Dayglow, Bedroom Pop, and the Introspectivity of Growing Up
Image Source: Daily Californian
BY KATIE ROHRBAUGH ‘24
September night was cool and the air was filled with the buzz of drunk teens and millennials milling around the artsy part of Philadelphia. For once, I was among the oldest of the concert-going crowd. Young people, sporadically masked, flashed vaccine cards to the bouncers and filtered into the Theatre of Living Arts. I followed, unsure what to expect inside. A decent crowd — 400 to 500 people — stood patiently before an empty stage. Now all I had to do was wait.
Who was I waiting for? Dayglow, the indie pop project of Sloan Struble. Struble — a much more musically motivated youth than I — taught himself how to play guitar, bass, keyboard, synth, and drums through GarageBand at the age of ten. He started the band in 2017 and released its debut album Fuzzybrain the following year. Incidentally, I first listened to the album almost exactly a year later, in September 2019.
Struble, born in 1999, wrote Fuzzybrain during the transition between his senior year of high school and first year of college at UT Austin. It’s no surprise that many of Fuzzybrain’s thematic elements revolve around the ambiguity of the future, especially regarding relationships (“Can I Call You Tonight?”, “Hot Rod”), personal growth (“False Direction”, “Run the World!!!!”), and growing up (“Junior Varsity”). Then a junior in high school, I felt a startling resonance with his strangely optimistic lack of direction in life. Now as a college sophomore, I still do. “We’re in the real world now // Not junior varsity” was a line that stayed with me as I applied for college and often punctures my psyche during exam preparation or long thoughts about my future. Indecision regularly afflicts me. When Struble sings “scattered mind, I call it a friend // I wish I thought a bit less and spoke up instead” (“Fuzzybrain”), I feel my own machinations in his voice. Yet, as Struble makes peace with his conscience, he encourages me to do the same.
I often listened to Dayglow in the quiet comfort of my bedroom. As I waited for the concert to begin, I thought it would be strange to listen to the band in such an unfamiliar setting. Instead of cozy lighting, I was blanketed in darkness. Rather than working quietly in my comfy chair, I was packed in a musty venue, surrounded by murmuring strangers. These elements of my room—the comfort and quiet of being alone with my thoughts, undisturbed—felt so intrinsic to my Dayglow listening experience, and their absence at this concert venue brought me pause.
Fuzzybrain is categorized under the sub-genre of Bedroom Pop. The bedroom aspect of bedroom pop goes both ways — the music is both produced and enjoyed within the bedroom. Bedroom pop as a phenomenon began in the mid-2000s, heavily corresponding with the accessibility of mixing software like Logic Pro or Garageband. Struble mixed, produced, and released Fuzzybrain entirely in his own room. Besides Struble, popular young artists like Clairo, girl in red, Conan Gray, and mxmtoon define this category. Fuzzybrain exemplifies another key feature of bedroom pop: described as blurry or dream-like, the genre aspires to emulate the space it most often inhabits—the bedroom. So, alongside dreamy lo-fi beats, adolescent introspection and nostalgia are the genre’s most definitive characteristics.
So what happens when the adolescent grows up? In the case of Dayglow and many other indie artists, they release more music. Released this past May, Dayglow’s second album, Harmony House, thematically steps away from the pressures of change and grounds itself instead in self-discovery. Still, Struble’s pensive lyrics continue to push for growth and an optimistic future (See “Moving Out” and “Woah Man”).
I wasn’t sure how Dayglow’s nostalgic synth beats would translate through a concert experience. I was accustomed to listening to Dayglow’s music in the comfort and sanctity of my room. How would it feel to experience this vulnerability in a crowd? Would the songs sound and feel just as impactful? The concert soon put an end to my apprehension. Struble often introduced songs on guitar, weaving synth motifs into the music at thematic intervals, creating a satisfying blend of the spontaneity of live performance and the familiarity of recorded songs. The crowd, too, was engaged and energetic — and the lighting! The picture I took (shown above) speaks for itself. Despite not being in the familiar environment of my room, I felt a new kind of comfort as the crowd belted out those familiar lyrics: “We’re in the real world now // Not junior varsity.” Despite facing a murky and unpredictable transition from high school to college, I have endured and grown.
Whether in-person or over Spotify, Dayglow has continued to bring me nostalgic comfort and optimism as I face the unknowable future and pressures of adulthood.