An Interview with Dayglow
Written for Unclear Magazine, August 2022
It never gets old meeting and talking to artists around my age exploring their dreams in the biggest way possible. Sloan Struble, better known as the frontman of Dayglow, is doing just that. At just 23 years old, Sloan has three albums under his belt, Fuzzy Brain, Harmony House, and the soon to be released, People In Motion. Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, this indie-pop sensation was prepared for the spotlight from day one - even releasing music under a different name, Kindred, a few years before founding what we now know as the band Dayglow.
With his latest release, “Then It All Goes Away”, Sloan announced Dayglow’s third album, People In Motion, along with a North American tour starting just before the album’s release in October and spanning through the beginning of December 2022.
Photo by Isabel Dowell
You introduced yourself as Sloan, do you see yourself differently being Dayglow versus Sloan?
SLOAN: Sort of, they're interchangeable. I just liked the idea of having an outlet for me to exist in as an artist. Also, it kind of allows the listener to enter into a world. So rather than just using my name, like following the footsteps of Tame Impala or Passion Pit, these artists that I grew up listening to, I just wanted to have a name for myself as well.
Is it weird being the frontman of Dayglow? People kind of see you as Dayglow, even though you have a whole band behind you.
SLOAN: It's fun because I write and play all the parts and recordings, and I make all the music myself. I will teach my friends who are my band the parts they need to know. They'll just come over to my house and like, I'm like, put your finger here. We kind of have this fun show that we put together. It's nice to have my friends on the road and it's not something I could do alone.
When you started Dayglow, did you kind of have it in mind that it was going to be you and your friends?
SLOAN: Yeah! I love Tame Impala and you know, there's those bands where the producer is the lead singer, and they're touring with a band. I just really liked the concept of that. When I started Dayglow, or just the project itself, the concept I wanted to make is music that can be played by a five piece band live. Originally, I was making pretty electronic music and I just couldn't finish anything because I didn't have any limitations. Dayglow came out of the idea wanting to make music that can be played live by five people. The goal at the end was to find a band to perform the songs. Fuzzy Brain was over two years old before I had a band to play with me.
You mentioned that you’re very reminiscent of Tame Impala, Passion Pit, and a lot of people say you take on this 80s groove type of music. Do you have any older influences?
SLOAN: Most of my favorite artists are from the 80s. I love Paul Simon or James Taylor.Those people who were like, just musicians, I feel like that's a really rare thing that doesn't really exist in pop culture anymore. Now, it’s actors that are kind of musicians. In the 80s, there were all these people that were totally musicians that somehow became actors. I love that style of pop culture, Paul Simon, I really love David Byrne from Talking Heads. You know, people like that.
What category would you put your music into? I've heard people say it's everything from bedroom pop to garage indie-rock, which is such a wide range. Do you find yourself in a specific genre?
SLOAN: I don't know. I mean, I think indie pop makes sense. It's definitely just like pop music. I really don't stretch any jazz boundaries or anything musically, it's a definite pop structure. I'm making it all myself and I want it to feel approachable. So, it's not too glossy, or too empty that people would think like pop music is. I personally don't but I know people think that. Yeah, it's indie pop, whatever that means.
Your last album was Harmony House in 2021 and you kind of said it was based off of an unwritten sitcom. Since it’s been over a year now that it's been out, have you, theoretically, written that sitcom? Or thought of what that's like?
SLOAN: No, I mean, that was a pretty elaborate idea that I probably thought too much about. Yeah, it just really helped me write the songs coming up with a large concept like that. In the way I looked at it, it was like The Truman Show. I was writing a sitcom about my life, processing it as if people were actually watching me, because I felt like they were. I just suddenly had all these people paying attention to what I was doing and it was really overwhelming. The way that got me through writing the songs was to have this thing in my head as a concept, but I'm sure it'll never be conceptualized other than in the album.
Your next album is People in Motion and how you're saying, you focus on that bigger concept, you had said that you experienced a lot of life changes when writing that album. How do you feel those emotions are portrayed in the album? Do you feel like people will be able to pick those out?
SLOAN: I think people will definitely be able to pick it out. I think the album feels really deep and the lyrics are really something I'm proud of. Yeah, I'm just really proud of the album. It came together really naturally and I try not to limit myself by any means. Both with Harmony House and Fuzzy Brain, I was kind of referencing an era where with People In Motion, I just wanted to use my imagination and make it its own thing. It's been a really fun challenge that just happened really organically and naturally. It’s a dance album, for sure. A lot of dancy songs, but also emotionally deep and will give people hope, hopefully listening to it.
Is there a specific song of yours throughout any of your albums, even unreleased, that you feel best describes who you are or your sound?
SLOAN: Oh, man. I don't know. I kind of think with every album, I try to have like a really wide radius. The type of sounds that I make the album feel like, but at the core, there's usually like, two songs that I really focus on, trying to be the face of the album. So for Fuzzy Brain, that would be “Hot Rod” and “Can I Call You Tonight?”. For Harmony House, it's “Close to You” and “Medicine”, they usually end up being singles. Then for People in Motion, there's a song called “Second Nature”.
I don't know if I can announce it yet, but that's gonna be a single and “Then It All Goes Away”.
Those are the two all around songs that fit the album.
You released “Then It All Goes Away”. That one's out now, you announced the album, and your upcoming North American tour. How is everything going? How are you feeling?
SLOAN: Good. I'm really excited. Yeah, I mean, this year has been so busy and encouraging. It only feels like it's the beginning of something and that can be really scary because it's like, what's going to happen? But it's all really good energy. And I have amazing fans and people are thankfully buying tickets to the shows. So it's going good. I feel really optimistic about the future.
Have you had any personal limitations or emotions with everything that happened with COVID? Has it been hard for you to jump back into everything?
Sloan: It's definitely overwhelming. It's not a position I ever thought I would be in any festival, just the fact that I get to come to festivals for free is cool, you know, that's awesome, because I would have done that already. So the fact that I'm headlining a stage tonight, playing these shows is really weird. There's really no other way to describe it. And that's okay that it's weird, but that's just kind of all it is. I don't know how else to say it. It's cool. It's really, really, really cool and that's overwhelming in good ways.
It's fun. It can be really overwhelming as an artist, but I just try to focus on the people that are here, you know. You never know what people are going through when they're here. There's 1000s of people here with 1000s of different stories and I just kind of try to take the responsibility of being the artist and providing them with a good time. That's what it's all about, you know, being paid to be here. It's my job to make them have a good time. Hopefully, I do that.
If you weren't living this life, what would have been another career path for you?
SLOAN: No idea. I went to college… I dropped out of college freshman year, but I went for Marketing and I kind of already do that right now. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would be some sort of advertising thing. I love making videos. I bet I would have done something creative around making commercials or something like YouTube videos.
In the time you were in college, did you learn anything that you use now?
SLOAN: In my advertising class? I don't know how, I mean, I passed everything, but I was not paying attention. I learned a little bit of French. In my advertising classes, I was almost always making Dayglow graphics or emailing people back. Yeah, so I was definitely doing work in class.
Dayglow
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