Vacations Come of Age, Again, on Pursuit of Anything
For some of us, the word "decade" still conjures the early 2000s, even though most of us were not old enough to actually live through it. But do the math, and we find ourselves reminiscing about 2016 (which is its own kind of "-core" now) and a very specific moment on SoundCloud — with bands leaning into hazy, unhurried indie pop, with the kind of sound that would include Mac DeMarco on a late-night playlist.
Vacations were part of that scene — especially if you were paying attention back then; songs like "Hamilton South" or "Days" were a snapshot of what it felt like to be young and unsure of what came next. Years later, the Newcastle four-piece, made up of Campbell Burns, Nate Delizzotti, Jake Johnson and Joseph Van Lier, have outlasted that moment, found a second audience on TikTok through "Young" and "Telephones," and grown up in public across four albums, with 2024's No Place Like Home capping their most successful run yet. Pursuit of Anything is the first record they've made in their 30s, and it sounds like it.
While the name Vacations suggests sunny, carefree days, the music has always carried something more restless underneath: doubt dressed up as a melody you can hum.
What sets the album apart is its scale. Burns wanted to make the album he had imagined at 20 but "didn't necessarily know how to, in terms of songwriting and production," and has finally done it, trading the band's usual jangle for lush, '60s-leaning arrangements with French horn, flugelhorn, trombone, and mellotron, taking inspiration from the Beach Boys and Beatles. His process is still the same as it was at 16, a guitar, a laptop and some loops, but the results have grown fuller. Mix engineer and collaborator Beatriz Artola helped shape the final sound, and Frank Corr of labelmates Morning Silk co-wrote "I See Myself in You."
"I See Myself in You" and "Lucky Forever," the two songs Burns names as the heart of the record, lean furthest into that fuller sound. The first, written after a conversation with his parents, wonders whether he will one day have the same talk with a child of his own. The second, written for his bandmates' weddings, is a love song at its most sincere and vulnerable.
Not everything is so grand, though. "Last Call" came out of Burns' love for short, catchy songs, and its quick, spiky energy is a reminder of the band that first caught people's attention. It is also the album's most openly reflective moment, picturing the last person at the bar after everyone else has moved on. That tender, searching feeling runs gently through the rest of the record.
"Holy Grail" grew out of a stressful stretch when the band wanted to make new music but felt stuck on the road, and it chases a happiness that keeps slipping out of reach. "Punchline," written in Burns' first year in New York as he turned 30, is about "taking everything day by day and figuring it all out." For Burns, growing up is something that "will happen to you again and again over time."
On the song, he sings the familiar checklist, "Get a job, move out, fall in love / Take a walk, cut your hair, cry about it," before admitting, "There must be a thousand strangers like me here." Delivered with his easy warmth, it's a truth anyone growing up will recognise.
Burns sees each record as a snapshot of where the band is at the time. "Every album is a time capsule for me," he says. "That's how I interpret it, and I think that helps a lot. It's me and the band in a very particular moment in time. Chronicles our lives."
These days the band is spread across the map. Burns lives in New York, Delizzotti is in Melbourne, and Johnson and Van Lier are still in Newcastle, where Van Lier recently became a father. So Pursuit of Anything came together in pieces, with Burns sending song ideas from his apartment and the band meeting in Sydney to finish them. For Burns, those trips double as time with family. "It's essentially a holiday for me," he says. "It can seem very complicated, but it is somehow easier once you're actually living it."
That ease carries over to how he sees his career. Ask whether ten years in music has ever brought real doubt and he doesn't hesitate. "I just can't imagine doing anything else," he says. "It's what I'm born, built, programmed to do."
That, more than the geography or the arrangements, might be the real heart of Pursuit of Anything: coming of age doesn't end with your twenties. Vacations have grown up alongside the people who first found them, and a decade and three continents in, they have learned to live in the moment, one album, one time capsule, at a time.
Pursuit of Anything is out October 2nd on Nettwerk.
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