven melodies to throw the Manchester-based outfit further into the spotlight, while drawing new listeners into their emotionally cinematic world. Frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie’s lyrics entangle you in their strikingly raw nature as she presents her most vulnerable self, while the production of drummer Ciara Doran creates lush gardens of whirling melodies and skies of twinkling synth that makes this album one to be kept on repeat, or risk leaving their beautifully melancholic world.

Despite the fervor surrounding My Mind Makes Noises, as well as their accompanying headlining tour, Heather and Ciara are surprisingly calm as they make themselves comfortable on the sofa of the small lounge we’ve met in. “It’s kind of like a timeline of our band from basically three-and-a-half years ago to present day,” Heather explained as we begin talking about the debut album. “We started the band because I had all these songs on my acoustic and when I met Ciara I was like, ‘Can you put drums to my songs?’ We did performances where she was just drumming, and then we decided to just become a band.”

Though they were the heart and soul of the band, when the duo met Hugo Silvani and Charlie Wood a year later, Pale Waves would finally begin to take shape as they began to plan for world domination—something that My Mind Makes Noises will undoubtedly help them achieve. “It feels pretty surreal. It feels like our whole journey’s been pretty fast and really exciting. A lot of people are really emotionally invested into our band at such an early stage, which is great because it means we’re really connecting with people. It’s just everything you could ask for and I want the album to be what people expected,” Heather stated.

In honor of the release of My Mind Makes Noises, we spoke about each of the 14 tracks on the album to hear the stories behind the music, and get a feel for what’s next for the band.

OTW: The opening track “Eighteen” is an absolute earworm that truly seems to channel what it feels like to fall in love. What can you tell us about its creation?

Ciara: “Eighteen” was written fully on tour.

Heather: Yeah, I wrote a lot of things to the instrumental and then in Denver I finally got it. Everyone we showed it to was like, “This is gonna be a big song” so, that’s why it’s first on the album.

Ciara: Lyrically, it’s really nice as well.

Heather: I had that first verse written for ages, and then Ciara wrote the music around it.

Ciara: That was actually a song that like I watched Adventureland and wrote to. Vibes from films can really give you inspiration for sound.

youtube

OTW: There are new recordings of your first two singles “There’s a Honey” and “Television Romance” making the cut. What was it about these songs that made them, as opposed to the others on your EP, essential for your debut record?

Heather: Well, “There’s a Honey” just had to be on the album because it was the first song that we put out there. It really made our fanbase, and it set something up for us. And then “Television Romance;” those two just sort of work together as a duo, and it felt weird to have one without the other.

Then when we were listening back to the demos it was pretty clear that we had to re-record them. We wanted it to sound like they were all recorded at the same time in the same studio and having the demos on the album just wouldn’t have worked.

OTW: “Noises” is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tracks as it tackles image insecurities and expectations. Did the track come from a purely confessional standpoint?

Heather: I thought about how the fans would react to it, but I knew I had to write it for me. I didn’t even think that much about how they’d relate to it until I got loads of messages thanking me. I feel it’s the most important track we’ve put out so far—we have quite a young fanbase and when you’re growing up that’s when you really think about what you wanna be and how you look. I’m just glad that I wasn’t too scared to write about that because it’s the song that’s now been there for so many people.

OTW: And what can you tell us about the video?

Heather: That video was a last minute thing but it was just so obvious that it needed to be a performance video from me. We spoke about having different Heathers that weren’t truly me: punk Heather is more exaggerated, the fashion look is stereotypically socially acceptable, and the doll look is a really sort of childish, vulnerable me. The one with the plastic sheet over my face, it’s basically like: what is beauty and who considers it? It plays on plastic surgery as well like, “Am I still beautiful under the plastic?” For the flashes of text between scenes, I wrote a paragraph of all my thoughts, and then we spoke about the ones that stood out the most. One, in particular, is “Does everyone feel this way?” I wanted to put that in because I wanted it to be like a sense of comfort for people who are really insecure as well, to know they’re not alone.

youtube

OTW: “Came In Close” and “Loveless Girl” are definitely two of the poppiest songs on the album. What inspired the tracks?

