15 Minutes with Dayglow + Live at the O2 Ritz Manchester:

March 26th was just like any other day. I woke up, likely cancelled alarms, and finally left bed. Sleepily waltz my way to the kitchen, fill the Moka pot with some grounded coffee, water, assemble, and put it on the stove. Make breakfast, whatever that constitutes? Re-enter the kitchen, pour the now-done coffee from the Moka pot into a small cup (the right size) and settle on the couch with said breakfast and said coffee (in a small cup). Relax, or try to, before work, and finally, check e-mails to see a last-minute invite to the Dayglow show at the Ritz that evening, and an interview with Sloane Struble himself. Excitement and panic ensue. Get dressed, get undressed, get dressed again, wonder if you look "professional" enough, and finally, remind yourself that you are a small indie zine editor, not the editor of Rolling Stone, and settle for dungarees and a yellow cap from an American convenient store which says "BIG CHEESE" in embroidered capitalised red font.

That's how the morning went, for those that are interested. I walked to work, refamiliarising myself with Dayglow, an artist whose albums have accompanied me through different chapters of life, with breakout Fuzzybrain soundtracking my late teens and Harmony House during my university years, have to say People In Motion, I sort of dropped off, and finally self-titled Dayglow for the canon moment of my first face-to-face interview. When I arrived at work, I spent the day writing questions and settled on a few, which you will see below. While doing this, work was comically busy, and the phone was ringing off the hook - so naturally, I was flustered upon leaving. 

After work, I embarked on the journey to Manchester (from Liverpool), it is safe to say that the motorway is hell on earth. Alas, I arrived and had fifteen minutes to get to the venue, racing the streets of central Manchester to the Ritz, exasperated and panting (because I am wildly unfit), I made it. Struble and I spoke in a dressing room, grey and empty, him on a seat in front of me and myself on an unusually large brown leather sofa. It wasn't until I arrived that I realised Struble and I are similar ages, and his career and chapters of his life documented through his music followed a similar trajectory to my own (forgetting the success). Struble was friendly and carried the same light and warm demeanour presented in his music, and after some small talk, the interview commenced.

Upon telling Struble how I (like many) discovered his music through his breakthrough track 'Can I Call You Tonight?', I asked him about how he has previously stated that he views his first three albums as mixtapes rather than albums and if this realisation was a slow revelation or a spur-of-the-moment type of thing. To which he responded, "Hmm, I think it just slowly happened over time, like I don't... when I say that, it's not as though my past albums are less than, or baby albums, or something... Fuzzybrain is the king of my albums so far when it comes to what people are listening to. But I think my albums are so personal to me; it's just me recording it by myself, mixing it by myself, and then letting people listen to it. So, just for me personally, in my life, I had felt a shift in my growing up and feeling like I became myself, and I felt more confident and understood what I was doing and what I wanted out of Dayglow and everything. So, it just made sense for it to be a self-titled record, it felt like a fresh start to me. So, it was less about songwriting because it was the same process where I recorded by myself and made it by myself in my house. But, it just came from a different, more confident place. Where, like, Harmony House and People In Motion, and kind of Fuzzybrain, they're like concept albums. But this album, there was no concept, the concept was just Dayglow, you know?" 

Struble, like many people in their mid-20s, has unlocked a self-confidence that was unreachable in the past, and it truly does come across on the self-titled album and the subsequent set at the Ritz that evening. In an era where a single track can have up to six songwriters and three producers, one can't help but wonder, where is the artist? I can't hear them over all of the noise, what is their vision? Struble, who works on all his music in the studio alone, may not have this problem, but I wondered if this was a part of his decision to work on tracks alone. To which he responded, "That's a great question." Let's sit with that for a moment... four words every journalist loves to hear. "It's hard to like... I think so much, nowadays, is about, you know, presentation and image, and that's always been true. But, I think social media has made a different beast out of it. It's not about music at all anymore, it's way more about the story of who the person is and how they're presenting it - which makes sense, but yeah it is shocking sometimes seeing how many people can write a song because I've never experienced that before, I just do it by myself."

This is something I, and many creatives, can relate to - you can spend hours, days, weeks, and months on a project, only to have to sell it on social media so people might pay attention to it. I asked Struble how he copes with it, to which he responded, "I don't use my press people as much as I should, especially with the social media stuff. I'm usually posting my things, and I like to edit my photos myself and stuff. It just feels weird to me, somebody else presenting you? The thing with social media that's so hard is knowing how to balance coming up with an original idea but presenting it in a way that's not original. TikTok doesn't like new ideas; they want you to do a trend, they want you to do something that's already been done, and that's how the algorithm works. So, it's always been so confusing to me. How am I promoting new music and new art, but in a way that's not new? It's really confusing; it's hard to wrap my head around. At least just with TikTok. It's a weird thing; social media is such an amazing tool, and when you do have something go viral, it's like the greatest high in the world, where it's like, this is crazy cool that you can reach so many people. But, when it doesn't, it's just... I hate that that's the pinnacle of why art exists now is for it to go viral. It's a hard thing if it's your main focus." 

This is true, and to take the edge off of the hard-hitting facts, we took a break and laughed about the ridiculousness of the sort of content which does go viral. Take, for example, shitty Harry Potter edits which get over 1 million views, or the edits of dolphins with the song 'Symphony' by Clean Bandit.

