Another New Release: Lunar Vacation

Yes, I just wrote up a whole fistful of new releases a few days ago (go check it out and get listening!). But I've since stumbled across one more, and it's a doozy.

My purchases these days tend to fall into several buckets: jangly indie bands that remind me of the Feelies and Flying Nun acts like the Bats/Clean (see, e.g., Ducks Ltd., Chime School, Quivers, Umbrellas);and jangly but more power-pop-oriented acts reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub (see, e.g., Laughing, Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness, Polite Company, Dot Dash)--those these sub-genres often overlap and blend together.

And then there's the other bucket: women-fronted bands who sound like they grew up on the same 90s indie bands I loved. (See, e.g., Slow Pulp, Momma, Wednesday)

[BTW, I made a pretty cool mix of some of my favorite recent indie releases last year; it's due for an updating.]

The new, sophomore long-player from Atlanta-based Lunar Vacation, Everything Matters, Everything's Fire, falls into that last bucket. It's a little less boisterous, some catchy indie pop and dream pop, but kept interesting with twisty guitar lines and some scratchy post-punk sonics. Opening track "Sick Again" captures that tangled, skewed 90s Pavement-y vibe; while the next cut, "Set The Stage," blisses out with a shoegaze wall-of-sound. They bring it home on the third track, "Tom," hitting the indie pop bulls-eye with a hook-crazy chorus straight out of the Beths' playbook. The rest of the LP bounces around these styles, gentle alt.pop bumping up against some noisier interludes. Put it all together, and it's another contender for one of my favorite releases of 2024.

Buy it on Bandcamp. (And while you're there, dig into their dream-pop cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated.")

"Sick":

"Tom":

"Fantasy""