With an accomplished new album and amidst a host of glowing reviews of their recent live shows coming through, we caught up with Lucy from Pale Blue Eyes to chat about the making of the record, the tour and plans for the coming months…

Hey, how are you all – how has 2025 been for you so far?

Hello! All good thanks, a very busy and fun year so far!

What’s the most interesting object in the room you’re in right now?

Well we’re back home on a day off atm so probably the now slightly deflated helium birthday balloons in the corner, leftover from Matt’s recent birthday party! Closely followed by The Cure record that Matt got for a birthday present from Aubs.

Your latest album New Place was released last month and you’re currently out on the road – what’s the response been like to the new songs?

Yeah – so far it’s been really lovely thank you, we’re really enjoying playing some of the new ones in the live set. But we’ve also enjoyed revisiting a couple of tracks off our first album that feel very fun to play in the current set as well!

Talk us through the concept for the album – did you have a really clear vision of how it was going to end up or did that happen organically?

I think we definitely had the goal of trying to see if we could create some new flavours on this third album, we did the first two albums in two years and it felt like the second was almost an extension of the first, so with this one we definitely wanted to take a little bit more time and try out some new ways of working and some new instrumentation.

It is a record reflective of new beginnings, starting again, feeling a bit like a weight had lifted, being in a new place, and also was inspired by some of the experiences we’ve all been through together as a band (getting to tour loads the last few years and the places we’ve been lucky enough to visit together).

Can you give us the story behind one of the tracks?

I like the sentiment of The Dreamer – Matt wrote that about the feeling when you meet someone in a dream and it feels so vivid and real, and then you wake up and realise it wasn’t. Getting a fleeting moment with someone in a dream. The song captures that slightly dreamlike wonkiness… not really a story but that’s the sentiment and feeling of that song.

And who would you want to shout out for helping you complete the whole record?

A lot of people helped us make this record possible, our manager Dave helping us navigate a lot of big changes last year… The team who helped us put the album out on our own label, Broadcast Recordings, the folks at ROM who distributed the album and believed in what we were doing. Dean Honer who final mixed and mastered the record. Tom Sharkett and Lewis Johnson Kellett who play on some of the tracks on the album. Our very supportive families, who encourage us to keep at it.

Me, Matt and Aubrey have been working on PBE together for quite a few years now so it feels good that we’re still doing it and still loving it!

The album cover artwork (header image) uses one of a collection of old 35mm slides you uncovered in a house move – can you tell us more about that and how important that visual side of things is when you’re putting music out?

We really enjoyed the circular nature of being in a new place and starting fresh but then digging out the old 35mm slide projector that belonged to Matt’s dad and seeing all these old amazing pictures of Matt’s parents when they were our age and when they first moved into their own house together. It felt quite nice to have a reference to that as the artwork for the album, slightly archival. We liked the blue window shot being fairly abstract, but it meant a lot to us.

We all love film photography and we are also lucky that Aubrey is a photographer and film-maker, so we do all care a lot about the visual side of things. We’d love to do more with pairing visuals with our music and exploring that in the live setting as well in the future…

Do you get to see much of the places you stop off at while you’re touring – any notable discoveries on this tour?

Not massively – we tend to be in the van and then in the venue, then in a motorway Travelodge type situation, but we try to make sure we have a quick wander around the venue if we get the time.

What’s the first thing you’ll do when you’re back home at the end of the tour run?

We’ve actually been lucky enough to stop off at home a few times during this tour, so it has felt very civilised, and we’ve been able to do normal home things and just having the familiarity of our own bed a few times which has been really nice.

I think we’ll definitely treat ourselves to a couple of majorly lazy days when we get home but then we have lots of work in the studio to crack on with so will be back to that next week!

Lastly, do you take a break after this or are there more plans in place for the rest of the year?

We’re always scheming and planning the next things with the band, we’re playing Wanderlust in Southampton next month, then we’re hoping to do another run of dates some time over the summer, then we’re away supporting a band called The Midnight all around Europe in September/October – so there’ll be lots of prep needed for that mega tour!

Get the latest news from Pale Blue Eyes and links to purchase New Place here, and why not dip into our review of last week’s Brighton show too…

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Interview by Siobhan

Published 16th April 2025