Vacations

Vacations’ fourth album finds the Newcastle indie rock quartet reaching new peaks and charting exciting new territory for themselves in the process. The follow-up to 2024’s sensational No Place Like Home adds new levels of warmth and texture to the group’s sound, drawing from the ornate chamber-pop of Weyes Blood as well as Beach Fossils’ gorgeously fuzzy rock style for inspiration. More than a decade into their career, Vacations’ sound continues to grow and mature, and Pursuit of Anything reflects the junctures the group have reached in their personal lives as well as the tightening bond that they’ve developed thus far in their incredible career. Pursuit of Anything arrives after extensive touring that followed No Place Like Home—a rigorous and wide-reaching schedule that included performances at Kilby Block Party and London Calling, as well as their own MATES festival (headlined by Vacations and featuring bands from Australia, the UK, and the U.S. curated by Vacations) in Los Angeles and late-night performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. “It got to a point where we needed to take a step back and look at our own lives,” bandleader Campbell Burns reflects. Indeed, as Vacations enjoyed a much-needed respite, life kept moving: Burns moved to L.A. briefly before eventually settling down in Brooklyn, bassist Jake Johnson and drummer Joseph Van Lier both got married (the latter also welcomed his first child), and guitarist Nate Delizzotti relocated to Melbourne. Amidst all this personal motion, Pursuit of Anything began to take shape, as Burns began writing the album in L.A. The band joined him for multiple sessions while in L.A. before Burns moved to NYC where he continued writing and recording in his apartment. The band reconvened for more sessions at Golden Retriever in Sydney to continue recording its ten songs. Burns then finished the album in NYC at Thump Studios and his apartment, along with multiple session musicians who were enlisted to help shape the record’s sound. Lyrically, Pursuit of Anything hones in on the growing pains of getting older, as well as how the ties that bind only grow stronger as a result of those opposing forces. “We're all going through a transitional period, and our lives are kind of starting to diverge in many different ways,” Burns says. “When Vacations started, I was adamant about it being a solo project. Over time, it became a band, and we've become so close. These people are my best friends—I've seen them go through so much, and we all help each other.” That close camaraderie led to Pursuit of Anything becoming more of a full-band than ever before: “In the studio, it’s all of us working towards the same goal and trying to get the best out of each other. There's a lot of love and respect that goes into everything, and it doesn't ever feel like work.” Adding to the creative pot was engineer Beatriz Artola, who Burns refers to as “The kind of person that you can trust to make changes, which goes a long way. It was like working with a mentor. I have so much respect for her, and she gave me a lot of self-confidence in my own production skills as well.” And Pursuit of Anything brims with easygoing self-confidence throughout, as Vacations make it sound easy to craft such impossibly pristine guitar pop. Ironically, the sparkling “Holy Grail” was directly inspired by a Zoom call with the band’s manager in which the quartet found themselves at a career crossroads: “We were caught in this catch-22 of needing to get into the studio so that we had a reason to keep going on the road. It’s about this idea that something that can bring you so much joy and fulfillment in life can also cause so much stress. But when you do figure it out, it's one of the most gratifying experiences you can have.” The album’s closing ballad “Lucky Forever,” which Burns describes as “me trying to write the most clichéd love song that I can while trying to be really earnest” and was directly inspired by his attending the weddings of Johnson and Van Lier. “I wanted to write a song from their perspective,” he recalls. “I don't really write love songs, and as a subject it's been incredibly overdone. But it was really refreshing to just write something that was so simple when it came to the intention.” The introspective penultimate track “I See Myself in You” was written with Frank Corr of labelmates Morning Silk, who became a friend of Burns’ following his move to NYC. “We’d get together and write, and we ended up with this lush arrangement,” he recalls. The song was inspired by a conversation Burns had with his parents in Sydney before flying back to New York City. He reflects, “I was going through something personal at the time, and they were there for me in a way that felt like I was talking to my best friends, because I was. My relationship with my parents has changed so much over the course of my life and it made me pause and realise how similar we are and our experiences. I also started to wonder if one day I’ll be in their position, having a similar conversation with my child.” Such moments tie in to Pursuit of Anything’s larger thematic sweep, which Burns describes as “The coming-of-age that is going into your 30s while thinking about your younger self.” Fittingly, the spiky and spritely “Last Call,” which emerged out of his love for “short, catchy songs,” uses the titular closing time at a watering hole to represent the very real fear of time slipping away from your very fingers. “Am I not going to catch up?” he rhetorically asks while talking about the song’s broader thematic bent. “Am I just stuck wasting away doing things that are more trivial?” Luckily, the accomplishments reflected in Pursuit of Anything are proof that, at this very moment, Vacations are using their time extremely wisely. “This record is our most refined and intentional effort, and we've also mellowed out a lot as people,” he reflects while talking about how the record represents this moment in time for Vacations. “It used to feel like we were always under some kind of crunch from the industry, whereas this record was very easy to put together. I’m excited to see where it can take us next.” And Pursuit of Anything represents the beginning of a bold new chapter for Vacations, as well as a crowning achievement in a catalog that’s already been studded with accomplishments.