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At certain moments during his band’s performance at Mississippi Studios this past Saturday, High Vis vocalist Graham Sayle looked like he was on the verge of tears. He glared at the audience roiling before him, with the rest of the quintet amping up the heat behind him with a rough fusion of hardcore punk and abrasive pop, as flickers of emotion threatened to crack his otherwise steely gaze.
There certainly was a lot about the evening for him to be moved by. High Vis was closing out what was, by all accounts, a triumphal tour of North America with a sold-out show in Portland. The band was joined that night by Amusement, the fantastic new punk project fronted by John Wilkerson, whose previous group From Ashes Rise was a major influence on Sayle. And, as the singer explained to the audience, it was hard to fathom that “a bunch of dickheads from the U.K.” would be met with hundreds of fans climbing over one another to shout along with each song in a city thousands of miles from their home.
Not helping Sayle keep it together were the lyrics he had to sing. The lanky vocalist writes with such compassion and poetic fury about the plight of young people faced with few opportunities to climb free of the lower rungs of England’s class system. He talked of losing friends to violence and drugs and how this band and therapy helped him survive.
“We’re not driven by hate,” he belted out during “Trauma Bonds,” a highlight of his band’s 2022 album Blending. “We’re just slaves to fear/And are we still lucky to be here?” For at least one summer night in Portland, the answer to that question was an emphatic yes.