Indie, soul, R&B, dance, electronic.

These are all words that Google uses to describe the genre of Philadelphia-based Grayscale, though I’m not so sure that any of those words accurately describe them as well as the more simply used word, alternative. Grayscale recently embarked on co-headlining tour Summer Dream, sharing the spotlight with emo-hip hop artist guardin, pop-punk band Bearings and indie-pop band The Ivy joining as support, resulting in a hard-to-miss lineup.

Tuesday night the Summer Dream tour took over Hawthorne Theatre in Portland, Oregon for a mind blowing night of music. Though I unfortunately missed The Ivy’s set, Bearings brought the heat, bringing back that classic pop-punk sound that’s ever so hard to capture these days. Following the support acts, guardin took the stage, his set beginning with a heavy bass and chemistry with the crowd that’s hard to get anywhere else, exchanging flowers with audience members while simultaneously managing to be everywhere at once whether that be on stage or in the crowd for a song or two.

Last but not least, Grayscale appeared on stage one by one, beams of light brightening each member up (Seriously, I think I fell in love with their lighting. Thank you Grayscale’s lighting engineer.) as they opened with a classic, Let It Rain, from their 2017 record Adornment. The crowd went crazy, arms in the air, wrists decorated with multicoloured glow bracelets handed out pre-show, singing the words right back. The band worked their way through some of their older stuff first before transitioning into tracks from their most recent record, Umbra, an album released in late August of 2021 (Go listen to Dirty Bombs right now. Just trust me).

Frontman Collin Patrick Walsh, commonly referred to as CPW online, was certainly no stranger to directing a crowd, stalking across the stage with a mic stand in one hand as he urged to crowd to crouch low, low, lower, before everyone sprung up at the chorus of the song, conveniently photographed by me, of course.

As Walsh continued to orchestrate the audience, everyone went through every range of emotions possible, switching from dancing and singing their hearts out to swaying to some of the slower songs to jumping around yet again, a dull moment never present. Grayscale finished the night stronger than ever, leaving me with the ever so present urge to go to, I don’t know, maybe a million more Grayscale shows and I strongly encourage everyone reading this to do the same!