Y’all, it feels so good to soak in the beauty of Spring again, especially after last year’s compounding grief. Being able to loosen my grip of the past and try to move onto something new has been a really wonderful feeling, even if it’s been a challenge.
One band that’s seemed to meet me in this storyline has been Vacation Manor.
The first time I heard of Vacation Manor was via the Spotify algorithm being insistent on showing me “A Toast and a Spirit” whenever I listened to Bad Suns lol. I remember thinking all those times that it was a nice song but I never really took a moment to feel my way through it. It just wasn’t the season to do so.
But then I found their song “Can’t Run Forever” a couple of years ago and realized this band had some important words for me. So I needed to sit with it for the entire year. The way that song soundtracked the character arc of 2023 for me felt unparalleled — right down to the details that I had been feeling “the blues in the ocean air” and doing things like getting a “new pair of shoes and [I] colored my hair” just to feel a sense of novelty.
That song brought out two things in me: 1) how restless I’d been feeling staying in my hometown of Los Angeles and 2) how there was a deeper issue at play that was making me feel restless. And I think the grounded advice I’ve needed can be found in the band’s newest EP, Back To Town.
I got the opportunity to talk to lead singer Nathan Towles about the new EP and what feelings it all hinted at. Here’s an except from our conversation, edited for clarity!
Kelly: Hi Nathan! I am super excited to meet you and talk to you about your music. I’ve been a pretty casual fan of Vacation Manor for a while and I’ve been really thankful for your music. I feel like y’all really approach things in a very thoughtful way. I’m excited to hear what’s been the story behind the new music and all that good stuff!
Nathan Towles of Vacation Manor: Thank you for that Kelly, I appreciate it. It’s nice to be interviewed with someone who has a connection with the music.
Yeah! I’m all for that! So what’s been on your mind as you’ve worked on this EP?
I usually feel like a song needs a little bit of justification to be worth writing, which I think can be a good and a bad thing sometimes. Kind of for that initial scheme to start growing. It needs to be like a pin dropped on my life map, like there’s at least some sort of an autobiographical thread.
The same way that if you’re writing a melody, you’re looking for these hooks in it – I think the same way about lyrics. There’s got to be something memorable and relatable to it for me. We’ve toured enough to where I know when a song doesn’t have that, it’s kind of a drag to play.
Like with “Can’t Run Forever”, I think it’s funny because that’s such like an upbeat song. You typically tend to identify songs like that as maybe a little bit more fluffy or like it’s not relying on the lyric as much so we can say whatever. But I wrote that with one of my childhood best friends about ourselves when we were younger. [Reflecting on being] just a little bit aimless and always chasing what’s novel, which is the whole thing in that song. No matter how many new things you introduce or whatever new place you go to, you’re still going to end up having to deal with yourself and it can be so easy just to drown that out.
It’s been interesting observing a lot of those themes in other indie rock bands that I love. Like capturing that zeitgeist of your 20s and then as you get older, trying to find that groundedness in your music is an interesting challenge. Especially knowing that you might be known for some more upbeat things. How do you start to find a sense of grounding in that?
I was joking when we played in Nashville recently that I leave my wife and son at home and drive to another state to sing songs about some other woman. The Girl, Say EP, which is our first thing that we put out, was kind of like all of these breakup songs from stuff I experienced to like 19 and 20. I’m 30 now and I’m married and I have a little boy. It’s funny how that stuff is still so fun to play live and it’s obviously a memory but I now have other memories attached to those songs of like the early days of us playing.
I feel like for everybody those heartbreak songs early on feel so easy to write. There’s something about it that just works with the music. I think the struggle is finding a way to sing about the more mundane things as your life becomes maybe a little bit more grounded. I don’t want to say [it’s] boring because I’m not bored, but there are often less of those high highs and low lows that you feel so much in your 20s.
So for this EP, that was one of the challenges: how do I dig beneath the surface of life as a new father? What are the insights there? What are the emotions there that are true of people in other phases of life too?
