My Mind Makes Noises

Pale Waves formed in 2014 when the drummer Ciara Doran met the vocalist and guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie while the two were attending BIMM Manchester.[13][14] The two began collaborating on musical projects and eventually dubbed themselves "Pale Waves" – a reference to a painting that Baron-Gracie's grandmother had made of a ship at sea.[15] Doran and Baron-Gracie eventually enlisted second guitarist Hugo Silvani and bassist Charlie Wood,[16] and in 2015, the group recorded demos for the songs "The Tide" and "Heavenly" with production team Sugar House.[17][18][19][20] The band soon caught the attention of the independent record label Dirty Hit, to which the group signed in 2017,[16] and on 20 February 2018, Pale Waves released their debut EP, All the Things I Never Said.[21]

The first songs recorded for the album were "There's a Honey" and "Television Romance", both of which were produced by Matthew Healy and George Daniel of the pop rock band The 1975. Pale Waves came to Healy's attention after Jamie Oborne (the manager for both the 1975 and Pale Waves) played him the demo tracks of the aforementioned songs.[22][23] Healy was struck by the songwriting – "There’s a naivety and a purity to them and an honesty to them that kind of comes through in their music,” he explained in an NME interview – and he subsequently reached out to the band, inquiring if they were interested in his producing their songs.[24] The band agreed to Healy's request and recorded the songs with him and Daniel in 2017. While talking to the University of Exeter's Exeposé, Baron-Gracie explained that she and the band were delighted to work with Healy and Daniel: "It’s been awesome, they’re amazing producers. We felt really special that they wanted to spend their time on our tracks considering how busy they are".[25]

Matthew Healy of the 1975 co-produced Pale Waves's singles "There's a Honey" and "Television Romance".

On 4 January 2018, Heather Baron-Gracie announced via Twitter that the band had started recording working on their debut album in the studio.[26] Discussing the recording process with Dork magazine, Baron-Gracie admitted: “We got to the studio, and I had a mini breakdown because I didn’t think we had enough songs that were good enough. Pressure really helped me. I needed the pressure. ... At times [recording] was really hard. Not just hard on me, but I could see it taking its effect on Ciara [Doran]. We all heavily depend on [them]. ... I was feeling stressed, and I could see it in [their] eyes as well”.[27] On 13 June 2018, Baron-Gracie confirmed via Twitter that recording had finished.[28] Excepting "Television Romance" and "There's a Honey", the album was produced by Jonathan Gilmore, a music technician who had previously worked with the 1975 on their eponymous album (2013), I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016), and A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018).[29] The versions of "There's a Honey" and "Television Romance" that appear on My Mind Makes Noises were slightly remixed by Gilmore and Doran, and Doran provided additional production for the entire album.[27][30]

Sonically, the music on My Mind Makes Noises is informed by pop music from the 1980s. When asked by Music Feeds magazine why the band gravitated toward the sound of this decade, Baron-Gracie explained, "Me and [Ciara] grew up with our parents playing a lot of music from the eighties, so it’s sort of engraved into us from such an early stage in our lives that I guess we always gravitate towards that era. I loved twinkly synths and the jangly chorus guitars".[31] 1980s musicians and bands whom the band members have cited in particular as influences include The Blue Nile, Madonna, Prince, Cocteau Twins, and The Cure.[16][32][33] Some music critics have noted the sonic influence of the 1975 on the album,[34][35] although Baron-Gracie has pushed back on blanket comparisons between her band and the 1975, telling Nylon magazine: "I guess people just hear poppy guitars these days and think, 'The 1975,' because they're the most relevant band at the moment, and they're so big people are automatically inclined to compare".[36]

Speaking to the BBC on 8 January 2018 about the album, Heather Baron-Gracie explained that while most of the music the band had released up until that point was about romance, many of the songs from My Mind Makes Noises were more introspective: "The songs we have out now are very influenced by romance. The album is me talking about a lot of my darker issues. I talk about a lot of things that go on in my mind rather than in my heart ... I talk about a lot of my insecurities, which I think a lot of people will relate to and will find really comforting. There's a lot of content which I think will strike a chord with people, who will think it's really honest".[23] In a subsequent interview with Music Week on 15 January 2018, Baron-Gracie further described the album as more sombre and personal: "A lot of people have only heard our pop songs, so I can't wait to give them the other side of Pale Waves, which is super dark and vulnerable".[37]

The album-opener, "Eighteen", was written while the band was touring. Baron-Gracie had "had [the] first verse written for ages",[39] and Doran wrote music around Baron-Gracie’s lyrics. Doran's contributions were inspired by their affective response to Greg Mottola’s film Adventureland (2009), and in a 2018 interview with Ones to Watch, Doran noted that "vibes from films can really give you inspiration for sound".[39] Because several people who had heard the song felt like it would be "big", the band decided to have it open the record.[39] The album's second track, "There's a Honey", was released on 20 February 2017 as the band's first single after signing to Dirty Hit. According to Baron-Gracie, the song "is about a failed relationship, the sense of desperation, contrasting feelings and insecurities".[40] When recording the track, the band aimed for something "dreamy and dark", like "something you could hear off a movie track"; Baron-Gracie later defined the sound as "a bit of shoegaze but pop at the same time".[38] A 12-string Vox Phantom guitar owned by Matty Healy was used when recording the song's main riff; Healy later gifted this guitar to Baron-Gracie as a birthday present.[41][42] "Noises" discusses mental health, focusing on struggles with body image and self-esteem.[23][27] "['Noises' is] such an important song to me", Baron-Gracie told Dork magazine. “I wrote it when I was going through a difficult time. I was struggling with how I looked and how my body was".[27] Baron-Gracie also expressed her hope that the song might have a positive influence on the band's younger fans: "A lot of our fans are young, they’re growing up, and they’re figuring out who they want to be. It was important for me to write a song on self-esteem and mental health issues because ... they need someone else to say, 'You know what? It's okay 'cos I'm feeling the same'".[27] Doran revealed in a BBC interview that they had had the first line of the song (i.e., "My mind makes noises", from which the album derives its name) tattooed on their arm: "It's my favourite lyric," Doran explained. "That's the most personal song [Baron-Gracie]'s ever written. I love that song. That's all about Heather's world".[23]

