Concert Review: Grayscale & The Maine
Saturday, August 14, 2021 at Ballpark Village in St. Louis
This is more of a venue review than a concert review — you’ll see why soon.
All Time Low was the headliner for this show, but I only stayed long enough to see them perform three to four songs before leaving. We arrived about a half hour before Grayscale was supposed to go on to find the line was wrapped around the building. We got through security minutes before Grayscale went on stage, and there was still a long line of people outside (many of them Grayscale fans) waiting to get in.
Grayscale puts on a great show, and the songs they played from their now-released new album Umbra were so fun to hear in a live setting. (It’s a solid album overall, though I’m not sure it’s quite as good as Nella Vita.) They had a good selection of different t-shirts and other merch available. Grayscale’s merch is always of the highest quality, so I highly recommend buying a shirt from them if you ever see them live (or you can order online from them if you can’t make it to a live show).
The Maine was also great. They’re a really fun band to see because they interact so much with the audience, but manage to do so without wasting so much time that it feels like a shorter set as a result. Their new music from their latest album XOXO: From Love & Anxiety in Real Time is so good and phenomenal to hear those songs performed live. Not to mention, they took a moment to let everyone scream out their frustrations from the past year and a half, and I think that was pretty cathartic. They also had a good selection of merch with various designs.
Although The Maine and Grayscale were great, the venue is not. The design of Ballpark Village is terrible for sound quality. The sound bounces and echoes off the walls and the stadium, which is more noticeable in some spots than others. It’s also miserably hot because of how the buildings cut off any cross-breeze. So although the weather was mild for an August evening in St. Louis (low 80s), the heat from all the people and a lack of breeze made it feel much hotter.
The other poor design choice is the “seating.” There are wide steps where people can sit and enjoy their drinks and give their feet a break — but they don’t face the stage. Ballpark Village seems like it’s trying desperately to resemble the Power & Light District in Kansas City, but it missed the mark. Where Power & Light has stairs/seating facing the stage, Ballpark Village is the opposite, so if you’re sitting, you can’t see anything at all (except the merch tents).
We ultimately left after just a few All Time Low songs. Why? Because they ran out of water. Because we didn’t get in until right before Grayscale went on, we didn’t have time before the show to get drinks. By the time we could leave our spot to get beer and water, you couldn’t buy water anywhere. The only options left were soda and alcohol. I don’t drink soda and because it was so hot, I didn’t want beer or anything else. It’s beyond frustrating that an outdoor venue would run out of water before the headlining band had even taken the stage. (This is part of the larger issue of charging people for water to begin with, but I’ll save that rant for another time.)
Since you couldn’t buy water anywhere, we left much earlier than we planned. The few All Time Low songs we did hear were great, and visually, it was a cool performance with the lights and the screen behind the band. It wasn’t a huge deal to leave early because we were primarily there for Grayscale and The Maine, but it was a frustrating experience, nonetheless.
Overall, the bands put on a great show and were clearly excited to be playing in front of people again. I probably won’t go to a show at Ballpark Village again (at least not anytime soon) because it was such a poor experience.
