Can you feel pride for a band you don’t know personally for releasing their best music yet? This is exactly how I’ve felt about Heather, Ciara, Hugo and Charlie of Pale Waves, a Manchester-based band that I’ve always had a lot of love for, but always knew they had a genuinely classic album in their future. Smitten isn’t just the best record yet from the band, it’s a turning point where the music finally sounds like a ‘Pale Waves song’ before any other lazy comparison a writer like me could make.
From opener ‘Glasgow’ right through to the closing moments of ‘Slow’, this is an album brimming with confidence, self-assurance and honesty. Each song as catchy as the last, this is Indie pop at its most accessible and all the better for it. Where we’ve previously heard lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie really belting out punk-pop hooks, instead we have her leading this album with a more delicate, almost country singer approach.
On songs like ‘Perfume’ and album standout ‘Thinking About You’ this gives it a poignant and effortless quality that makes the moments where she does push her vocals even more impactful. ‘And I know I’ve asked you before, do you think about me at all’ could be a simplistic and obvious lyric to pick out, but on ‘Thinking About You’ it absolutely soars as a hook Heather will be singing with fans for the rest of the band’s career.
There are 80s vibes all over Smitten, but musically the band have never sounded more current and forward-thinking. ‘Kiss Me Again’ has such a dynamic energy, while there’s a confidence as a band on songs like ‘Imagination’ that I haven’t heard from Pale Waves in their career yet. Yes, this is big, hooky pop music for the most part but there’s just something about the lack of ego and effortless delivery that makes it so engaging as an album.
‘Miss America’ is the closest we get on the album to the 00s pop punk sound of the band’s last album Unwanted, but even here the song doesn’t feel out of time, there’s a dreaminess that wasn’t there on either Unwanted or second album Who Am I?. I also feel that lyrically these songs rely less on tired cliches while still being pretty simply spoken than anything I’ve heard from Pale Waves before. Yes, there’s a generalisation to everything still, we don’t get very specific tales of love and loss, but there’s enough of a personality and emotional tone to hook me in.
I am proud of Pale Waves on this, I always feel like this when an artist I really like manages to really define their sound on a full length album. In the short time since release, I have listened to Smitten a LOT. Not the most insightful take I can give on a website full of very well spoken music writers, but for me it’s an album that’s getting better with every listen from one of the most likeable bands in the UK. That’s about all I can ask for.
Words by Sam Atkins
Picky Bastards 
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