The atmosphere at Indianapolis’s oldest standing stage house on Saturday night was energizing. Dayglow and Sunroom came to life on stage at Old National Centre’s Egyptian Room on Saturday night.
My favorite thing about Indy’s Egyptian Room is that it’s a standing room only venue. I love general admission show’s, they offer an intimate experience with the performers and the people next to you, chances are that you are going to walk out of there with a new friend.
Opening band Sunroom stormed the stage first, lead singer Luke Asgian was followed by guitarist Ashton Minnich, bassist Max Pinomonti, and drummer Thomas Rhodes. The tone of the set was established throughout the first four songs, with the lights on stage being only the color red. As a photographer – this isn’t ideal, but as a live music enjoyer it was perfect for the band. The SoCal band sticks to the rock-alt scene, but very obviously has some California influence in their tracks. Sunroom got their start in 2020, with a couple songs gaining traction on social media, mostly TikTok. Which we will see again with Dayglow and will continue to see with newer artists. Their most popular song “Sol Del Sur” released in 2020, has 22 million streams on spotify. The surfy-cruise crew has potential to have their own headlining tour in the future, but I thought it was an interesting choice to have the open for Dayglow. The discographies between the two have very different styles.
Dayglow waltzed on stage around 9:00 pm Saturday, starting the night off with a mashup of songs across his discography. The stage decor aligned with Sloan Struble’s visual design of his self-titled album Dayglow. A minimalistic design of letters spelling out “Dayglow” with a large white star arched over the band.
The indie-pop artist Sloan Struble started releasing music in 2016 under the name “Kindred” until 2018, when he released singles leading up to the 2019 album Fuzzybrain under the music project name “Dayglow.” Fuzzybrain gained traction on TikTok with the hit single “Can I Call You Tonight?”
Dayglow sounds incredible live, you can tell Sloan and his crew put just as much effort in recording their songs as they do performing them. I also really enjoy Sloan’s energy on stage. His music to me exudes the energy of bright red, and the fact he was wearing red this night and his guitar is an iconic color of red, it really just tied everything together for me.
After his opening mashup of songs “Junior Varsity” and “Broken Bone,” Struble goes into his song “Hot Rod” from Fuzzybrain. I was in the photo pit in front of the stage while he performed this song, and I can’t tell you which was louder, the speakers in front of me or the fans at the barricade. This song is one of Dayglow’s most popular tracks, it has over 275 million streams on spotify, coming it second for his most streamed songs.
Sloan Struble considers Dayglow to be a music project, similar to Tame Impala. Where he isn’t just making music, but inspiring other creative projects within each record. Dayglow has its own record label, called “Very Nice Records” based out of Austin, Texas where Sloan is originally from.
My favorite moments of the night are when Dayglow performed songs from the new self-titled album. I love “Every Little Thing I Say I Do” and “Mindless Creatures” as well as “Cocoon” These songs are back to back to back on the album and have easily become some of my favorite Dayglow songs. If you haven’t listened to Dayglow, these songs are perfect openers to his discography. As well as “Run the World!!!” and “Can I Call You Tonight?” from Fuzzybrain.
It truly was a night where everyone was just having a good time together. Dayglow is one of those artists that doesnt have a whole lot of emotional sounding songs – so the crowd really was just rocking out the whole time. I would be surprised if 50% of the crowd didn’t walk out there with a sore throat.
Artists I would compare to Dayglow the most would probably be Still Woozy, Peach Pit, COIN, and Wallows. If you are a fan of indie-pop, Dayglow is a must for your playlists.
Photos by Ella Absher (@ absherstudios)
Written By Ella Absher
