Australian Indie Band Vacations' Favorite Part of Making 'No Place Like Home'

Vacations’ singer and bassist talk fan relationships, major milestones and their new album “No Place Like Home”

Making an album that is emotionally honest is no small feat, though today it can seem that artists deal in selling a sense of authenticity online. But Vacations, an exact-genre-not-yet-named indie band from Australia, have managed to write something that is strikingly, truly human on their latest album, No Place Like Home. The album, like people, exists in the gray space between coming and going, knowing oneself and growing into someone new.

The group is composed of Campbell Burns (vocals), Jake Johnson (Bass), Nate Delizzotti (guitar) and Joseph Van Lier (drums), and their 10-track album highlights what Vacations does best — especially on stage. While the album on its own can feel calm, with quiet dips between verses and bridges, and surf-rock-esque guitar lines, on stage, the group is electric. 

As soon as they walked on stage in Philly, it was palpable how thrilled the crowd was to get straight into the new tunes, jumping to and cheering on “Next Exit.” Through a speaker, it’s a fun summer tune to play while driving with the windows down. In a venue packed with eager fans, and on stage with the band’s infectious energy, it’s the kind of song that demands to be screamed back at the band.

But before they met the crowd, Pleaser had the chance to chat with singer Campbell Burns and bassist Jake Johnson. They told us about how this album differed from those before, both in process and emotional vulnerability, their relationship with fans, and more:

PHOTO BY LINDSEY DADOURIAN: CAMPBELL BURNS (LEFT) AND JAKE JOHNSON (RIGHT)

Pleaser: I've seen that the headlines are calling you Australia's greatest boy band, which I think is such a fun title. 

Campbell Burns: Self-imposed.

You’ve said it comes from feeling very equal as a group — not having that “frontman and then band” relationship. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your fans, and how you feel close to them and how they get to know y'all? 

CB: I think we try to keep a sense of community at our shows and engage with our fans whether that is on social media replying to comments or messages. Or if we're at a show and someone is filming the show on their 3DS or something I'll usually point them out, or someone's holding a sign, there's a bit of banter back and forth. I don't like the idea of being like on a pedestal. I'm just a guy, we're all just people. I like trying to break down that barrier and especially as a band as well because I don't want to be a frontman — I think of say The Strokes or something, I just think of Julian Casablancas, but I don't really think of the rest of the band members. 

Jake Johnson: I think we played such small intimate shows for so long that it helped really foster that kind of tight knit community as well. And it would have been the coolest thing ever if when I was a teenager and first started going to shows, I could reach out to bands I enjoyed on Instagram or whatever else and get a response from them. That would have blown my mind, and so I think that's a nice thing to be able to do when we get the chance to actively engage with our fans as much as we can. 

Where do you guys feel like your line is with engaging with fans on social media, but also having a separation for the seriousness of the music?

CB: I think it's almost like an intuition or a gut feeling, because I know what it's like to feel pressured by an external source whether it's your manager or your record label to post on social media. And any time that pressure has come onto me, I absolutely despise social media and you start to see the dark side of it. Whereas if it's coming from a genuine place, like for myself, and I just want to post a joke because I think it's funny, then I feel really good about it. It feels like again engaging with that community and kind of breaking down that barrier. 

It feels a lot more natural and that's definitely been a process that has taken quite a lot of time to get to that point where I'm now okay with my relationship with social media. Because for a minute there when there was that viral moment I was like, “How do I approach this?” There are so many people listening to us now and watching every single move, it's sort of like, how do you present yourself to the world?

JJ: It was harder as well because it was during lockdown and so social media was the only way we were connecting with fans. So I felt like that was then shaping the whole relationship. But I now think of social media and our presence as just “in addition to.” It's one facet of the band. I don't think anybody is listening to the album or at a show and thinking about what our Instagram page looks like. It doesn't matter really. So if there's a different fun way of engaging fans like, “hey we've got a tour coming up” and telling you through a meme of two people kissing rather than like a tour poster.

CB: It’s just so easy to do as well. It got to the point where I was like surely this can be fun and entertaining. And I enjoy sh*tposting and I enjoy that the other people enjoy it and it creates a very genuine like personable kind of persona for the band. Because you can see it from miles away when a band has made a post and it's been forced or it's just not authentic and I never want to do that again. 

I want to talk about the new album No Place Like Home. It's very admirable when people are able to talk about personal things through their music, because it's hard, but I also know that there can be an element of “How much of myself do I want people to actually know?” Is your music a reflection of who you are, or is it the music and you want your listeners to shape it as they take it?

