Just over a year after Sloan Struble’s sold out show at First Avenue, His band Dayglow graduated to the larger Palace Theatre in St. Paul.
When Dayglow was here last year, I spoke about the smiles, the dancing, and the positive vibes Sloan Struble brought to the First Avenue Mainroom. Tonight at the Palace Theater, fans were treated to an even better concert experience. Not that his last performance here needed to be topped – However it appears as though Sloan took it upon himself to make those improvements. Fans looking for a positive, upbeat concert experience found it tonight.
The upbeat experience was made possible by Dayglow’s latest record, People in Motion, which was released October 7th. In interviews, Sloan described the latest effort as an album meant to be played live. After releasing two previous records, and touring behind 2021’s Harmony House, Sloan was able to take what he had learned from the road, and transfer that into his music and songwriting, Making what he calls his most cohesive body of work so far.
Songs from Harmony House appear to have taken a bit of a rest from the setlist, With only four songs making the cut into tonight’s show, compared to the nine songs from the album during Dayglow’s last show here. However, Dayglow’s Debut album and Fan Favorite Fuzzybrain still featured over seven songs in the setlist, each receiving great acclaim.
For the parents and/or music aficionados in the crowd, it was easy to see where Sloan draws his inspiration from. After performing Run The World!!! He transitioned into Daft Punk’s Robot Rock. Not long after, he also covered Lipps inc’s Funkytown, Perhaps as an omage to Minneapolis (where the song was originally recorded.) He even included a cover of Paul Simon’s Call Me Al which he nailed, although the song seemed to go over the heads of many of the younger audience, but had much applause from the parents in the balcony.
While these covers may seem out of place when just played on their own, Dayglow made it sound like they were all meant to be played together. His sound draws from different elements of each of these covers, which helps draw the older crowd of people to like hearing 80’s synths and vocoders, and the younger crowd who like to think that this is what 80’s music sounds like. It’s a testament to the skill that Sloan has to be able to meld these together, and what will make him an artist who will be doing this for quite some time. Myself and many fans hope he’ll come back again next year to the Palace again, or maybe even The Armory.
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