Grayscale is Showing Their Truest Selves on ‘The Hart’
The Philadelphia band shares how their fourth album marks growth as musicians and takes inspiration from classic rock writers
PHOTOS BY LINDSEY DADOURIAN
Grayscale’s annual hometown holiday show in Philadelphia is a tradition for their fans — and this past Christmas, it was extra special. The now weekend-long event was filled with merch pop-ups, tattoo charity events and a VIP sound check, all in anticipation for the band’s fourth album: The Hart.
Singles from The Hart, set to release January 31, have been slowly added to setlists for more than a year now, beginning back in 2023 with “Not Afraid to Die.” And it’s quite fitting, as the band tells Pleaser it was the first song they wrote for this album. Ironically, it was made at a time when lead singer Collin Walsh says the band was feeling a bit uninspired, but that drove them to look for a new approach — or rather, an old one.
“That deliberate decision to be like, let's really go all the way down to the studs and remember why we love music so much, and why we started doing it when we sucked at it and we were 16 and just playing together,” he says. “Let's get back to all of those things now as musicians that are much more seasoned. ‘Not Afraid to Die’ was the first result of that.”
The four members of Grayscale, Walsh (lead vocals), Andrew Clark Kyne (lead guitar), Dallas Molster (vocals, rhythm guitar, keys) and Nick Veno (drums) all shared the same sentiment about The Hart: it’s the most true representation of their musical intentions yet.
“When we did ‘Not Afraid to Die,’ we just literally played it a bunch of times in a room and then we would spot check and figure tiny little things out afterwards,” Kyne says. “But we did like three or four takes. It felt more organic and like a different experience than sitting down and being super particular about every little thing.”
“That’s something that took a lot of time and experience to be comfortable to do that. So that felt good. And I think the result of it was the most authentic version of our band that it's ever been,” Walsh says.
Matching the puzzle pieces in the studio
Creating songs that can be “cut primarily live,” as Walsh noted, is certainly something that requires balance between bandmates — and that’s exactly what Grayscale has. When asked about how they each add to instrumentation and writing a song, the band agrees it’s a constantly collaborative, changing effort. After honing their abilities, though, it’s one that sometimes comes with a bit of “magic,” letting things fall in place easily.
“You kind of get the feeling of what the band is as you go,” Kyne says. “I think being in the same mindset, writing with these guys for so long, it's kind of like you'd play something and go, ‘Oh, that's not right. That's not it.’ Your instincts develop. I think they become quicker and sharper, especially the more you do it.”
Veno and Molster share that they first tend to follow a bit of melody, top line or lyrical direction, finding the right instrumentation to match the song. But that process, too, can guide the song in new ways.
“If I play something different ‘cause I hear one of them do something, it inspires one of them to do something different and it kind of builds from there,” Veno says. “So it's just kind of like an evolving thing, the whole time.”
“I get to spend more time with being like, there's 15 different ways to voice this chord. So which one is the right way or which one feels the best right now, based off of what he might be doing and what he's singing or humming, whatever stage of the song we're in,” Molster adds.
The band is always looking to complement each other’s next or last move in the process. “I feel like [with] songwriting, the best analogy is it's like a puzzle that you're putting together, while that's also moving. And pieces are falling off as it's moving and you're just molding this thing as best you can,” Walsh says.
Grayscale seem to be a living puzzle themselves, fitting into each other through shared love and memories. Whether living in shared Philly apartments or recalling weekends from college, they’ve been growing together through pop punk beginnings into a more matured rock band.
PHOTOS BY LINDSEY DADOURIAN
Their sound has certainly shifted and grown since their first studio album Adornment was released in 2017. It’s been evident this maturation has been underway, especially since their third album Umbra, but each new track released last year has only emphasized it.
Additional singles “Mum II,” a reprised ballad to an older track about Walsh’s relationship with his mother, “Summer Clothes,” “Let Go,” “Kept Me Alive” and “Don’t Leave Me In The Dark” gave their fans more than a taste of what’s coming on the full 12-track album. While vulnerability is not exactly new to Grayscale’s music, each new album seems to open them up further.
“Mum II” is the most outward example, so far, of how the band is letting vulnerability lead artistry this album. Though it may be difficult to revisit an older, angrier song about the changing relationship with his mother, Walsh says the story felt like a “book that was half read,” and he felt a “dire need to collectively express it again and update it.” And as a testament to their process, they say it took a matter of less than an hour to create something close to the final track in the studio.
In other tracks as well, The Hart comes with a clear level of integrity for the emotional quality of the music. “Kept Me Alive” is a full-bodied rock track fans can undoubtedly look forward to jumping and crowd surfing to for years to come, but it’s a sincere celebration for those who support them in the hardest times lyrically. “Let Go” similarly bears the tough experience of walking away from relationships that drag them down, but in a sonically liberated chant.
While leading with songs like this may once have been uncomfortable, though never something they strayed away from, the band is evidently far more confident in doing so now. In fact, it’s something of a necessity.
“There are definitely feelings of trepidation, especially earlier in songs that we'd write together, like this is a really honest and vulnerable and uncomfortable thing,” Walsh says. “But I think as we've done this, the artists that I really, truly love, the lyricists that I really look up to, that's what they would do. That's what art [is], that's what it should be.”
The band all cite shared inspirations of true rock bands and singers for the album — Bruce Springsteen, Third Eye Blind, The Killers — but have unique musical perspectives and interests of their own. Molster tells us about Flatland Cavalry, a nine-piece country band he recently saw in Philly, while Kyne names Creed as the best concert he’s ever attended. It’s their individual musical comforts and experiences like these that make the group more than the final on-stage performance, and make an album like The Hart possible.
PHOTOS BY LINDSEY DADOURIAN
A release show for the books
Just a couple days after we spoke with the band, they played the new album in full to their audience at the Fillmore Philadelphia, including what the band named as their favorite tracks, that day; Walsh and Molster agree on, “Through the Landslide,” especially following rehearsals for the show.
“That one for me is really fun to play,” Molster says. “And I feel like that also always kind of holds a thing amongst us, what our favorite song is, because it's fun.” At the show, it was more than evident Molster was correct.
Kyne and Veno name “Talking in my Sleep” as their unreleased favorites, with Veno also mentioning “Some Kind of Magic.” And even though fans hadn’t heard the songs before, they still sang along — in a clever release show fashion, lyrics were projected up for every song. The singles proved to be fan favorites already, met with just as much energy as setlist staples.
The love in Grayscale’s community was palpable at the show, because as emotional as their songs may get, the band never forgets to have fun. Just after “Atlantic,” a long-time fan favorite, the captioned screens read, “This is what you all came here for,” as Veno took the spotlight for a drum solo.
And it wouldn’t have been a holiday show without a couple more showstoppers. Kyne’s saxophone solo on “Motown” drove the crowd wild, while early songs like “Painkiller Weather” and “In Violet” inspired dozens of crowd surfers. The night closed out with a classic rock cover, as always — this year, “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
These playful moments made the release special for their closest listeners, local friends and day-one fans as they all celebrated the next era of their career. After all, The Hart is a milestone marker to them.
“I undoubtedly can say for all of us, it is the most proud we've ever been of a record,” Walsh says. “I think it's something we've worked towards for a long time. And we've always taken each record as a phase in life, and what the songs are about and how the production complements that. It's very deliberate to do that every time.”
Listen to all of The Hart on January 31.
