Vacations

Vacations started as his solo project, and for a long time that's exactly how Burns ran it: he wrote the songs, recorded the parts, made the calls. The Newcastle, Australia outfit has since grown into a four-piece, with Burns alongside bassist Jake Johnson, drummer Joseph "Joey" Van Lier, and guitarist Nate Delizzotti. Their fourth album, Pursuit of Anything, the follow-up to 2024's No Place Like Home, is more of a full-band effort than anything they've made. Getting there meant Burns learned to loosen his grip, a shift he traces, in part, to an OCD diagnosis at 27.

We recently sat down to talk to Burns about the shift in ownership and to hear more about the band’s health at the 10-year mark—and how it all relates to their dynamic new album.

Analogue: Your band celebrated a 10th birthday since the last time we spoke and that feels like a real milestone. Were you ever thinking about longevity when you first started?

Campbell Burns: I had no sense or idea of longevity. Not that I wasn't ambitious or had goals, however, and I think it's funny to reflect on, but I was so engrossed in the music scene in Newcastle, and so in my own universe with my friends and what we were doing, that I never even imagined our music really traveling any further than our hometown, which is also hilarious, because the internet exists, and we were uploading our music to Spotify and YouTube. I was very much in the headspace of, ‘Well, I'm a local band. I play local shows. I hang out with my friends. That's about it.’ But then it kind of just snowballed, and people discover your music and start talking about it, and then you realize, oh, there are people in the U.S. that listen to our music, or there are people in South America or the Middle East or Europe or all over the world. It's insane to think about.

Analogue: Is that something you reflect upon internally within the band?

Campbell: Not particularly. I feel like I kind of celebrated that by myself, which sounds very funny, but we hit the 10-year mark when I was over in New York, and obviously everyone's back in Australia, so I celebrated it by having some solo performances of the first EP at a church in Brooklyn. So that was great, but it's kind of hard to comprehend.

I actually can't fathom that it has been 10 years, especially because it feels like we've only really been a band since, I guess, 2022, post-pandemic, because we've been able to actually tour and see the world. I mean, we did tour previous to that, but it feels more real now or something. It feels more actualized. I always think it's kind of wild how some bands exist and they're huge, and they're like household names in two years. That never feels right to me. I don't mind that we've been at this for so long now, and I think it's a natural progression for us.

Analogue: It makes me curious about the music you're making on Pursuit, and what you're capable of now that you weren’t before.

Campbell: Well, that's kind of the reference for this record, because Pursuit, if anything, is kind of the record I always wanted to make when I was 20, 21, around Vibes era, the second EP. But I didn't necessarily have the skill set, the production chops, or the musicality to quite get there. I think I was also a bit harder on myself and very limiting.

Back then, I was like, ‘Well, if I can't perform it live, then I won't record it’. So that's why those early EPs are so raw and just very simple. Whereas now, it's like, ‘Okay, we'll worry about that later. I just want the most accurate representation of what I'm trying to convey.’ But I've also done three other albums since then. I feel like I know a lot more about myself since I started out, same with the rest of the guys. And also, it's like we're more of a band now. When Vacations first started, it really was kind of myself. The whole relationship of Vacations has changed, where it's like, 'Okay, we are a band.' Everyone's on equal footing here. There's no ego, anything like that. We make informed decisions as a group.

Analogue: Was that hard for you to open up at first? Or were you glad to hand things off?

Campbell: I was resistant at first. And it definitely made a lot more sense when I got my diagnosis of OCD when I was 27, I think. That feels like a lifetime ago. Because I had a really hard time letting something go or giving up control and having trust in other people. But the only way to really gain any exposure to that and change yourself for the better is to just try it and see how it goes. And obviously, we've been touring together so much. We are starting to make more decisions as a group rather than as an individual.

That naturally bled into the songwriting. I would write a new song, and obviously it's like, ‘I'm not going to record all the parts by myself.’ I can kind of play drums these days, but not very well. I'm not to a recording standard. And it's like, ‘Okay, well, Joey's in the band. He is a drummer. What does he think?’ You get him to play the parts, and then you just have this back and forth.

At this point now as a band, I still do a bulk of the songwriting as a foundation these days. But now it's something where I present that to the band. We rehearse it. All of our influences and all of our tastes and everything starts to kind of bleed together. But then it becomes its own special, unique thing. It's better for it.

Analogue: The rhythms here—Changes, Forever, No Place Like Home, Pursuit—there's a very steady output. I'm wondering about your own rhythms of songwriting. Is there a lot of discipline there?

Campbell: Songwriting? No. Wait, define discipline. My songwriting process?

Analogue: It just seems like a lot of output.

Campbell: Oh, thanks. I don't really think it's even that much. Really? I honestly think I could be doing more. I just always try to push myself. Maybe to my detriment. As far as discipline with music, I remember reading a Nick Cave book where he describes his Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 office hours where he sits at a piano and is always writing. I personally can't do that. That's where I don't necessarily have the discipline. I write when I feel like writing.

There are definitely moments where I want to do the Bon Iver thing and lock myself in a cabin for a month and see what happens. I think that would be pretty fun. Maybe I don't do that because I've been travelling nonstop for the past couple of years. I've been pretty uprooted for a long time now. Honestly, since 2022. It's only recently but in the past year or so I'm finally starting to nest in New York, and I like it here.

Analogue: Do you feel like the uprootedness affects the songwriting?

Campbell: Absolutely. A lot of No Place Like Home is centered around that. A lot of Pursuit of Anything is centered around that as well. It's just a common kind of trope or motif within my songwriting personally. It's just that idea of home and how that really defines you and shapes who you are as a person. For me, it's this constant: am I ever going to be settled? Am I ever going to live anywhere for a long period of time, or am I ever going to truly make somewhere a home? I feel so vague, and I get really curious about it. I explore it through songwriting.

Analogue: Do you get antsy if you're there too long?

Campbell: I think a lot of musicians experience this, but I think it starts to play with my sense of self because so much of my identity is assigned or affiliated with Vacations. If I'm away from anything related to Vacations, it feels like I'm away from my best friends, and then it feels like I'm sort of not myself. It really does make you who you are. It's difficult to live without it. I feel like I would have to be a lot older and have a family or something before I can truly take a break from this for years at a time and be okay with that. Whereas if you were to tell me you're not touring for the next five years, I'd be like, 'What do I do? I can write music, but what am I doing with myself?' It's an insane concept. I'm a performer. I'm meant to be performing.

VISIT: Vacations

Photo: Andrew Boyle