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Following on from the success of their most recent album ‘Smitten’ – Manchester indie pop band, Pale Waves has just announced a headline Academy, Dublin show for Tuesday 28th October 2025.
Tickets from €29.00 (inc booking fee & venue facility fee) from Ticketmaster.ie on sale Thursday 26th June @ 10am. Bookings subject to 12.5% service charge per ticket (max €10.50).
“Feeling naked, dressed up head to toe / It’s been a while since I’ve been this vulnerable,” sings Heather Baron-Gracie – of the British alt-rock four-piece Pale Waves (Heather, Ciara Doran, Hugo Silvani, Charlie Wood) – on “Seeing Stars”, a gorgeously melodic slice of dream-pop about opening yourself up to love, heartbreak and self-discovery. In many ways, these are the themes that define their fourth album Smitten: vulnerability, love, sexuality, queerness, findin yourself, moving on, growing up. “I was reading a lot of sapphic poetry and queer films and just being ultra queer,” Heather says today. “I feel like that unlocked a lot of my past experiences with women that have been in my life, that I’ve been in relationships with and that I’ve been in love with.”
While Pale Waves’ first three albums focussed on the band’s immediate present, Smitten is a lot more preoccupied with past lives – some more recent than others. Written two years after Unwanted, and after the tour that followed, Heather found herself in a headspace where she could finally breathe, and reflect, like peeling through the pages of a long-forgotten teenage diary and being surprised by what she found. “I found myself writing about not just a certain time period, but my whole life, from years ago,” she says. “When I fall in love, I fall deep, and it’s interesting to me that you can feel so fascinated and smitten with someone and then they can become a total stranger. So I feel like Smitten really summarised perfectly what I felt for others at a certain point.”
So much of Smitten captures the excitement and euphoria of early queer relationships; some of which come alongside confusion and pain. On lead single “Perfume”, an infectious 1980s-leaning anthem reminiscent of bands like The Cure and The Cranberries, Heather sings about being totally enamoured with a person: “My mother says that when I want something I never let it go / Call me obsessed but I don’ t mind just as long as it’ s all mine.” Elsewhere, on the bright, guitar-laden track “Gravity”,she laments being yanked in different directions by a lover who can’t choose between their relationship or her religion: “She’s pulling me like gravity everywhere she goes / Am I in to deep, or out of my reach? Little does she know”. “Some of the songs reflect my current feelings, while others draw from my formative years of figuring out my own sexuality and the duality of bein with women who were also trying to navigate their own,” Heather adds.
On “Miss America”, a song about appreciating her current partner, Heather swivels the lens on her own past behaviour and how she’s grown. “She was patient with my selfish mind, I was crazy and I didn’t even realise,” she sings in syrupy tones over pummelling drums and thick, explosive riffs. “So take me dancing, take me out, paint my body with your mouth, take my tears and dry them out.” “I feel like I’ve strengthened as a person, mentally,” Heather reflects now.
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