The songs on My Mind Makes Noises were written by Heather Baron-Gracie (centre), and Ciara Doran (right).

While discussing the songs "Came in Close" and Loveless Girl" with Ones to Watch, Baron-Gracie emphasized that they were both "really influenced by Ciara".[39] Doran was inspired to "dancey" vibe of "Came in Close" to Aretha Franklin's single "Jump to It", which Doran was listening to while working on the song's bassline.[39] "Loveless Girl" was based on Baron-Gracie's experiences as an aloof high school student,[43] with particular inspiration coming from a time she was chastised by an admirer after rejecting their advances: "That person ... wanted me to be in a relationship with them, and then when I explained to them that I didn't feel that certain type of way towards them ... [they] said I was cold and loveless and mean. But it was just because I was rejecting them".[44] "Drive" was inspired by the synth-pop sound of the Naked and Famous, and Baron-Gracie considers it to be a sort of follow-up to "Noises", telling Ones to Watch that if "'Noises' was when I was 16, ... 'Drive' is where I am now at 23".[39] Baron-Gracie later told Coup de Main magazine that the song was about self-discovery and mental growth: "Sometimes I get really sad about stupid things, and I'm like, 'God, I'm 23, why [am] I still feeling liks this?' Or why am I still doing silly immature shit?"[44] "When Did I Lose it All?" is about "having somebody who's 'the one,' and you know that they're right for you but you just don't work in that moment".[39] "She" is an "all emo" lament that details a once-passionate relationship collapsing; musically, it was one of the first tracks that Doran composed almost entirely by themself.[39]

"One More Time" was consciously written by the band to be one of the album's "pop bangers". Described by Doran as "straightforward" and "pop", the track was crafted to "sound really good with Heather on guitar".[39] Doran composed the track's musical structure, and Baron-Gracie wrote the song's chorus immediately after hearing what Doran had developed: "Usually we're perfectionists", Baron-Gracie told Ones to Watch, "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.'"[39] "Television Romances" was written by the band in 2016, during a period of self-doubt, as Baron-Gracie explained to NME: "We got off that tour, and we’re like, 'Right, we can’t write.' We were so sad. … [But] then we came out with one of our best songs".[45] Lyrically, the song was inspired by Baron-Gracie’s experience with an unwanted admirer, as she told Billboard magazine: “[The song is] about a night we had … [And] somebody was just constantly coming onto me, and I was like, 'No, please stop! Because one, I don’t want this, and two, I’m not really into you.' And they just wouldn’t stop and I was like, 'Is it not obvious that I don’t like you back?'"[46] In a discussion with Sarah Kidd of Ambient Light, Baron-Gracie noted that some listeners have incorrectly taken "Television Romance" to be a love song, even though it is really "a rejection song ... It’s looking at romance in a negative manner".[47] Musically, many critics have compared the song to the music of the 1975.[34]

"Red" – a song that Ones to Watch likened to the work of both Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen – had originally been envisioned by Baron-Gracie as an acoustic track, but when she showed the song to Doran, the latter insisted that this musical approach "wasn't right".[39] The two reworked the song, adding in a "club track" chorus.[39] "Kiss" was another older composition, with its origins dating back to when Baron-Gracie was a student at BIMM Manchester. In one class, Baron-Gracie had been tasked with "writ[ing] a soundtrack to a film", and so she spliced scenes from John Hughes's The Breakfast Club (1985) down into a trailer-length video and scored it. Doran and Baron-Gracie later took the score and fleshed it out into what evolved into "Kiss". In a conversation with Clash magazine, Baron-Gracie described "Kiss" as "a naive song" because its lyrics were written when she was "try[ing to] get into the mindset of being a songwriter for a band, rather than a solo artist".[48] Musically, "Kiss" has been compared to the work of The Cure and Robert Smith.[49][50][51][52] The album's penultimate track, "Black" was another song that had been written years before the album's release. The track (originally called "You Don't Love us Anymore")[44] went through several iterations, which led Baron-Gracie to call it "the most problematic song" that the band had ever written.[39] Musically, "Black" fuses "really frantic and really rock" verses with a more "relaxed R&B" chorus.[39] My Mind Makes Noises closes with "Karl (I Wonder What It's Like to Die)", a sparsely-arranged acoustic song in which Baron-Gracie mourns the loss of her grandfather, who died when she was 14. The track – described by DIY magazine as being "filled with an almost uncomfortable level of sadness and pain"[43] – was written after Doran encouraged Baron-Gracie to channel her grief through music.[24] Due to its emotional resonance, Baron-Gracie has cited "Karl" as her favourite song on the album.[53]