No Place Like Home is the alternative band VACATIONS’ third album.
Released on Jan. 12, the album is comprised of 10 new songs that ride a fine line between exciting synth-rock and bittersweet emotionality.
The album’s opening salvo barges into your eardrums with its first track “Next Exit,” a song made for long, hazy summer drives with the windows down.
Opening with a lively marimba rhythm, “Next Exit” launches into an exhilarating opening verse characterized by pitched-up guitar, thumping bass and a snare-heavy rhythm section. As the song progresses, the listener anticipates the track’s climax, which is teased twice throughout the song with unrewarding results. But as the track builds for the third time, a section highlighted by a tension-building guitar line, it finally takes off into a bright and dynamic finale that would send anyone’s foot down hard onto the gas pedal. Soaring through to the end, “Next Exit” makes you feel like you’re 16 with your brand-new driver’s license again, ready to leave what you know behind and take on the exciting new world that lies ahead.
“Next Exit” is immediately followed up by “Slow Motion,” and this is where things start to fall apart. “Slow Motion” sounds almost sonically identical to “Next Exit,” down to the pitched-up guitar rhythm and the distorted vocals. It’s a disappointing follow-up to what was, on its own, a great song. Still, “Slow Motion” is a great example of what great heights a song can achieve when it builds in the right way.
“Over You,” the album’s fourth track, tries to avoid its past mistakes and chooses to move in somewhat of a new musical direction. A little more laid back, the track starts slow and low and gradually builds to a nice pace. The rhythm dances nicely with the light-hearted guitar line, pulling together a track perfect for languid walks down the beach or a day laying out in the sun. While “Over You” still hangs on to the same instrumentation as its predecessors, it does attempt to take on its own identity, something that can’t be said about the earlier tracks.
It’s the sixth track, “Arizona,” that sets the precedent for something brand new. Without any vocals, “Arizona” is the perfect song for the soundtrack of a coming-of-age movie. Bouncing between an emotion-inducing guitar section, something that mimics the sound of bubbles and the distorted murmuring of a female voice, it’s the perfect track to float above the scene in a movie where the young protagonist finally conquers all their inhibitions and knows exactly what to do. Perhaps the best track on the album, “Arizona” inspires understanding of oneself in a completely indescribable way.
While No Place Like Home struggles to find the balance between an album that is sonically cohesive and an album that is sonically identical, the sound that they have chosen to stick with isn’t a bad one.
There is still room to grow for VACATIONS, but if they continue to evolve on the path they are taking, good things are sure to come.
