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Album: "Everything Matters, Everything's Fire"
Artist: Lunar Vacation
Genre: #Indie, #IndieRock
Sub-Genre: #PoolRock, #GarageIndie, #Alternative
Label: Keeled Scales
Non-Airable Tracks: N/A
Lunar Vacation's recent album showcases a new beginning of where they're going regarding their music. In their prereleases, the songs highlighted the new instrumental they started to go for in their music, with the louder contrast of the guitar and the number of hidden vocals in the songs. For the past three years after their debut album, they've only been releasing singles and/or covers of Christmas songs or songs that the band members enjoy. Many fans, myself included have been waiting for the moment until the band even announced that they are coming out with something new. This being short, but sweet as an album is perfect. Gep's vocals create a soft and sweet tone for the songs, and the instrumentals done by Maggie, Matteo, Connor, and Ben perfectly complement each other in this project, and the many other projects.
The uprising of Lunar Vacation is one not to forget, considerably with their most popular song(s) being "Blue Honey" and "The Basement" which surpassed over 9 million streams on Spotify, their EPs put them in a brighter light, and especially during the indie culture of 2017-18, the new and different sounds being brought to the table in many people's lives. Because of their popularity, they were able to do some performances and even headline for SALES way back in 2019. However, their popularity seemed to decrease after COVID-19, arguably because of the different phases and eras that people were entering in 2020, 2021, and even 2022. People could argue that the indie genre can get tiring and repetitive because of the number of similarities and sounds that certain bands and artists have, or even because the indie culture slowly died out after COVID-19 because of how many different and vast types of trends in music, fashion, and internet culture brought to the table.
Because of that, the new sound they released shows what Lunar Vacation can offer. The album begins with 'Sick', which creates a mellow and light sound to start their album. The song describes the feeling (mentally and physically) of seeing things in the world continuously repeat themselves and not seeing true progress with anything, re-establishing a new meaning for the word, sick. The album then continues with the first prerelease song for the album, 'Set the Stage', STS (Set the Stage) is a story that describes the hardships when going through a breakup. Lingering for the same feelings that were there once before, even though they reached so far that they lost themselves in trying to regain everything with that person back. Later showing how they need to set the stage, could be argued as to face the reality of what happened between each other instead of straying away. Even though in the end, the lyrics illustrate that despite everything, they still see a future with the other person.
The album continues with 'Tom', 'Erase all the B's', 'Bitter', 'Fantasy', 'Just for Today', 'Better Luck', and 'You Shouldn't Be'. These songs complement each other and the album very well, the slow and mellow vibe every song has creates an atmosphere of emotions with a soft use of instruments. The slower instrumental done by Lunar Vacation is an experiment that the band wanted to explore, showing what they're all capable of. The band's beginnings in fast and true indie-like music, now moving to a different style of music show their musical exploration and what they want to release in the later future. Alongside their covers and previous releases before the album, their new style brings more people and their devoted fans to join the band's journey to what other types of songs/albums are released.
This album tells a story, recapping the emotions that the narrator has after their breakup with their partner, explaining the envy, rage, confusion, and sorrow that someone goes through during a breakup. The lyrics showcase how close the narrator and their ex were which creates more anger and confusion about why they broke up and were so mean to each other after their split. The slow tempo the album presents can represent how the emotions are feeling without having a physical emotion associated with it. In 'Fantasy' and 'Just for Today' highlight the yearning for the partner again, hence the titles 'Fantasy' and 'Just for Today'. Both songs describe the desire of wanting to see that person again and have that intimate relationship like there was before, even though the narrator knows it's wrong to go back especially after the breakup not being so healthy or level-minded. It later concludes with the acceptance of knowing that you cannot go back to that person, even through all those sudden urges, moving on is what's right.
Lunar Vacation is one of the many indie bands, but it is still my favorite for new sounds and catchy tunes. If you're interested in wanting to explore Lunar Vacation's music, this should be the one you should first listen to!
Sounds like:
Relax - Vacations
Natural - Shelly
Yam Yam - No Vacation (Vacations and No Vacation are different lol!)
Recommended Tracks:
Tom
Better Luck
Just for Today
The whole album
Reviewer's Name: Anicia Trejo-Flores
Date of Review: 10/3/24
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