Ahead of the release of their fourth studio album Smitten, I had the opportunity to speak to Pale Waves guitarist Hugo Silvani. We spoke about the inspirations of the new album, the writing process, and discussed Silvani’s passion for the sonic side of the musical world. We then delved into details of the upcoming 2024 Smitten tour.
Talk me through your writing process as a band. For this album did you find that it pieced together slowly song by song or did you begin with a specific theme?
I think for this album it was definitely different. For me anyway I was involved more on the writing and production side this time which was amazing for me personally. It started in a strange way because I was in London and Heather was in LA, but we knew that there was another album that needed to be made, and we had ideas floating around. Then, me and Heather just started doing stuff together, just sort of experimenting – some stuff came from that. Honestly, there were things that aren’t even on the record, like demos that the record was excited about. We just kept on doing more of that. I’d send Heather something and I’d go to sleep and wake up the next day and Heather might have sent something back. We did a lot of back and forth. Just less than half the songs on the album were done in that way.
A lot of the album was made over in LA with a producer called Simon Oscroft. So, Heather was writing songs out there as well. We ended up going to a proper studio to re-record everything and get the band in as well with real gear. That was really exciting as well to sort of translate it to the studio, because everything before that had been done in the box really and on laptops. It was a new experience for us because we hadn’t had the chance to record as a band together in the studio since album one, because of Covid and certain situations such as where people were living. It was nice to be back in the studio together’.
So, you think the writing process for this album differs from that of your previous albums, due to situation and circumstance?
Yeah, definitely for me. Obviously on the song-writing side of things, the songs usually come from Heather. The lyrical content is always from Heather and the stories that she’s telling are coming from her brain. For me anyway, it was certainly nice to be involved in the production side of things after being in the band for quite a while now (since 2015). It’s always nice when you get to evolve and step into a new role.
As you mentioned that the lyrical content comes from Heather, how do the songs stay personal to you?
I think for me the personal element comes from being involved in the sonic world, as it’s something that I’ve always been really captivated by. There’s often someone that listens to lyrics when they listen to a song and someone who listens to music. I definitely listen to the music more than I do lyrics. That being said, if lyrics are great in a song, it will catch my attention. But I do often find myself being like “How do they achieve that sound? What kind of tone is used on that guitar?” and stuff like that.
I also think hearing the stories behind the songs – as I’ve been friends with heather now for nearly ten years – makes them stay personal. I’ve been there through a lot of the experiences she’s had and the stories that she’s been through, but obviously not first-hand.
Definitely for me in more of the sonic realm, I see the attachment to the song, as I’m helping to bring forward the message of the song in the best way by supporting it with the music. I’ll hear certain lyrics and sort of know what the guitar should sound like. I’ll know based off that lyric, or based off the vibe of the demo Heather’s sent me. So, I think in that lot of my attachment comes from my involvement in the sonic realm.
I noticed that your last album had a heavy pop-punk feel to it, whereas Smitten seems to have adopted a softer dream-pop tone. Did this change occur naturally or was creating this sound a goal that you had already planned to achieve?
Those sorts of things do come naturally, but also there’s always a moment I think when you decide on what you want to do. We were sort of back and forth trying out different ideas. We had a demo, and we thought that it was interesting, and then Heather had a concept for an album before we’d even really wrote any of the music. One day she was like ‘I have an idea for an album – this is what I want it to be’, and we kind of knew what it should sound like based off that. The music that we’d been listening to a lot at the time, and when we first started the band as well, had an influence. There’s definitely more of an eighties and nineties influence coming back in that we had when we first started the band. That’s always been in our DNA. We felt a strong connection with it and always have. It was really nice to explore that but in a different way. One of the most enjoyable parts of the process for me, was experimenting how we could take our influences but make it feel like us and do something that’s for the band.
Who were your personal musical influences for this record in particular?
I used to listen to Cocteau Twins quite a lot and I like a lot of dreampop stuff. There’s always room for experimentation when it comes to guitar sounds and that’s always an area I’ve been drawn to sonically. Cocteau Twins, The Cure and The Cranberries are big inspirations for me personally. Seeing what you can do to push your own music using those inspirations, is the exciting part. For example, I’ll take the inspiration and maybe I’ll try it on a totally different guitar or play it in a different way. I’ll think: how can we make it sound like us and how can we do things that we think are quintessential to our sound ?
Talk more about your upcoming tour- what guitars and effects pedals will you be using?
It’s funny you say that because I’ve recently moved on to using a Kemper – my pedal board has been made redundant unfortunately. It’s frustrating because I’m a massive gear nerd and I love amps and pedals, but we moved on to Kempers to make things easier as we’re travelling a lot. It makes it cheaper too. However, I can tell you all about the pedals I would be using, that we used on the album!
