My Mind Makes Noises is the debut studio album by English indie pop band Pale Waves, released on 14 September 2018 by the independent record label Dirty Hit.

With the exception of the album's singles "There's a Honey" and "Television Romance", the songs on My Mind Makes Noises were produced by Jonathan Gilmore, with Pale Waves' drummer, Ciara Doran, providing additional production.

The 1975's George Daniel and Matty Healy produced "Television Romance" and There's a Honey" (although the songs were remixed by Gilmore and Doran for inclusion on the album).

The album's lyrics are melancholic and often dark, focusing on the pain of heartbreak, young love that is now lost, mental health, body image, unwanted romantic attention, and the death of beloved family members.

Pale Waves formed in 2014 when the drummer Ciara Doran met the vocalist and guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie while the two were attending the British and Irish Modern Music Institute (BIMM) in 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] 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.

[18] 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.

[19][20] 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 he and Daniel could produce their songs.

While talking to the University of Exeter's student-run newspaper 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.

[20] 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".

[41] "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".

[36] 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?'

'"[36] "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.'

[31] "Red" 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".

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.

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".

The track – described by DIY magazine as being "filled with an almost uncomfortable level of sadness and pain"[40] – was written after Doran encouraged Baron-Gracie to channel her grief through music.

[52][53] The video features the band performing the song in the living room of a flat located in Ashton-under-Lyne in the Greater Manchester area.

[66] The music video for "Eighteen", directed by Adam Powell, was released on 22 August 2018 and follows Baron-Gracie as she goes on a road trip across the United States.

[12] A music video for "One More Time" was released on 17 September 2018,[69] which was directed by the duo Sophia + Robert,[70] sees Pale Waves perform the song in a small red room.

[71] To promote My Mind Makes Noises in the United States, Pale Waves performed "Eighteen" on the 14 November 2018 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers.

[81] Ward concluded that "My Mind Makes Noises is both immediate and idiosyncratic", and that while "Pale Waves' presence may be gloomy ... their songwriting and ambition could not be brighter".

[81] Writing for DIY magazine, Rachel Finn argued that this record proved Pale Waves to be "a band keen to subvert your expectations", whose debut album was "filled to the brim with hooky pop choruses centred around that well-trodden songwriting topic of falling in and out of love".

[4] Thomas Smith of NME magazine called My Mind Makes Noises "an impressive, deft debut" that he hypothesized would propel the band "from cult concern to the big leagues".

[77] "Battle-hardened by lengthy tours across the land and beyond", Murray wrote, "Pale Waves bring that energy into the studio on a crisp, effervescent debut LP".

The reviewer concluded that My Mind Makes Noises "feels like a beginning – a picture not entirely in focus, but somehow you can't rest your eyes away".

magazine wrote that Baron-Gracie "broadcasts her highest highs and lowest lows overtop of light and shimmering '80s rock and R&B with a modern pop gloss".

[78] While noting that the record's "repetitive nature" and its highly produced sound may alienate potential listeners, Gormely nevertheless concluded that "if early aughts emo was your jam, there'll certainly be lots to love here".