Over a decade on from the start of Grayscale and the American rock formation continues with relatively tame tones of pop punk. They have found a sound which suits them and by God will they stick with it until the bitter end. At least their latest album, The Hart, has a slight promise of instrumental ingenuity, albeit one which takes just a minute to unravel. From the build-up heard on their lush, self-titled opener to the crunch of pop punk attempts on Kept Me Alive, the dissonance and failed bleed from one track to another is noticeable. Already, The Hart is struggling to keep a listener invested in their production, not least because of how feeble the transition is. There are further issues within, but this opening moment sets up a spectacular dud. Sloppiness on a fully-fledged studio album is unforgivable.
But then this is pop punk, a genre which is, at best, limited. A desire to never break from a Tumblr aesthetic but a keenness for the top of the charts. Songs like Through the Landslide are the sort of song you can roll your eyes at. Cynicism for the sake of it, all lead singer Collin Walsh wants is to mend this lush, broken heart. He can love if given the chance. That vapid context is the weak structure of most songs found on The Hart, an album which flatlines because of its inevitable reliance on this lost love or that potential relationship is all it has to show for itself. Meandering lyrics, metaphors and visual aids are rarely connected to emotional desires, the focus is not so much on what the lyrics mean but how they sound when backed by pop-oriented instrumentals. They sound fine. Muffled enough to never quite listen to what the copy-and-paste songwriting style provides.
Borderline cringe-inducing lyrics are almost impossible to work around with The Hart. You can just see the grey tones of a stairway in an office building, Walsh leaning against the wall and smacking an open palm against the beige world of his making. Talking in My Sleep hears that momentum while Let Go has the inevitable confident step, the skip in a newfound walk of life where defiance reigns supreme. Instrumentally sound moments are overshadowed by some desperately poor lyrics. Theatre kid-like interjections in place to get a crowd chanting away, and poorly mixed piano to bring on the teary-eyed reflections of holding onto a loved one. Inevitabilities like this are not made any better or worse by the streamlined desire for a pop hit. A deluge of personable tones and lyrics relating to this or that bust-up is fine enough, though The Hart does well to make them feel utterly redundant.
The Hart deals in non-specifics with a main character perspective when they would be lucky to be a bit-part player in the real world. This is neither escapism nor a comment on the world around us, this is just pontification with a shuffled deck of inevitable pop-punk cliche. Promises of “some kind of magic,” on Some Kind of Magic never materialise. A series of songs where Walsh and the band mark their audience, whoever is listening, as an object of romantic interest. Peppering them with dull instance after dull instance, Grayscale wastes what few wonderful guitar riffs it can get its hands on with a slog of similarly intended songs of love despite all those other raging emotions. Affectionless dross at the very best of times, and truly difficult to engage with because of how dire and emotionally immature its work can feel.
