Grapevine Gossip Teams Up With Old Friends For “Incognito Mode”

By: Cash Spicer

When it comes to the history of Grapevine Gossip, there’s a short version and a long version. The short version is that the young band released their first single “Raftel” (a desperate ballad that sounds like Anthony Green singing on a Makari song with a Jon Mess breakdown) in January 2023 and then released “Open Palms Reach” (which might be the best Isles & Glaciers impression to come out since The Hearts of the Lonely People) in March 2023. But it’s the long version of their history that’s more useful when it comes to explaining their latest single “Incognito Mode”. To start, long before Grapevine Gossip was even a speck in the trios’ eyes, the Grand Rapids, Michigan natives had been bumping into each other around their local scene for at least a decade, if not longer. Guitarist, vocalist, and instrumental songwriter Devon Sargent and lead vocalist and lyricist Sebastian Ozbut just missed each other in their respective band tenures, with Devon going from an early version of Hiragana to becoming a mainstay of Fire, Said the Albatross and Sebastian leaving Fire, Said the Albatross early on to front Hiragana. There was a tiny overlap that occurred while they were members of Fire, Said the Albatross and that was enough to convince the two that they needed to work together again, at some point. All the while, dirty vocalist and lyricist AJ Pierce and his former band, This Far, had become a regular supporting act for Hiragana around the western Michigan scene and endeared himself to Sebastian with his impressive gutturals and intriguing lyrics. Eventually, Fire, Said the Albatross would begin to lose momentum, and Devon would look for an outlet for his unrecorded FSTA music and Sebastian and AJ obliged.

Grapevine Gossip set the bar pretty high right out of the gate. Like any self respecting progressive post hardcore band they put frilly and captivating guitar parts near the forefront of all their music, but what has really set GG apart was their vocal versatility. Whether it be harmonizations, dueling vocal lines, or call and response, Grapevine Gossip was down for it. And why not when you have someone with Sebastian’s gritty high end range to go along with Devon’s deep emo mids, not to mention AJ’s classic fry vocals. “Incognito Mode”, though, might be the first time Grapevine Gossip decided to really lean into this strength and explore their multi vocalist line up. Everyone gets a verse including the group’s first rap feature; the ever talented and charming Caleb Gatling (currently of Laylines but also the frontman of Fire, Said The Albatross) makes the most of his 31 seconds of opportunity, gradually transitioning a rap verse into a brutal breakdown. 

To facilitate all the emphasis on the vocals Grapevine Gossip shed a bit of the progressiveness off their post hardcore, harkening back to something a little more reminiscent of the pre-crabcore, MySpace hardcore of the mid 2000s. Devon’s guitar work is the main catalyst of the change, moving away from hammer ons, pull offs, and tapping more towards picking through chords and letting the notes ring out with a layer of delay and reverb, before committing to fully strummed chords during Caleb’s verse, and then hitting an almost Secret-Band-esque riff to go along with AJ’s breakdown. All in all, Devon’s guitar is pulled back the most out of Grapevine Gossip’s first three singles, not only to make way for each vocalist but to really center the song on the lyrical tributes to each vocalist’s respective significant other. But Devon still finds a way to bring out a vibrant and unique guitar tone for each section of the song. And even after ceding some of the spotlight to the song’s vocals, Devon still gets to close everything out with a soft sustained guitar line before quietly, but with a hint of joy, uttering that he can’t go get beers with his friends because he promised to hang out with his wife, before finally ending the song. In a vacuum, it’s hard to deny that Grapevine Gossip (with the help of Laylines) delivered another delightful listening experience with “Incognito Mode”.

