Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Vacation - Vacation LP


There are two albums right now that I am majorly obsessed with, and both of them happen to be called 'Vacation'. One, as you know, is Bomb the Music Industry's recent release, and the other is the new self titled LP by the Cincinnati pop-punk band Vacation. I've already reviewed BTMI's masterpiece, so now it's time for me to finally rant about Vacation's masterpiece. I throw around the world masterpiece a lot. But, it's totally 100% accurate every time I use it.

(The best way to read this review is to be listening to the album at the time time...which is easy enough since you can stream it online FOR FREE. You can't skip around tracks or anything though, this is the internet version of listening to the vinyl, bro.)

You may notice immediately upon turning this record on that it's going to be a pleasant mess of noise from start to finish. The recording quality isn't the greatest thing in the world, but I think it fits the songs and suits Vacation's style a lot better. I think it'd be way less entertaining and a pretty dull if this was recording in The Blasting Room or something like that. Despite being pretty lo-fi, the quality is still miles better than it was for The Do Shit Tape/CD Vacation released on If You Make It a while back. I love all the songs on that release, but I couldn't bear the quality for the most part. However, this LP sounds perfect to me. It's like music to my ears. Well, it IS music to my ears.

All the songs on this release are so catchy that they could catch polio after having been thoroughly vaccinated. They're so catchy that they could catch a baseball thrown by Kenny Powers in his fucking prime. There's not a single song that doesn't fit in and there's not a single song that overstays its welcome. There's 33 minutes of what is honestly going to be in the top 10 releases of the year. Listening to this record feels a lot like being at an actual Vacation show...if you've been to one, you're definitely going to have a lot of flashbacks while playing this album. And if you haven't been to one, you need to get a move on it.

The unfortunate part about listening to the trackless stream of the album is that I don't know any song titles so I can't be like, "this track is awesome!" with you knowing what track I am referring to. Actually, just fastforward to nearly 16 minutes in. That's my favorite song on this album. It's kind of soft, it's extremely infectious, and the lyrics represent the band very well. Vacation are great dudes, who have this habit of putting on really good shows at various house venues and bars in the Cincinnati area. They used to have this place called the Bike Haus, and it was everyone I know's favorite venue in the world. The shows were always 5 bucks, the money went exclusively to the bands (with a priority to the ones who are travelling the furthest), and the dudes even fixed bikes for free. They even offered to let me try out their tall bike, but I never got around to it. I think I may've mentioned this all in the last review I did of this band. Point is, it's damn near impossible to find better dudes. And if you do, and they happen to also record music, you better make a point to listen to that music. Because if history repeats itself, it's bound to be fucking awesome.

So, you have this beautiful link to stream this album, and you can leave it bookmarked forever and listen to it as many times as possible until it ever gets taken down for whatever reason. And another cool thing is that soon you'll be able to purchase the vinyl from Let's Pretend Records and Mandible Records. I know I'm buying this vinyl once I quit being such a broke asshole.

10/10 slices of pizza!

-Idle

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