If you’re a fan of English bands, I think you will agree with me when I say I really do believe we are experiencing a second wave of the British invasion, and I’m referring to the music scene. If you consider our recent history of popular boy and girl groups like One Direction and Little Mix, all the way to alternative bands like Arctic Monkeys and The 1975, Brits have been taking over the charts in recent years.

If you found yourself listening to any of the bands I previously mentioned, chances are you may have run into indie pop band, Pale Waves in your suggested playlist on Spotify. After releasing a few singles and an EP, the group finally released their first ever album, “My Mind Makes Noises” on Sept. 14.

The album is reminiscent of The 1975 in terms of the lo-fi sound and vocal range. Lead singer and guitarist, Heather Baron-Gracie, formed the band when she met drummer, Ciara Doran while attending college in Manchester. The album is very naive in terms of the way the lyrics describe relationships and the things you learn while growing up, but I think in some way that’s why I find it so appealing—it’s undeniably raw.

I particularly fell in love with the track “Karl (I Wonder What It’s Like to Die).” It is a definite tearjerker. The song is about the death of Baron-Gracie’s grandfather, and she describes what it was like coming to terms with his absence from her life and how she felt when she initially found out. It’s a beautiful acoustic song and is much slower in contrast to the other songs on the album.

The band also taps into a retro ’80s sound that nearly categorizes them in my book as Hi-NRG. You can particularly hear it in tracks like, “There’s a Honey,” “Television Romance” and “One More Time.”

Songs like “She” and “Loveless Girl” take more serious themes and turn them into up-tempo anthems that I found quirky and kind of fun.

However, I wasn’t fond of “One More Time” or “When Did I Lose It All.” I kept waiting for an interesting bridge in both songs and it felt like it never arrived.

I give the overall album a four out of five. I think Pale Waves has a leg up when it comes to the new wave of emerging artists. Their sound is ambient and creates such a cool atmosphere. However, some of their lyrics caught me off guard knowing they were written by people who are supposedly in their twenties. It’s like they spent too much time perfecting an album they wrote as teenagers and by the time it dropped, they had already grown out of it.

Rating: 4/5 stars