But “Incognito Mode'' might be at its most intriguing when under a microscope. It’s a song with purposeful contradictions and a surprisingly rich history. And while it may not have the deliberate conceptual complexity of, say, Coheed and Cambria, there's an interesting amount of depth in the choices made surrounding the song that are worth the attention. On a purely aesthetic basis Grapevine Gossip appears to try to, well maybe not tamp down, but divert their listeners from the cleaner sentimentality and romance in the song, by presenting a song title and cover art that hold somewhat adult connotations. I think the Caleb Gatling feature also partly serves a similar purpose, contributing a more lighthearted and humorous tribute to his wife, compared to the trio’s lyrics. And I don’t think these choices are made to shy away from the lyrical content of the song, but I think it's a self-awareness on the part of Grapevine Gossip to give their song multiple dimensions and elements, as opposed to simply just making a post-hardcore song about their wives or girlfriend (which don’t get me wrong, a GG song, without a Laylines feature, called “I Want You to Be Alright” would still be a worthwhile listen).

But stronger than the purposeful contrasts is the less obviously deliberate lean into nostalgia, resting on the rather obscure history of Grapevine Gossip themselves. “Incognito Mode'' is not only a departure from the progressive post hardcore sound present on their first two singles, in favor of a more classic post hardcore offering, but is also a song that literally features the former frontman of the band 2/3s of Grapevine Gossip used to be a part of. The trio embraces nostalgia in not only sound but in the very personnel present. But perhaps the more interesting fact is that “Incognito Mode” was the original name of Grapevine Gossip at their inception. And while the title is a tribute to an earlier period for the band, I think its presence almost begs you to imagine a timeline of the band/song. A history of “Incognito Mode” probably looks something like Devon having the DNA of the song written for Fire, Said the Albatross (and Caleb), but with FTSA not working on new music at that moment, Devon starts Incognito Mode on the side as an outlet for his unused FSTA ideas, before finally changing the name of the project to Grapevine Gossip, and then eventually getting Caleb to do vocals on a song he was already planning to write for him.

Strands of history are woven into the song: a post hardcore history, a history of the Grand Rapids music scene, and then, finally, the implied histories of each member of Grapevine Gossip’s romantic relationship in the song's lyrics. Each vocalist's paints in broad brush strokes with their lyrics but all roughly subscribe to the same motif of finding happiness in their significant others after overcoming relationship obstacles. And, in a way, I think this approach gives “Incognito Mode” a universality as each vocalist is able to share a single lyrical story with each other without compromising the narrative of their own contribution to the song. Even more interesting is the secondary role Caleb’s feature also kind of fulfills, as he gets to serve as an outside perspective for each of the trio’s stories, as someone who probably witnessed, first hand, the growth in each relationship, as a former band member and colleague.

But, perhaps, the most perplexing part of “Incognito Mode” is also the hardest to diagnose or even quantify. A haunting familiarity that tricks you into believing that you had heard the song many times before, if not grown up with it, is “Incognito Mode”’s true x-factor. And it’s a familiarity that’s not simply explained away by pointing to the older style incorporated into the song. A far stronger but more abstract explanation is that it’s a byproduct of Grapevine Gossip’s (as well as Caleb Gatling’s) own history that’s implicitly explored in “Incognito Mode” that makes the song feel like it didn’t come out on Cinco de Mayo, 2023, but was rather an anthem from your high school years. It’s a collective throwback or even reunion of sorts (even if it maybe wasn’t intentionally written that way) that gives the song it’s all too familiar feeling. It’s a familiarity that had me spending days trying to find an appropriate comparison for “Incognito Mode”, only for the song to fold back in on itself under my scrutiny, making me, for a minute, consider if Silverstein’s Discovering the Waterfront sounded like Grapevine Gossip’s “Incognito Mode” or if Grapevine Gossip’s “Incognito Mode” sounded like Silverstein’s Discovering the Waterfront, before rediscovering time and causality.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Grapevine Gossip, in their extremely brief existence, has already won on so many fronts. They’re musically captivating in many more ways than one, but also willing to add a profound level of depth to their music that I believe we will all come to appreciate as they grow into a more prominent band. For now though, I’m just happy to have them on my radar, especially as their recently announced June 5th follow up, “Cold x And x Nefarious” inches closer and closer. But until then, I’ll just listen to their first three songs on repeat to see what else there is to discover.