{"id":5673,"date":"2019-10-07T09:07:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T14:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=5673"},"modified":"2019-12-17T20:08:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:08:31","slug":"review-grayscale-brighton-music-hall-10-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2019\/10\/07\/review-grayscale-brighton-music-hall-10-2\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Grayscale @ Brighton Music Hall 10\/2"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Julia Ermi<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

On Wednesday night at the Brighton Music Hall, six hours north of their home base in Philadelphia, up-and-coming pop-punk band Grayscale debuted their first headline show in Boston. The band brought with them three opening acts: Rich People, another Philadelphia band that is vaguely reminiscent of Greyscale\u2019s origins, the more seasoned Bearings, and crowd favorite (of the openers) Belmont.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Grayscale was founded in 2011 in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where they spent their high school years listening to popular Philly punk bands like The Wonder Years and the Menzingers. The band\u2019s older music certainly sees influence from the heavy punk melodies of both bands, as well as the harsh, raspy vocals that lead singer Collin Walsh tends to emulate. Grayscale began to grow in popularity after the release of their 2016 EP, What We\u2019re Missing<\/em>, and a tour spent opening for pop-punk legends All Time Low. Their success has only grown since I first started listening to the band on Spotify, back in 2016 before they had even 1,000 listens on most of their songs. For comparison, their current most popular song, Atlantic, now has over five million listens.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This tour celebrates the release of Grayscale\u2019s sophomore full-length LP, Nella Vita<\/em>, translated from Italian to \u201cin life.\u201d Preceded by their first two EPs entitled Change<\/em> and What We\u2019re Missing<\/em>, as well as a first LP in Adornment<\/em>, Nella Vita<\/em> boasts a more complex sound than the straightforward heavy pop-punk feel of their previous work. The record\u2019s leadoff track offers a bridge from Adornment<\/em> to Nella Vita<\/em>, relying on both the driving beat and heavy vocal feel of Adornment<\/em>, while foreshadowing the lighter, dancier facet of this most recent album. Tracks “In Your Arms” and “YOUNG” deviate wildly from older releases, combining elements of synthy, 1975-esque pop with Collin Walsh\u2019s punk vocals to create what I can only describe as second-generation pop-punk, several steps away from the redundancy and heaviness of traditional pop-punk. The result is a lighter, catchier record that demonstrates this band\u2019s ability to evolve and mature with the scene, and their audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Nella Vita<\/em>\u2019s fresh sound induced an entirely new energy in the audience of Grayscale fans that flocked to Brighton for the show. For the first time since I started frequenting Grayscale\u2019s shows (this was my fourth; what can I say, I\u2019m a Philly girl), there was more dancing than there was moshing. Sure, the pit still opened up for throwback songs from Adornment<\/em> like “Mum,” “Beautiful Things,” and “Atlantic,” but the majority of the crowd, for the majority of the time, was more focused on dancing, singing, and having a good time. A cleaner setlist provided a stark contrast from earlier shows where the band\u2019s energy and instrumental heaviness seemed to settle over the crowd with the expectation of rowdiness and riot. Groovier songs such as “In Your Arms” encouraged the crowd to let go and get dance-y, while the slower middle-set sequence of “Old Friends” followed by “Forever Yours” gave the band a break, and stimulated deeper connections between this audience and the band\u2019s art.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even Grayscale\u2019s musicians seemed to lean into the more relaxed atmosphere, with lead singer Walsh shedding his \u201cgo, go, go\u201d attitude from previous shows to adopt a more casual rapport with the audience, telling anecdotes about the band\u2019s experiences in Mass. and joking about the Eagles-Patriots rivalry that has bloomed in the last few years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be interested to see however, if the band\u2019s fan momentum continues building as they move farther away from their original sound and the tour traditions of the pop-punk genre \u2014 i.e. moshing, heavy sets with fewer slow songs, little to no dancing. While it seems that a lot of fans have massively enjoyed the new maturity that the band has brought to both their new album and this new headline tour, there\u2019s a good deal of unrest in the scene right now regarding the direction in which the music is headed, and the overwhelming demands of the fans. As for me, I hope that the boys can continue to work to make their shows a space for fans to dance, hang out, connect with the artists, and sing along to some really fun new music.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Julia Ermi On Wednesday night at the Brighton Music Hall, six hours north of their home base in Philadelphia, up-and-coming pop-punk band Grayscale debuted their first headline show in Boston. The band brought with them three opening acts: Rich People, another Philadelphia band that is vaguely reminiscent of Greyscale\u2019s origins, the more seasoned Bearings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525],"tags":[215,924,925,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5675,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5673\/revisions\/5675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}