Heather: Those two tracks are really influenced by Ciara. I feel like we work so well together because I’m quite dark and she’s quite light so that’s how we get our sound. The lyrical content is quite meaningful and sad, but then Ciara sparkles it with pure pop elements, which you can really see on those tracks.

Ciara: “Came In Close” is really new. I was listening to Aretha Franklin’s “Jump To It,” and then I just sat down and wrote that bass line. It just turned out to be a really dancey song.

“Loveless Girl” originally sounded quite different, and I was so unhappy with it. I had to literally force myself to rework it cause it didn’t have the right vibe.

OTW: “Drive” is a larger than life track that smacks you with a guitar driven alt-rock sound and some truly dreamy synths. What can you tell us about the track?

Heather: We kept coming back and kept referencing The Naked And Famous, especially with the guitar sounds. I imagine when we play it live, it’s not going to take a lot for it to sound massive. It’s a really dramatic track as well; lyrically it’s like the sequel to “Noises.” Like “Noises” was when I was 16, and “Drive” is where I am now at 23. I do find writing songs about myself is hard, but I’m really glad we have tracks like “Drive.”

Ciara: You know that line “I drive fast so I can feel something?”

Heather: She would listen to that on repeat!

Ciara: Because I would cut it and put a delay on it and it made it like the best part of the album, I think.

Heather: Everyone we’ve played it to has been like, “Oh my god, this is something else!” We must be doing something right.

OTW: “When Did I Lose It All” is a breathtaking ballad that is just pure emotion. How did you approach writing the track?

Heather: Well, Ciara actually helped me write the chorus, and it’s about basically having somebody who’s “the one,” and you know that they’re right for you but you just don’t work in that moment. We were writing that chorus and Ciara came up with the “I want to marry you, but not now.”

Ciara: It’s the saddest thing.

Heather: I thought it was a really strong message. When I’ve shown the album to people, I’ve noticed that the older audience sway to that song.

Ciara: They find it really powerful; it’s a really powerful song. The guitar line was written on the tour bus. I feel like the next thing we do is going to be that vibe.

OTW: Similarly, “She” uses its power as a ballad to create a slow build into an absolutely epic guitar solo that has become a fan-favorite at your live shows. How did the track come to be?

Heather: “She” is quite an old song. I wrote, “My baby don’t touch me like they used to” first in my bedroom ages ago. It’s one of those songs that Ciara really just let me be all emo about. And the guitar solo—I love playing it live. A lot of the time I give all the lead riffs to Hugo but with this, I was like, “I can’t give you this, I’m sorry I have to play it.”

Ciara: I think it’s also the first song that I started doing a lot more of the music.

Heather: And now Ciara pretty much owns that whole area. I feel like the album has much more personality than the EP because when we did the EP that was all my really old synth songs except “The Tide.”

Photo: Danny North OTW: The following song “One More Time” seems to be the formers’ upbeat sequel that features an addictively timeless rock hook, making it one of the fullest sounding songs on the record. What shaped the creation of the track?

Heather: This was one of the moments where we were sitting down in the studio, but we needed more sort of “pop bangers.” We weren’t trying to write it for the radio but that’s just how we are.

Ciara: We just didn’t feel satisfied without it though, because we love pop so much. We wanted a song that was really just straightforward and would sound really good with Heather on guitar.

Heather: Really simple and dry all the way through, but you don’t really get a break in it. When Ciara showed me it musically for the first time ever, I just stood there and started singing the chorus.

Ciara: She sang that, and I was like “Fuck!”

