Do you already have an artist that checks the boxes of “grungy space rock” in your life? I didn’t, and I didn’t realize it was something I needed until I listened to Nathan Day. His latest single “Friends” is like a science experiment that fused together 90s Seattle grunge with Blur and Beck. Just an absolutely unreal combo of unique sounds and feelings.
From the videos we’ve seen so far, Nathan has intro’d us to the different parts of himself as a series of characters: an alien who represents isolation and abandonment, a skeleton who represents fear of death and existential defeat… and now, we meet the rabbit. This one is a little less on the nose, representing his experience with bipolar disorder. The stark contrast between the pink bunny suit and the lyrical content is the perfect example of “two polar opposites coming together to create one story.”
Speaking of unreal combos of sounds and feelings… wait until you hear the playlist he put together for y’all. Sonically, it covers so much in only ten songs, but somehow it makes absolutely perfect sense after listening to “Friends”. Nathan described it like this:
I wanted the playlist to basically be like “Friends: The Musical”. It’s like a journey through the thought process of the song – you want, you get, you’re scared, you leave, and you’re back to the beginning.
Getting to dive into the mind behind the song gives me an excuse to keep listening to this track on repeat and excuse it as “research” or “studying the layers and symbolism.” Really, I’ll accept any reason to keep Nathan Day on a loop until we get the next video and the next character to dive into.