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About
In a seaside town known for its 125-year-old amusement park, a boy dreamed of launching a band with a group of imaginary friends. Years later the Blackpool, UK native Nathan Day turns this dream into a reality by crafting his vision into otherworldly alternative pop. Energized by punk spirit and blessed with adventurous experimental magic, he manifests a sonic world inhabited by vibrant characters: an alien, a skeleton, a rabbit, a ghost. He adopts each character in both personality and costume for the respective tracks, representing mental illnesses he’s coped with. After racking up millions of streams, the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer invites everyone to join him on the colorful journey to his debut solo EP.
“When I was 16-years-old, I tried to start a band called Nathan Day’s Imaginary Friends,” he recalls. “The idea has always been in my head. Last year, I solidified it. The sentiment ofeachsong dictates the costume. If it’s mellow, it will be the ghost. The alien representsderealization, which happensto me through stress. When you see me in a pink rabbit costume, you know a heavy tuneis about to come. The visualsallow me to experiment with the songs and give them a face.”
Nathan naturally took to music. As a kid, he stumbled upon the piano in the main hall of his elementary school and would play one note at a time, letting it ring out in a massive echo. “That made me fall in love with music,”he recalls. “Soon, I started to sneak into the music roomdailytoplay guitar.”
However, his eager innocence drew the ire of classmates and subsequently led to bullying. Eventually, a neighbor lent him a guitar, and it unlocked a world of possibilities. At the same time, he discovered he had synesthesia, learned “how to play songsby color,”and eventually picked up a myriad of other instruments.Following high school, he took a job as a cleaner at a local college. A co-workernamed DaveyWilliamsnoticed one of his acoustic videos on Facebook and asked to play bass.At this point,Nathan’s first band Darlia was born. He taught his bandmates 13 songs and kicked off a whirlwind. They released a series of EPs with one full-lengthandtouredalongside The 1975, Nothing But Thieves, Gerard Way, and The Wombats. As the group went throughperiods of activity and inactivity, he recognized his path.“Being in a bandtaught me what I wanted to do,” he states. “It made me realize I had to do this for myself, because I just wanted to get as muchmusic outas possible.”
The next couple years tested his mettle. A breakup left him in homeless in London before ending up moving from one friend’s place to the next.Still, he managed to make music, collaborating with the likes of Micko Larkin [Courtney Love], Cam Blackwood [George Ezra], and Dan Lancaster [blink-182, Good Charlotte, Avril Lavigne].After seven years in London, he found himselfback in Blackpool. Quitting alcohol, his vision clarified like never beforeas he feverishly wrote, recorded, and produced everything on Garage Bandsolo.“When I stopped drinking, the art changed from writing random songs to creating something proper and cohesive,” he admits. “It birthed the idea of the costumes, representing each of my emotions. Ifinallyhad the clarity to channel these things into bodies.”
He crash-landed with “She Came Down From The Stars,” introducing the alien in the accompanying video.Run The Traphailed it as “absolutely awesome,”while Earmilkpredicted, “As the anticipation plateaus into the stadium-ready chorus, echoes of iconic rock stars through the ages come through, and with such consistent quality as this, Day is well on his way to joining them.”
On its heels, the skeleton took over “Fade Like You.”Uplifted by sweeping synths, warm distortion, and a skyscraping chorus, the song details “the moment you meet someone, and you’re both fucked, basically. There’s beauty, because you match each other.”
Then comes “FRIENDS.” He confesses, “When I’m with you, my whole world disappears, better promise me we’ll always be imaginary” witha jagged riff brushing up against a warbling groove.“It’s got a contrast between super heavy and the rabbit,” he smiles. “Because I’m 6’2”, it’s kind of funny to see me in a fluffy rabbit costume.”
A hummable clean guitar hops along through “Ghost Town”as he bottles alienation inside of a fluttering hypnotically haunting refrain. “It was very honest,” he explains. “I’d been evicted. I had no money left. I felt like I had no friends. I’m sure I did, but my mindset was I didn’t have anyone to talk to.”
In the end, this is a world you’ll want to visit again and again.