It took a while to write. It was really slow moving at the beginning. We tried a couple different recording approaches and then ultimately ended up self-producing it, which I’m really happy now that we did. But it felt like sort of a struggle to move into like, ‘all right, we’re in a new era of our lives now. I don’t feel like a musician 24 hours a day. I’m getting woken up in the middle of the night by a baby crying or, yeah, just all the things.’ So is there something true underneath all of that that transcends the things that you rely on for inspiration in your early 20s?
I think it’s super cool to find those threads. As somebody who is also in her late 20s, many of my friends are getting married, venturing out into parenthood and all that. As a friend, trying to find those threads of connection of like, ‘Where do I meet you where you’re at?’ That challenge is similar because there are still periods of grief, periods of joy, periods of like, ‘Wow, I’m doing something new.’ I think to be able to pull out those threads is what makes those connections. In the songs, there’s been this groundedness of weathering through the storm. Can you speak to that?
It can sometimes feel like every day looks very similar. So trying to, but there’s so much going on in your inner life. At this phase with so much wrestling around, how do I hopefully gracefully change into the person that I’m becoming?
And how do you let go of some of the nostalgia and the novelty of life before? It can be such a funny and awkward transition sometimes. So digging into it even if my environment is not changing every day and I’m not always meeting new people and making new friends as often as I used to. There’s so much going on internally. How do you give language to that? I think it’s a harder thing to do.
But I hope that we did it on this EP. I feel like we did that because those songs are still really resonating with me. They continue to feel true.
What were the sonic inspirations for this project? Did you feel like you needed to do something different from the sound in the past?
I think there are those types of artists that reinvent every record. And I don’t feel like that has necessarily been us.
There’s been a pretty clear through line of like, our taste has evolved. But even going back to our early stuff, there’s a thread that’s been consistent through it. And I think that we were more focused on how do we kind of change this just enough to move into a new chapter of our sound. Like you would with anything else, what do we want to keep and what do we want to let go of here? Where do we want to turn in a new direction? And so much of that is just instinctual. We’re ultimately going to make things that excite us. And we’re very much song people, both Cole and I. And so we’ll go with whatever the best song is.
But in terms of inspirations on the EP, I would say a lot of more of a particular vein of 90s music was pretty present with us, like Oasis and this band, The Sundays.
They’re kind of a cult following band, you either do or don’t know about them. We discovered them in the last couple of years through a friend and I think you can definitely recognize that inspiration on “You, In the Afternoon”.
Stuff like that, some songs from The Cranberries, and then you mix that together with inspirations we’ve had for a long time like The Killers or The Cure. I think that all just made its way into the sound.
But I think one thing that’s interesting too is especially in interviews when I’m asked about inspirations, you want to like give all these artists names or records or whatever. There are some things that are like stuck in my head from like growing up though where I would hear that song at a gas station or I remember hearing that in the store. And maybe I’m not even a fan of that band. Maybe that chord change going from the chorus to the bridge of this is just stuck in my head. So I think things like that are inspirations too.
What do you hope listeners gain from this EP? What do you hope people sit with?
If there is a through line to the whole EP, it’s just trying to approach change gracefully. I can be a pretty sentimental and nostalgic person. And I noticed that as I moved into a pretty identifiable change in life, since I’ve gotten married and into fatherhood and all that. I think the big through line [in the EP] is trying to move into a new season gracefully and also to try to be present, to not get too idealistic about the past, which I feel like so much of music depends on being idealistic about the past. I hope that people walk away feeling hopeful about the future.
That feels like a really poignant thing to kind of carry these days. I feel like so many people are in the midst of a lot of change. All right. Last question. What are three songs that helped inform this project?
This song definitely inspired this project. There’s so much sonically about it and there’s just a lot of feeling in her voice.
A newer artist that has been huge for me is Sam Fender. This song is so good. I think there’s something so conversational and unedited about the way that he writes lyrics. At least it sounds unedited. It feels very off the cuff and not overly thought through to death. Cole and I are both huge Sam Fender fans.
They’re one of our label mates. They’re a band from the UK, and they have a song called “Defender” off their last record. They’re much more in the singer-songwriter, more acoustic-leaning kind of music. I would say we were inspired by them as a whole, but that song in particular was influential on us.
