Album Review: 'Unwanted' - Pale Waves
I don’t know why I bother reviewing Pale Waves’ albums at this point.
Their latest, Unwanted, sounds almost the same as 2021’s Who Am I?, like a pastiche or even an outright facsimile of every pop punk and female rock record of the 2000s, only soaked in more distortion.
The title track fuses early-era Avril with the snarling riffs of Sum 41, which is super hilarious in hindsight. ‘Clean’ and ‘Act My Age’ Sound like tracks straight of Michelle Branch’s The Spirit Room. I know Gen Z has really come to love that album as of late, but why can’t they give her other record, 2003’s Hotel Paper, a spin as well? That has some pretty good tracks on it (‘Are You Happy Now?’ ‘Desperately’?)
Lavigne’s influence, of course, still looms heavy over the British band. It’s frightening just how much frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie sounds like the Canadian icon, right down the yodel-like wailing and vocal cracks, like she followed a step-by-step tutorial on YouTube.
Pale Waves have also gone through a Paramorification of sorts, building tracks like ‘Lies’ and ‘Jealousy’ around hi-energy power pop riffs, strong, raspy vocals and scream-along choruses.
But Riot! this is not. Baron-Gracie's songwriting is still as generic as ever, relying on the same cliched platitudes and teenage angst despite nearing 30. There are only so many times and in so many ways that the frontwoman can tell us that someone she thought she loved sucks/is mean/is a narcissist/that she can’t live without them.
‘Jealousy,’ meanwhile, sort of clashes with her well-established feminist ethos. While tracks like ‘You Don’t Own Me’ and ‘Tomorrow’ from Who Am I? promoted empowerment and sexual freedom, this number comes off rather pathetic and needy as Baron-Gracie declares: ‘I don't ever wanna know/Who you've been with before/Burn all your old photos/They don't exist anymore,’ the kind of words that would probably get a less popular (or male) artist relentlessly mocked for being a yandere.
Later, she’s hitting rock bottom, standing in the rain and being the joke of the party. And that’s all on the one track! If Baron-Gracie mentions something about hating her hometown, then she’ll truly hit the emo jackpot. One-word titles like ‘Lies,’ ‘Alone,’ ‘Numb,’ ‘Unwanted’ and ‘Jealousy’ are meant to feel dark and edgy, but end up evoking the feel of bad teenage poetry in an old and tattered Hot Topic diary. Even ‘The Hard Way,’ a tender acoustic ode to an anonymous girl’s suicide, feels rather superficial and vague, lacking the emotional punch to truly make its anti-bullying statement work.
That’s not to say the songs are bad, per se – they're ably produced, with occasionally catchy hooks. ‘You’re So Vain’ (not a cover) is a particular standout. The band couldn’t quite decide whether to rip off Avril’s ‘Girlfriend’ or ‘My Happy Ending,’ so they went with both, yet there’s something about the sassy, sugary, nah-nah-nah-like taunting that’s hard to resist. It might be a rip off, but it’s a good one, I guess. And yet, Unwanted is just such a dull and repetitive record, it feels almost impossible to review. What’s the point??
To think Pale Waves had the gall, the guile, the gumption, the sheer audacity to proclaim in a recent interview with Kerrang!: ‘If you try to be someone else, you’re just going to fuck up.’
With all due respect, piss off. You guys listened to Avril’s Let Go once, and now you wanna wear her goddamn skin. Even Olivia Rodrigo isn’t this shameless, and she had to give Hayley Williams a writing credit on ‘good 4 u.’
That album name was just asking for trouble...
- Bianca B.
0 notes
Hey! could you help me find a female fc with a gothic vibe (wears a lot of black) age 20-30 thank you so much
i can certainly try ! the first person i thought of was lyrica okano, but i’d also rec having a look at angela giarratana, anna lambe, asami zdrenka, barbie ferreria, brianne tju, charlotte ritchie, eleanor barnes, emma blackery, emma dumont, emma mackey, emer kenny, evelyn hoskins, kaya scodelario, kat dennings, lily sullivan, lindsay pearce, safiya nygaard, zoe kravitz, and if you vibe w/ using resources of fc’s from 10+ years ago, emilie de ravin could be a good shout using her flashback resources from lost, or winona ryder in... basically anything she was in in the 90s. for actual gothic gals with resources, there’s 70+ gif icons of heather baron-gracie available in the source link !
14 notes
·
View notes