The Vacation is a four piece rock group from Los Angeles and if the city had an official flag, they would surely drape themselves in it. Following in the footsteps of groups like Rock Kills Kid, who like to add a cocky 80s edge to their music, The Vacation spend a lot of time wallowing in the excesses of the City of Angels. There are tracks called “Destitute Prostitues, Hollywood Forever and Trash that play like suave slick odes to the danger and desperation that are part of any urban epi-center.
That’s all well and good and every few years or so we all need a band who can romanticize the dingy places that music lovers flock to like the dark side streets that house your favorite hole in the wall clubs or the dives that cause Midwestern tourists to scurry past clutching desperately to their camera equipment. There’s a lot that can be said about that “scene”, but unfortunately, The Vacation don’t have anything terribly new to add to the folklore of Los Angeles.
Lead singer Ben Tegel is a capable vocalist who knows how to slink and sneer his way around lyrics, but he’s still a man searching for a style that he’s completely comfortable with. In fact, The Vacation bounces around between tracks that sound rock, punk and even metal without giving any of them a real chance to take root and let loose. “Cherry Cola”, with lyrics like “I want to taste your liquid sunshine”, is a song that could plop down on a 1980s hair band album and feel right at home. I realize that every rock band has to have a song like this in their catalogue, but even a good guitar groove can’t save this one from sounding third-rate.
The Vacation do offer glimpses of promise, like their paranoid acid trip of a song called “Spiders” which perhaps, justifies their growing buzz. However, Band From World War Zero is still more likely to get a “been there / heard it” shoulder shrug when it wants to be the disc you put on and spin before you go out looking for your Saturday night hook up. |