By Brian Tucker

Raleigh’s Gray Young is best left open to individual interpretation. What they’re playing – songs that are mostly music sans lyrics – underscores what a listener is feeling or have felt before. Subtlety in the music is their secret, pushing emotional buttons with driving rhythms, angelic guitar playing and occasional hushed-whisper or soaring vocals. At last year’s WE Fest people approached the band as they played, like moths to a flame, engrossed in their walls and waves of sound.

They’ll play at Satellite Bar & Lounge on Saturday with Wilmington’s Unholy Tongues and it will be difficult for those in the venue to ignore or not be affected by the driving force of the music. As a live act Gray Young is a sonic experience. It can be frenzied and cathartic, rapturous like worlds being born, reaching a fever pitch then subsiding to calm or jarring silence. The live show always varies, always emanating from ideas on albums and happening in the moment.

“I think playing live just helps a band become more in tune with each other in general. I don’t know if playing lots of shows really nurtured the (new) album in particular but it’s just something that helps foster a collective intuition that’s focused on a common goal.” guitarist and lead singer Chas McKeown said.

“There are no real preconceived notions when we get to the space that we play in. We don’t always have something to say when we play, but when we do it just comes out. We just see where the music leads us from there. That’s the thing, it’s completely unpredictable. I feel like it’s something that we don’t fully control. That’s the magic of it all. When the music is in the air its amazing, when its not it can be frustrating.”

Gray Young’s albums are a buffet of ideas, exquisite albums of music rising and falling with elegant and thunderous energy. Songs are comprised of textured ambiance, engaging material that crashes and struggles, soars and lands slowly, and exploring emotional territory both tender and scarred. You can play it repeatedly and still hear something new. In the last five years, over the course of three albums, the band’s sound, and its scope, has become larger and equally more nuanced.

“I think the main thing we are learning right now is that we should never get comfortable with what Gray Young is supposed to be. The music should always be taking us somewhere and we shouldn’t be afraid to let it, even if that means not liking where it takes us and then starting again,” McKeown said. “It’s about freedom. A dead band is a caged one.”

New album staysail marks a nascent departure from their last, Firmament. It moves beyond massive sound-scapes to something more introspective and tender, notably the surprise of banjo prominently on two songs that lend a haunting, melancholy flavor to staysail.

“We looked at the music creeping into our live shows and noticed it would make a concrete record. It’s not something that we want to over think. The subconscious thoughts of not wanting to put out Firmament Part 2 were alive and well.”   

Still, they’re an atypical band to describe to people. How do you explain that it’s moving, beautiful and epic without sounding pretentious? Adding that there’s minimal singing takes some aback. Regardless, this is a band that wants to work outside the box. 

“The funny thing is I never really thought about it until other people pointed out we do that. I’m just singing when I feel like the music calls for it. If the music doesn’t call for it all then I just don’t sing. It seems very natural to me. Music is about freedom. To me it’s not about the structure, it’s about the music. Is it alive? Does it have a heart?”

More with Chas McKeown

Does Jeff Dopko have a metal music background?

McKeown: Dopko’s metal background is kind of a misconception. He has been into some metal but he listens to a lot of stuff and would probably tell you that metal is not the overwhelming musical influence in his life. Dopko has played in a real variety of bands. My personal favorite that he was in was a band from New York called Dark Heart Alarm. Dan has a fairly prominent pop punk past although he did play in a pop rock band and a hardcore band at one point. I had only played guitar in one band and that band eventually turned into Gray Young.

Outside of primary instruments in the band what other instruments does everyone play?

McKeown: Dan plays the banjo on this album. He has two very subtle piano/key parts as well. There was a time where I would have almost called myself a drummer. Drums were the instrument that I just intuitively knew how to play growing up. I wanted to be a drummer for a long time. Then Dopko swooped in like a falcon and stole my dreams. I played the piano on Firmament.

staysail album review

The subtlety of Gray Young’s music is its weapon for making great music. As the trio consistently delivers songs that are massive, like climbing ocean waves of sound, they’ve done it with minimal vocals and defied genre conventions.

The band makes melodic, soaring, near instrumental music. Vocals are part of the soundscape, textures that serve, not overwhelm, the whole idea. Foremost, it’s the tone and atmosphere of each song, of the whole album, be it soaring and caring or edgy and rhythmic. Gray Young remains engaging because the music continually resonates.

Where the band’s release Firmament was a follow-up to the EP Kindle Field it also felt like an extension of the EP’s original ideas. That’s no slight, as both are beautiful triumphs. With staysail the band has grown, exploring further, trying different approaches to expand their sound, and even emulating what sounds like a dial tone via guitar on “Picture” to great effect. Still creating songs that exist more through emotional construction than traditional song structure, it has broadened its own pallette. Instead of continuing to offer blistering songs the band digs deeper here, operating at a different level of sonic dependence. The band is less aggressive, if you will, and the result is something more heartfelt than before.

staysail is also more delicate than its predecessors. With “Unbound” it’s acoustically driven and makes irreverent use of the banjo to heighten the song. The haunted tone recalls REM in the mid-eighties. Chas Mckeown, the band’s lead singer, oscillates vocally, from whispered vocals to large, haunting ones. “Prescience,” also acoustic driven, is simple and ghostly as a bookend to “Unbound”.

“Seven:Fourteen” operates with scorching guitars and on-the-run rhythms that propel the song. It cascades with guitar strikes that recall The Edge. Lyrically staysail mentions light frequently as well as the passing of time and what’s left behind. On “Ten Years” there’s faint positivity. Mckeown sings “The flowers died/But the ground is alive…”

Gray Young’s music can be played again and again, there’s so much going on. And with staysail the band shines bright, revealing a band thinking heavily about what they’re crafting.