Is there anything else you want to say about everything you guys are cooking these days?
We’re going to try to be getting out there playing shows a little bit more. It’s been a while since we’ve been very big on touring. But we’re trying to get out there and do a bit more of that this year and next. Keep your eyes open for more tour dates and likely another EP to follow this one not too long after.
Exciting! I’ll keep my ears open.
Well, thanks so much, Kelly. This is great talking to you.
Yeah, was great talking to you!
The biggest thank yous to Claire from Nettwerk for reaching out with the opportunity and to Nathan for such a thoughtful conversation! You can connect with Vacation Manor on Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and more. I’ve done some reflecting on this EP and how it’s meeting me in the following highlights. Check out the EP and the full playlist of the songs we discussed below!
Highlights
January (Over & Over)
“Now January’s got you standing on the edge…”
We all know my vendetta against January. It seems to have come back with a vengeance this year when it was just one stressful thing after another. When I heard this song in January, it felt a little too real — especially in this particularly angsty/hazy feeling that can only really be captured by 90s inspired indie rock. It’s really good for feeling your way through that fog that comes with immediate change and chaos.
You, In the Afternoon
“Trying to take in all these sunny days that I’ll appreciate too late…”
This song is meant for you to make like a plant and photosynthesize in the park, preferably on a Sunday afternoon (as I did on Easter this year). It’s blissful, it’s sweet, and it makes me long to be so in love again that this song just makes sense. God, I miss that feeling. But for now, I’m feeling it ground me in just the miracle of being alive to see flowers bloom and sun shine through the trees. Approaching everything from that place of gratitude is super helpful.
Back To Town
“Feeling inside out when I come back to town…”
I just know this song is gonna help me get through the coming back of my upcoming London trip. I know it’s not worth it to be worried about something I’m gonna feel a month from now, but truthfully, I’m worried that I’ll have a repeat of what happened to me after I studied abroad 9 years ago – aka when all I could do was park myself in front of the tv and disassociate from the fact that I was in LA and not in Asia anymore. Idk, will deal with that later. For now, I need to plant this song in my heart.
Damage Is Done
“When everything around you is leaving and all the fears are running at once, when the only heart you’ve got takes a beating, I’ll be here ’til the damage is done…”
Speaking of songs to treasure in my heart, this song exactly the warm hug I need. When I said that this EP may contain what I need in this new season, this song immediately comes to mind. This gentle song feels like a lullaby in a dark time. I have cried to this song multiple times because it is meeting me exactly where I am these days. Harmonica solo and all. It’s such a reminder of unconditional love and how much showing up for yourself and others makes a difference. Seriously, this song is so good it made my dad stop in his tracks when I played it on the way to a family dinner. I think these featured lyrics really got him (he’s had multiple heart surgeries).
Casio Cure
“It’s been a long day in the corners of your mind…”
This song seems to speak to that restlessness I’ve been struggling with. Because yes, it’s been a long day in the corners of my mind. Actually, it’s been a long 5 years in the corners of my mind. The picture of dissociating in this song has literally been me. I’ve struggled finding true connection in LA, dare I say since my last ex. I know I’ve been changing but I fear I’ve been living in my mind so much that it’s become my only coping mechanism these days. I’ve gotten used to spending a lot of time alone in my thoughts and while it’s made me very self-aware, it’s made me feel so disconnected from everyone and everything around me. The call to be present physically, spiritually, and mentally is what will ground me enough to approach the changes gracefully, as Nathan spoke about.
When It’s All Over
“Now, I’m playing it out in my mind, dreaming about the day that we wake up when it’s all over…”
This gentle song feels like I should go journal with a nice, steaming cup of tea and try to ground myself while listening to this song. I really love how this song kind of forces you to be present in this hazy but sobering state of mind. I will definitely be journaling with a cup of tea in London to this song. I can’t wait for it.
Listen to Vacation Manor’s Back To Town EP:
Here’s a playlist featuring the EP, the songs we discussed, and a few extra Vacation Manor songs to get lost in:
SOUNDS LIKE FEELS LIKE 