By Desk Kapur, Rock At Night Manchester

Venue: Manchester Academy-Friday 27th September 2019

Pale Waves, playing Manchester Academy was going to be special, a hometown gig for this super-hyped Manchester quartet and the end of their very successful tour of the UK,

The Academy was sold out and was packed from very early doors, I missed Sports Team who were supporting Pale Waves on this run of shows, which was very disappointing as I have heard a lot of people talking about them lately.

All of a sudden the house music stops the crowd roar and on walk tonight’s heroes. and they launch into breakthrough track “Eighteen” and the crowd roar goes up another few decibels and they move straight into “Kiss” another big single for this young Manchester band.

Pale Waves look like they should be Goth especially lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie and drummer Ciara Doran who both look like they could have been members of Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Cure, but that’s where the Goth comparisons stop, in my opinion anyway, yes there is a very slight nod to The Cure in some tracks, but their sparkling synth driven pop gives more than a nod to 80’s artists such as Prince, Madonna and maybe a little of The Bangles thrown in for good measure then add to this lead singer Heather Baron-Gracie’s voice that is a sweet melting mixture of Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan and Taylor Swift, yes Taylor swift, or that’s how they sound to me, what does this mean?? Well it means that Pale waves serve up a shimming blend of emo pop and to be quite frank its very very good.

Tonight they play pretty much all the tracks of there debut album “My Mind Makes Noises” a coupe of tracks of the first EP and a track of their yet untitled forthcoming album, Pale Waves are young and are going to grow in to a band that has the potential to kick some very big goals here and on the other side of the pond, when you watch them play live you can see the confidence in them selves and there songs, and the song they played off the forthcoming LP shows a new maturity in there song writing, I will be very interested in hearing more of it.