Credit: Jordan Curtis Hughes
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Pale Waves kick off 2021 with new single ‘Easy’, premiered tonight as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record, and the third track to be taken from the band’s forthcoming second album Who Am I? set for release on February 12 via Dirty Hit.
Pale Waves’ frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie describes ‘Easy’ as “a song about how love can change your whole entire perspective on life itself. It’s saying ‘being in love with you is so easy, you finally make sense in my life because nothing did before’.”
The video, directed by James Slater, is a gothic romantic brought to life. A Tim Burton-inspired wedding built around one of the main lines of the chorus, “you keep the lights on for me”. Baron-Gracie says “I wore a wedding dress throughout and we shot the video in an old abandoned church. I’m really inspired by the gothic medieval aesthetic and at the time I was thinking of the video I was watching a lot of Tim Burton films whose creativity really inspires me.”
‘Easy’ follows on from the band’s comeback single ‘Change’ which garnered huge support from Radio with it currently sitting on the Radio 1 B List, DSP’s and the likes of The Guardian who commented “Pale Waves are back with a banger!”. Following ‘Change’ was the release of ‘She’s My Religion’ – another deeply personal single for Heather, who wanted to represent a same sex relationship between two women in it’s true form without hiding behind the cliches of oversexualisation or playful experimentation. The video was directed by award winning filmmaker and photographer Jess Kohl and filmed in the UK countryside with Heather’s real life partner Kelsi Luck.
Who Am I? was recorded primarily in Los Angeles alongside producer Rich Costey (Muse, Foo Fighters, Sigur Rós), before the Coronavirus lockdown in 2020 forced the making of the album to go virtual, with Heather and drummer Ciara Doran remaining in LA and the rest of the band returning home to record their parts in their bedrooms.
The album acts as the Pale Waves manifesto – inspiring inclusivity, self-discovery, and the notion of being whoever the hell you want to be. On the making of the album, Heather says “for me, music and art is for people not to feel so alone and isolated. I want to be that person my fans look up to and find comfort in.”
Formed of frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie (she/her); drummer Ciara Doran (they/them); guitarist Hugo Silvani (he/him) and bassist Charlie Wood (he/him), Pale Waves released their debut album My Mind Makes Noises in September 2018, by which time they had already won the NME Under The Radar award, made the BBC Sound Of 2018 shortlist and toured with fellow Dirty Hit label mates The 1975. When the album charted at 8 on the UK album chart, Pale Waves were seen as more than a breakthrough act and instead one of the most important emerging indie-pop bands in Britain.
Who Am I? tracklisting:
1. Change
2. Fall To Pieces
3. She’s My Religion
4. Easy
5. Wish U Were Here
6. Tomorrow
7. You Don’t Own Me
8. I Just Needed You
9. Odd Ones Out
10. Run To
11. Who Am I?
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