The self-titled album, both visually and sonically, seems to me, very full circle from Fuzzybrain (his debut). I asked Struble whether this was purposeful and he said "Yeah, I definitely think so. I think this album to me, is what I wanted... I love Fuzzybrain, it's probably my favourite album that I've made. But, I think, what I wanted it to feel more like, is this record. Where, it's a little bit more rock and harder hitting? At least in the way that it's mixed. I mentally was visiting my childhood self a lot, like my pre-career version of myself, which was Fuzzybrain. When I was making Fuzzybrain, I was without a manager or anything, I was completely by myself, and I tried to channel that again. Yeah, I wanted it to feel like a full-circle thing, and it was, like personally, Mindless Creatures is a song that I wrote when I was 15 and it was the first Dayglow song that I put online, on Soundcloud. And, it's a song about getting old and jaded, so I rewrote it as my old and jaded self and a lot of things like that. It felt like closing a chapter and also starting a new one." 

At this point, I couldn't help but joke about the type of 'edgy' stuff you write as a teenager, trying to channel your inner Pete Wentz (who's a great songwriter, nonetheless). Yet, Struble said, "Yeah, and that's the thing too when you look at what you did when you were 15/16, you cringe a little bit, but it's so weird because that is Fuzzybrain is to me. But, the whole world, and my fan base, are like: 'That was the best thing.' So, it's been so confusing to me because that's what I did in the cringe part of my life? So, I kind of learned to embrace that part of myself and be like, 'It's not cringe', you know? Do whatever, maybe cringe is cool, I don't know."

Struble's music is typically very upbeat, with hard-hitting lyrics. I wondered how he gets himself out of his head enough to make upbeat instrumentals or, to go a step further, bring a sense of happiness to his vocals. "I think I have just never made other music. Naturally, faster music is easier for me to pay attention to, and music that I can dance to is easier, especially when recording, it feels like it would take too long if I'm playing a slow song. So, I just naturally make songs that are faster and quicker and have a hard-hitting drum beat. I think every artist has a responsibility for what you're making someone feel. It's all about feeling, and so for me, music has always been a tool to make me feel better, and I want to give that to other people. So, that's my goal with Dayglow. Making music is to make people feel good. Not in a naive, Disney Channel way, but just making songs that feel hopeful."

Anyone from a small place will be familiar with the existential dread of having locals/family/friends pass judgment on your art/interests. Struble comes from a small town in Texas and had just left months before the release of Fuzzybrain. I asked him whether it was scary to release music that he'd put so much work into, which people may not understand, both sonically and lyrically. Again, "That's a good question" my ego has inflated to the point of no return. "Yeah, I grew up in a small town in Texas, where no one was even interested in music/listening to music. It's crazy. Everybody just cared about football. You know, like 'Friday Night Lights'? That's basically where I grew up. So, it was definitely weird putting up music, and I felt like I had something to prove? And i'm still getting over that - I have total imposter syndrome all the time, where it's like I still feel like I have to prove that this is my career and my job. But, I don't know, I just was fully convinced that no one was going to listen to it anyway? So I didn't really care about putting it out." I asked if most support came from friends/people from his hometown or strangers, to which Struble said "Definitely not my hometown, I put Fuzzybrain out the first week of college, so I had moved to a different town to start college. It was all online, I had e-mailed a bunch of press things, blogs and whatnot, and sent them my album, and there was kind of buzz around that. But I just remember one day, randomly, like before I even had a team or bandmates or anything, Spotify had put 'Hot Rod' and 'Can I Call You Tonight?' on the Bedroom Pop playlist, which was a really big deal at the time, and from that it just took off. Then, Emma Chamberlain was a huge Dayglow fan, and that helped."

The cover of Fuzzybrain features a clay self-portrait of Struble, in juxtaposition with the live-in-the-flesh self-portrait of Struble featured on the cover of self-titled. Is this a testament to Struble's growing confidence/growth as an artist? "Yeah, exactly. I think it was kind of a Pinocchio-type thing, where it's like becoming what I was trying to become, and now i'm living it. But yeah, I mean you summed it up perfectly."

Big-brain questions aside, we got to chatting about some smaller cutesy things, like, what is Struble's favourite track from the album, or to put it better, which track means the most to him?' "'Mindless Creatures,' I think, is probably the most meaningful. 'Nothing Ever Does!!!' is probably my favourite from the album. It's a really fun, creative song, where it's like what you were saying, hard-hitting lyrics with upbeat music. It's a song about having a panic attack, but a fun song." Thank you to Van Halen and 'Jump' for inspiring a genre.

Finishing up, the all-important question of who inspires Struble? "I love '80s bands that were making new-wave stuff - I love David Byrne. I love the new wave time, music, and technology, it felt hopeful. They were using synthesisers, computers, and music, and it was cool. Whereas now, it's like we're all scared of technology. It just didn't feel like that in the music, and I just think that's the craziest idea, like in the '80s they were like 'The future's gonna be awesome.'"

Finally, Struble shouted out his friends in the band Sun Room and show-opener Della XOZ - "This is her first tour ever, she's awesome."

Della XOZ was, in fact, awesome - she captivated the audience with her whimsical vocals, midwest riffs, and witty lyricism. XOZ is a rising star for sure, and somebody we should keep a close eye on during their rise to the top.

Dayglow's set was bursting with energy, fan-favourites, both old and new, were scattered throughout, and the crowd was polite and immersed in the experience. Shoutout to the light technician, the lighting was sick, and truly added a whole new vibe to the show.