On the album I’d say the main amps we used would be a Fender Twin or a Vox AC30 I think. They are just the two that we found fit the bill for quite a lot of the album in terms of the bass of what we wanted to do and on the guitars. Guitar wise – we kind of moved back to the classic ones we’ve had since the start. Heather’s Mustang, the 12 string Vox, and the green 1980s Fender has a great sound to it. I have this 70s Telecaster that our manager gave to me that we end up using quite a lot.
Pedals wise, we use quite a vary to be fair. If we want to sneak in quite a heavy sound we’d use like big muffs and an array of things like that and some crazy ones that our producer brought down. I’d then say a lot of the chorus sound comes from either a Roland chorus echo unit that we used in the studio, or a DOD65 chorus pedal or maybe 68 – and that was the main base for our clean chorus sound.
In a dream world I’d play with like four amps and a rack mount of pedals and gear, but it ends up being costly. So, we’ve moved onto Kempers which definitely helps with the budget. You can programme them to a point of making your life easier, like not changing ten pedals at once.
As you play live to an audience, how does your relationship with your songs change?
Yeah, I mean playing live can add a whole new sort of realm and dimension to the songs that you might not have known was there which is always super interesting. One of the most exciting parts of touring a new album is seeing the reactions to the songs that you’ve made. You might think ‘oh this songs going to be a really heartfelt moment’ and maybe it doesn’t end up being like that, and another song sort of steps into that place and it’s the one that everyone gets their phones out for or it’s the one that everyone dances too. That’s a really exciting and engaging part of tour sort of finding those fan favourites live. We’ve spent so long on these songs that you kind of become unaware of how they might appear to other people as you are so ‘in the world of it’ that you can’t have another perspective on the songs because we’ve heard them a thousand times over. We’ve heard every guitar part, every drum loop, every high hat, every bass part so many times – sometimes you forget to listen to the parts almost. You forget the effect it might have on people and then when you perform live it becomes really apparent. It’s one of the most special parts of playing live for sure.
How do you navigate creating a setlist for your shows, including the order in which your songs will be played?
Honestly that’s probably the hardest part. A lot of that definitely comes from Heather as she has an idea of how she wants the show to go in her head. Having four albums worth of material is always hard to fit into one set, you have a couple certain ones. The other day we were in rehearsals, and we’d already decided on the setlist, and Heather came in on the day of the last rehearsal and was like ‘we need to change it all’.
It’s interesting because we’ve brought in certain songs from album one that weren’t even singles, but we thought they just felt right in the set. Whereas certain ones from album three we were struggling to place because they were so different. I think it’s good to have dynamic in a set and diversity, but sometimes you have to find a way to blend them in with interludes and outros. It’s definitely something that we really like exploring and hopefully we’ve stepped up on it this time round and on this tour to showcase parts of songs that people maybe haven’t heard before. Like there might be certain outros of a song that we might extend and bring string parts into and stuff like that. It is hard to choose a set but the only way you know if you’ve made the right decision is through trial and error.
It can take sort of several shows to sort of figure that out so yeah, it’s a lot of hard work and rearranging and trying new things and experimenting. But I’d say the idea comes from Heather and how they want the show to look.
How do you think your music has changed and progressed over the years?
I think it’s really hard to say because albums and songs that we write and produce, are a snapshot of a moment in time. Our first album was a snapshot of a few years where we first met, and Heather started the band and started writing songs. For us it’s like looking through a picture book. When you play an album or a song it can take you back to that time. I wouldn’t say that any of them necessarily define us as people more or less than the others. Although, especially with the first album there’s something special there, because I remember at the time thinking it’s a privilege that you get to even record an album and people want to listen to it and see it live. That was our first experience of doing that and we experienced a lot of what we have because of that first album. There’s a heavy nostalgia and feeling of gratitude towards that album to me anyway.
I think the new album shows a more mature side towards us that we haven’t shown as deeply in the past. There’s amazing songs on all those albums, and this album has some really amazing songs on it, but I think again sonically and song writing wise there’s a maturity there. Maybe there’s more of a conceptual idea behind it than in the other ones. I feel like we spent a lot of time on this and crafting it. It’s certainly the album with the most songs written for it. We wrote probably thirty to fifty songs for it. From those we chose I think twelve or thirteen. That’s probably one of the first times there’s been a lot of songs available. So yeah, we’ve definitely spent a lot more time experimenting with it.
Words by Jemima Lake
Featured images in courtesy of Kelsi Luck. No changes have been made to the image.
Disclaimer: Press Ticket were given to attend this event.