Grayscale LP ‘Nella Vita’ is “gonna make you wanna dance [and] cry”
Gearing up to tackle their first headline run in the midst of their second full-length release (out Sept. 6 on Fearless), Grayscale are continuing to make bold and adventurous moves in the music world. Frontman Collin Walsh and guitarist Dallas Molster took some time out to walk AP through the raw reality of Nella Vita and all it encompasses.
Although no stranger to delivering emotional tracks dealing with heavy subject matter, Walsh faced especially personal topics head-on in the studio.
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“I’ve always been super-open and honest about my life and the things that I lyrically write about on all of our work…but I think the topics in ‘Old Friends’ and ‘Tommy’s Song’ were really difficult, to the point where there were days tracking the vocals I couldn’t do it, or I’d get really emotional or start crying,” he reveals.
Even through dealing with topics such as addiction or losing a family member to suicide, continuing to create while capturing candid vulnerability is what enabled the music to become so raw. “[There are] parts where my vibrato is super-wobbly from trying to hold it together, and I think those were the two hardest [songs] to do, but the outcome from it was really special, and I think we captured something awesome,” Walsh says.
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There was no specific point in time where the process in creating Nella Vita actually began. Rather, the creative chemistry between Molster and Walsh was a key factor in what allowed the album to form organically. “I remember listening to the demo of ‘Desert Queen’ and working on it with Dallas before and during Warped Tour last year,” Walsh recalls.
The effortless power to create stirring tracks is evident in such songs as “Baby Blue” where haunting lyrics are paired with both a pop track and a funk breakdown. “At this point in our songwriting together, it just clicks,” Molster explains. “We know when we’re gonna get super-serious or if we’re gonna talk more lightly about something. We always complement one another when it comes to writing songs.”
What would eventually become one of the record’s middle tracks, “What’s On Your Mind,” started off with the title “Song 3,” an older, heavy tune that the group were at a standoff about using. “The hard part was the battle of, ‘Do we keep it the same, or do we rewrite it?’” Molster shares.
With producer Machine advocating to keep the track, the group rebuilt it around the original piano part when things took a turn. “‘Song 3’ still ended up being the oddball song,” Walsh says. “But instead of the heavy side, it was actually the electronic, trap-club song side. I just thought it was interesting that it went from one polar left to then just turning into the polar right, but either way the DNA of the song was the oddball, no matter what.”
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But their change in sound was anything but accidental. Grayscale dove in head first on Nella Vita to play around with the intention of incorporating everything from electro-pop synths to funk sensibilities. “For this record, it was very much a calculated thing—at least in my brain—that we were going to further explore that world of creating,” Molster says. The musical diversity that Nella Vita has to offer is largely due to the extensive knowledge of music history the band hold respect for in combination with the wildly varying tastes among its members.
“There’s a very eclectic span in the kind of music that we love to listen to and love to play,” Walsh explains. “I think our sound is always going to progress—we’re never going to be afraid of implementing those kinds of things as both fans of music and [as] people who make it. We had to pick and choose the right way to keep people knowing it’s Grayscale, but also [conveying], ‘Here’s the evolution. Here’s where it’s at now.’”
But the band are quick to stress that Walsh didn’t want to write an album about growing up, but rather to tell stories about the more raw things in life, inspiring the all-encompassing name of the record.
“It takes in the beauty of natural human emotion and what you go through in life,” he elaborates. “The real shit, whether it’s sex and love, grief and death, anything. It’s a record that is gonna make you wanna dance. It’s gonna make you want to cry…you’re gonna feel a lot from it, and I want people to know that’s the intention. It all comes from a very, very true place, both musically and lyrically.”
Nella Vita drops Friday via Fearless Records and is available for preorder here and presave here. The band kick off their tour today with support from Belmont, Bearings and Rich People with dates and tickets here.
This feature originally appeared in AP #373 with cover star Awsten Knight of Waterparks. The issue is available now here or below.
