All art strives to bring its audience somewhere, to create an experience that is both novel and immersive. No small task for any medium. As a lover of music, I have no trouble letting a song or a record take me away, but it is rare that I am absorbed by the music, carried into a world that is both brand new and painfully familiar. And that is exactly what happens every time I start spinning the new full-length by Will Grayson, Yet What Else After All, an expansive journey through youth and memory.
Will Grayson is a solo musician who thinks like an orchestra, and the instrumentation on Yet What Else After All really has the feel of a symphony. The record is a splay of different dynamics and textures, placing grinding, near-dissonant rock anthems next to wounded acoustic ballads. Even the songs themselves feature dramatic, almost violent shifts: “Like a Death” is a panic attack juxtaposed with a daydream, while “Angels’ Wills and Diana’s Pills” jumps from jangly 4/4 indie-pop into a jolt of mathy and fuzzed-out rock.
In juxtaposition to this cacophony of sounds are the vocals on Yet What Else After All. The melodies are gentle, like the scrawl of a pencil as it writes, and that is just what his voice is doing. Will Grayson uses rapid-fire rhyme and multiple literary devices to brighten his language and delivery, all sung in a soulful croon. His lyrics are feathered strokes of the human experience, delving into the depths of relationships and the tangled messes that they can become.
Will Grayson is a solo musician who thinks like an orchestra, and the instrumentation on Yet What Else After All really has the feel of a symphony. The record is a splay of different dynamics and textures, placing grinding, near-dissonant rock anthems next to wounded acoustic ballads. Even the songs themselves feature dramatic, almost violent shifts: “Like a Death” is a panic attack juxtaposed with a daydream, while “Angels’ Wills and Diana’s Pills” jumps from jangly 4/4 indie-pop into a jolt of mathy and fuzzed-out rock.
In juxtaposition to this cacophony of sounds are the vocals on Yet What Else After All. The melodies are gentle, like the scrawl of a pencil as it writes, and that is just what his voice is doing. Will Grayson uses rapid-fire rhyme and multiple literary devices to brighten his language and delivery, all sung in a soulful croon. His lyrics are feathered strokes of the human experience, delving into the depths of relationships and the tangled messes that they can become.
Lines like “You know why / I’m callin’ tonight / because I can’t win that fight / if I have to face you” or “Your passive reaction / smacks of a pyrrhic attack” expertly capture the tiny intensities and anxieties that often manifest in relationships. Yet it’s not all misery; the lines “Last night I tried to tell you why / I became such an ambivalent guy / oh well, okay, alright” cheekily introduce the concept of ambivalence before immediately bringing it to life within the song.
Yet What Else After All plays like flipping the pages of a photo album. Each song captures an experience in sickly-sweet detail that pulls from the past those ghost notes of nostalgia. There are parts heavy and yet beautiful, moments of clarity next to fuzzy yet familiar feelings. Will Grayson has managed to press a dream to a record, and each listen has me dizzy like the moments just after waking up, trying to remember specifics but finding only deep emotions instead. It keeps sucking me back in, and I have no doubt it will do the same to you.
My Top Track: “Because He’s Hiding Something”
You can find more from Will Grayson via his Instagram page, @willgrayson. Then head to Spotify to stream Yet What Else After All, or hit his Bandcamp page to purchase your own copy.
Yet What Else After All plays like flipping the pages of a photo album. Each song captures an experience in sickly-sweet detail that pulls from the past those ghost notes of nostalgia. There are parts heavy and yet beautiful, moments of clarity next to fuzzy yet familiar feelings. Will Grayson has managed to press a dream to a record, and each listen has me dizzy like the moments just after waking up, trying to remember specifics but finding only deep emotions instead. It keeps sucking me back in, and I have no doubt it will do the same to you.
My Top Track: “Because He’s Hiding Something”
You can find more from Will Grayson via his Instagram page, @willgrayson. Then head to Spotify to stream Yet What Else After All, or hit his Bandcamp page to purchase your own copy.
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