Featured image: Niall Lea

Ahead of Manchester’s Neighbourhood Festival 2024 this weekend, aAh! Magazine’s Gracie Hall catches up with Pale Waves’ drummer and producer, Ciara Doran, to chat about their new album, Smitten, the impending headline set at Neighbourhood, and misogyny in the music industry.

You performed Neighbourhood Festival at its first iteration in 2016. How does it feel to be coming back and headlining it this year?

Kind of surreal really! Headlining a festival in our own city is kind of amazing. I can’t really believe it, but I’m buzzing for it.

It should be a good one. Are there any other artists on the line up that you’re excited about or you think other people should be excited about?

Let’s see… Balancing Act, Daydreamers. Cliffords are really cool! They’re a band I recently found out about, and I managed to hang out with the singer. Oh, and Pixey, she’s really cool.

There’s a lot of iconic venues that are part of Neighborhood Festival – have you got a particular favourite?

Deaf Institute, it’s wicked. I love it there. That’s a really special one to us because that was our first proper headline show. The Ritz was also a really crazy place to play for us because that was the first place me and Heather went to a show. We went to watch Daughter there in our first year of uni, so playing there was kind of surreal as well. 

You’ve got four singles from the new album [Smitten] out and you’ve been performing ‘Perfume’ live, how have you found the fan reception to the singles so far?

Yes, really good actually. People seem to have been singing the chorus of ‘Perfume’ already so that’s a good sign.

Are there any songs you’re particularly excited about performing live that have not been released yet?

‘Last Train Home’ and ‘Kiss Me Again”. Also, ‘Not A Love Song.’

The album Smitten is very much centered around queer relationships and that representation seems very important to both you and Heather. How does it feel, performing songs like that on stage and stuff and continuing this on into your career? 

It feels really good. I feel like all our songs are queer, basically since the start really. It’s important for us to be spreading that message and so now it’s just natural to us and organic.

You have been producing and writing queer songs since the start, but there’s been a massive rise in like queer artists, especially this past year, like Chapell Roan, Renee Rapp and Ethel Cain. Do you find yourselves in good company with these artists? 

Yes, I especially love Ethel [Cain]. I think she’s one in a million to be honest. Her whole thing is insane – her lyrics, her production, everything. I think she’s one of the best artists of this decade really.

I know that you take a lot more of the production side of the band. How has it been working on Smitten as an album? 

I didn’t do as much [production] on this one. Hugo [Silvani] did a little bit on it and a guy called Simon Oscroft. The first album was more my production, but it’s been cool to work on [Smitten]. It sounds a lot more like original Pale Waves.

Pale Waves came to be because of BIMM Music Institute in Manchester – how was it navigating the Manchester music scene in the early days?

That’s a long time ago now, but it’s where I met Heather and then we met Hugo. It was cool, we played literally every bar in Manchester. We played the Castle Hotel a lot, and mine and Heather’s first ever show was a place called Retro Bar. Night & Day, we used to play there and also had a practice room downstairs. So yeah, it’s pretty ingrained into us and going back to play this show is going to be mint. 

I’ve seen you guys play twice this year, at Kendall Calling and at Slam Dunk, and the crowds you pull creates something very special. Are you excited for the UK tour you’ve got coming up?

Yeah, I can’t wait. It’s my favourite thing to do – do a headline tour. I’m very excited. 

Can you tell us about getting involved with the Babes Behind the Beat with Bess Bowen? It’s really cool that they spotlight women in the music industry.

Yeah, it was really cool to do. It’s quite nerve-wracking, I’d never really done an interview on my own but to be honest, I’d like to do more of that and talk about these subjects because it’s important to me. It’s still a very male dominated industry, especially behind the scenes. To be taken seriously as a producer when you’re not a man is still difficult, because people still have that underlying lack of trust in your ability or taste. You feel that because you can literally see it’s different for other people in the room who aren’t dealing with it. It’s important to me to be able to talk about that because it’s still a problem.

As a young, female, queer creative in like the scene, while it is still getting better, sometimes it can be quite the uphill battle getting yourself into places that a lot of men feel very comfortable slotting themselves into.

Absolutely. Men are so easily able to just say their opinions no matter what, even if it’s not asked for. Doing sessions, it’s interesting to see the difference in how I operate in terms of working with people, to how others might. I think art is very fragile and you’ve got to delicately pull it out of people instead of like being a dictator of the room. So that’s kind of what I want to bring to music in what’s still a very male dominated world.

One thing that lots of artists like you and Heather help with, especially people like me, is finding that confidence. Especially being Northern and not London-based creatives, seeing that representation in you is invaluable to others.

Thank you, that means a lot. It’ll only get better with time but for now, it can still feel like it’s not moved on very much. Especially when it’s not in front of cameras or anything and it’s just in a room, there’s still the element of misogyny going on. It’s ridiculous really, but we’ve got to be there to move it on from that bullshit way of thinking. 

Before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to mention? 

Just that being asked to headline Neighbourhood Festival is an incredible moment for us. To be a band that no-one knew with the stress of putting on a show there [in 2016], no crew and setting up our own things in front of people, to now – we’re not taking it lightly. It’s been quite the journey, and we don’t take it for granted, that’s for sure.