Heather: Usually we’re perfectionists and we’re like, “If it’s the first thing it can’t be right,” but with this, we were like, “You know what? That’s it.” I feel like everyone goes through it when you break up with someone and you have that doubt in your mind. You like to know you could still have them—you want that power and that’s what this song’s about.

OTW: As we touched upon “Television Romance” earlier, let's talk influence. Considering how many of your tracks are cinematic enough to be suited for a John Hughes movie, and “Television” is a frequently used word lyrically—how much do TV and Film influence your songs?

Ciara: It influences us a lot, I mean that’s how we used to start off writing songs like “Kiss.”

Heather: Yeah like The Breakfast Club—I had to do this assignment for Uni and it was like, “Write a song to a film.” I caught a trailer of The Breakfast Club and that’s how “Kiss” became a song. So like I think it influences us a lot more than we think.

Ciara: Movies are like songs: like they all have a flow and a vibe and a story. So, like I feel like it can go hand-in-hand and just inspire you a lot. Especially when you can go, “I want to make a song that sounds like it belongs in that movie.”

OTW: “Red” is an incredibly modern pop-rock classic that seems to channel the likes of Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. How did the track come to be?

Heather: “Red” actually started as an acoustic track. I love playing acoustic, and it was how we started the band, so I wrote “Red” acoustically to be that song. When I showed it to Ciara she was like “Oh my god that’s far too good.”

Ciara: It wasn’t right, the tone wasn’t right, the lyrics weren’t enough for an acoustic song.

Heather: It’s completely different now—the chorus is like a club track

OTW: “Kiss” is akin to a “Friday I’m In Love” moment that’s effortlessly feel-good. What inspired the track, and on that note, what was it like playing the Robert Smith-curated Meltdown Festival this year?

Heather: That was amazing, so good. We didn’t get to meet him but knowing he was the one who gave us that slot and kind of likes our band is pretty amazing. I think Robert Smith is an amazing songwriter and just a fantastic icon. I’ll probably dress the same when I’m old. “Kiss” is so old. It started with The Breakfast Club and that riff. It’s such a naive song, and I wasn’t half as honest as I am now. It’s a fun song to play live—the main thing about it is that it goes down really good live, and it’s just really energetic.

youtube

OTW: “Black,” your most recent single, is your most diverse. It plays with R&B beats and intensely catchy guitar riffs. What shaped this track?

Heather: “Black” we’ve had for ages. I actually wrote the first verse ages ago, then I showed Ciara and it always just stuck with her, so she was like “Please, please make it into a song.”

Ciara: That was written on tour as well.

Heather: It’s been the most problematic song that we’ve ever wrote. It just had a lot of different versions.

Ciara: When I stupidly put an R&B chorus in there we were like “Ugh, how are we gonna do this now?”

Heather: Cause like, when you listen to it the verses are really frantic and really rock, and then the chorus is relaxed R&B.

Ciara: It’s a juxtaposition.

OTW: Closing out the record is “Karl”—a deeply personal acoustic track that is beautifully haunting. What was it like writing the track destined to end your debut record?

Heather: Well, after I wrote “Red” and needed a new acoustic song Ciara was like, “You need to write an acoustic track about something a lot more personal… Why don’t you write it about your granddad?” I’d been trying to write about him for ages because he’s such an important person in my life, so then I sat down in the studio and really, really focused on him while writing. It took me a day to write the song and the next day we went in and recorded, so it’s as real and raw as it gets. Ciara cried when I first sang it to her. Everyone has nearly cried when they first listen to the song.

Ciara: You’d be a monster if you didn’t cry to that song.

Heather: I think that’s a track that’s really going to impact some people. I wanted it to be like a conversation more than a song so a lot of the lyrics are like if I could talk to him now the things I would say. It’s definitely the song that I’ve listened to the most. It’s my most vulnerable self, and it’s really quite scary, this going out into the world, but it’s as real as it gets.

#interview #pale waves #my mind makes noises #pop #rock #alternative

2 notes · View notes