CB: It's kind of both. Especially with No Place Like Home, that is very much genuine from the heart experience and I feel very comfortable being that vulnerable and sharing that part of myself because it's through music. Whereas if you ask me to — at least when I was writing it — get on stage and talk about a lot of those issues, whether it be like my OCD diagnosis or my constant transit going back and forth between Australia and America and trying to figure out where to live, then it might be a bit more difficult. But I feel quite comfortable with that now because I've done the work over years and had those experiences to shape who I am and to be very expressive. So it feels really normal for me to talk about it now. 

But, you know, sometimes fans come up to me and they have their own interpretation of the song, which is kind of funny because this album is actually a lot more blunt with the lyricism and concept. It's like, “No, this is exactly what it's about,” I'm not trying to be flowery with the language or anything.

JJ: You [CB] have often said that you don't always know what you're writing about until you're able to take a look back.

CB: Yeah, that also is kind of the funny thing with songwriting. I've spoken to a lot of other songwriters and friends of mine with similar experiences where it's like, you might have a vague idea or you're writing and you have no idea at all and then over time the meaning of the song changes. It's very dynamic and you could mean something else entirely two or three years later. It’s definitely happened.

What were each of y'all's favorite part of the album process, whether it's writing or recording? 

JJ: My favorite moment was working with John Velasquez, our producer for this one. John is just such a lovely guy and I think his mindset, like work ethos, was kind of perfect for what we needed at the time. He was just super interested in getting to the core of what we were feeling as we were putting stuff down to track…I feel like in the past when we've been writing it's been in this almost third-person view, “What will this song be like when we're performing it for people” kind of thing. Whereas John was very much just like, “You're just writing for yourself.” And then, being finished and stepping back and releasing an album, and other people having their time to experience that, it's like there was no moment of me imagining how they would react to it beforehand, you just get to experience that in the real with them.

CB: I think as well the process was a lot slower and with a lot more attention. Because with the second album, we recorded that over a space of two weeks, just working non-stop. Whereas with this album, it was multiple studios and we would do one or two songs at one studio and then take a little bit of a break and then go to a different studio. And that felt very refreshing, to sort of sit with the music.

Granted, the whole album only took like one year to write, mix and record, which is insane now thinking about it. But it was good just being able to take a breather and go, okay let's shift focus and do something else for a minute and then go back to the studio. 

Now that the album’s out, you guys have done late night and morning shows, but it's been away from home. Is there an emotion associated with doing those big firsts in a different country, maybe not where you expected those things to happen?

CB: We had two weeks of PR once the album came out — we had one week in New York and then one week in LA — and I think so much was happening that I couldn't genuinely process it in the moment. It was just one thing after the other. And it was a very beautiful experience and I look back on that quite fondly, but it was just such a high intensity every single day there was just something happening every minute. A new update or a new milestone or anything like that. So it feels incredible to be able to look back on that.

JJ: It's the first time we've really put something out there and felt like we've gotten an immediate response back from the public. Like the Late Night with Kimmel, that was wild and had people from high school messaging me about that. There isn’t really an Australian Jimmy Kimmel either, so it’s not like doing that was a shame. And I feel like we've had really awesome critical reception everywhere, which has been lovely. 

By the time we got back home, we got selected to play one of the biggest festivals still running in Australia at the time, Laneway. And then we got feature album on basically the only big radio station. And then we've gone in and done “Like A Version” which is a huge institution there as well. So it feels like we've been kicking goals that we've been aiming at for a really long time, so it's been a bit of a tour of success for us with this one.

Final question: You guys have a really unique sound. I've seen it described as indie-pop-synth, but for someone who's never heard Vacations before, how would you describe your music?

JJ: Man, I find this question so difficult.

CB: I tend to just use other people's answers to that question.

JJ: I think that's why “Australia's greatest boy band” is such a fun bio, because it is disarming.

CB: It’s just funny! More bands need to be funny. Just lean into it a little bit, you can be a little bit goofy and a little bit silly.

JJ: It’s hard because I think people don't really know, and it's scary to try to break into any industry. And so you're listening to people that you think know better and if they're telling you to be serious, then yeah. I don't know, I always just say “indie pop rock” because already it's such a broad genre, it covers beach rock, it covers synth rock.

CB: I’ve started just saying rock music because I had a TSA officer recently who was like, “What kind of music do you play?” And I was like, “Indie,” and she was like, “I have no idea what that is. Is it like rock?” I’m like yeah, it’s like rock. You go with what everybody says.