Newcastle band Vacations find their home in US with streaming success

Their songs are only occasionally played on triple j - and never on commercial radio - and the Novocastrian quartet have only performed one hometown show since 2018.

And while they've been heavily featured in the Newcastle Herald's entertainment pages, they've been practically ignored by the majority of Australia's mainstream press.

But in terms of global success, Vacations are Newcastle's biggest band since Silverchair.

In an era where traditional measures of success in the music business - such as chart positions - have been upended by streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, Vacations' steady rise is a very modern phenomenon.

Vacations boast a monthly audience on Spotify of 10.2 million people. Their 2016 single Young - a dreamy slice of bedroom pop about lacking ambition - has been streamed an incredible 520 million times.

For some perspective, Australian electronic-dance giant, Flume, only has 100,000 more monthly listeners.

You throw in 220,000 TikTok followers and 234,000 YouTube subscribers and you've got a significantly large fan base, especially for a DIY band from Newcastle without major label support.

Along the way Vacations have had Young included in the Spotify US viral top-50 during the pandemic and the track bizarrely became the soundtrack to a TikTok craze involving the mid-2000s UK TV show Skins.

Last July Spotify released their inaugural Australian Music Global Impact List, revealing that Vacations were the 13^th most streamed Aussie act in the world during the first half of 2023, grouping them with stars Kylie Minogue, The Kid Laroi and Empire Of The Sun.

Over 60 per music of Vacations' listeners live in the US, where they've sold out their past three tours and played rooms with a 2000 capacity.

It's a million miles away from where Vacations were when Weekender first met frontman and chief songwriter, Campbell Burns, in 2016.

Back then Vacations was effectively a one-man project and Burns was releasing copies of the first EP Days, recorded in his Hamilton South bedroom, through the DIY label, No-Fi Records, that he co-founded.

"I try not to look too far back and try and stay present, within the moment and be mindful of where I currently am," Burns says of the band's American success.

"But it is a bit bizarre to look back on, if it does cross my mind.

"It's more when we play songs from Days or Vibes, those first two EPs, in the States to these rooms of thousands of people and they're all singing the words back.

"It's a very odd moment to think I was playing those songs at the Croat Bowlo [Croatian Wickham Sports Club] or the Cambridge [Hotel] in the side room, before it got renovated, and probably playing them to just my friends.

"Now those tracks are still connecting and resonating with people in ways I couldn't predict."

Six months ago Burns made the move to Los Angeles to capitalise on Vacations' success across the Pacific.

The rest of the band - Jake Johnson (bass), Nate Delizzotti (lead guitar) and Joseph Van Lier (drums) - remain in Newcastle.

When Weekender catches up with Burns he's back in Newcastle for a brief visit over Christmas.

"The beach is just not comparable [in LA] to what we have in Australia, so it makes me really grateful," Burns says of being home.

"Just missing things like the kookaburras calling out in the morning or the gum trees. Anything like that.

"Any of those things I've grown up with, subconsciously just really make me feel grounded and connected to home and connected to nature. It's just different when you're overseas."

Burns is living in the north-east LA suburb of Mount Washington in a house owned by Grizzly Bear bassist Chris Taylor, where he works in one of the two home studios.

"It's a really wonderful house up in the hills that overlooks a bit of the valley," he says.

"It's very very peaceful up there, so it's a good home base to come back to, especially with all the travelling I've been doing this year."

Home and travel have been front of mind for Burns over the past two years.

Vacations' constant touring in the US and Europe and the personal upheavals that come with a transient lifestyle, form the basis of the band's third album No Place Like Home.

The album was self-recorded last year at Sawtooth Studios in Newcastle and at Idyllwild near Los Angeles and North Hollywood.

"It's very much a tour album that reflects all of our own respective experiences in regards to touring and who we are as individuals, and also who we are collectively as a band, and how we've navigated through the music industry," Burns says.

No Place Like Home instantly reveals a more mature-sounding Vacations.

The bouncy indie opener, Next Exit, is arguably the most infectious track they've produced and the shoe-gaze title track begins as a steady plodder before blossoming into Burns' most gorgeous vocal to date.

Close Quarters is a lush '80s-inspired piece of synth-pop that could have been the lovechild of The Smiths and latter-day Strokes.

But the biggest surprises arrive at the album's end where Burns introduces Americana and folk influences and a more introspective brand of songwriting with Terms & Conditions and Lost In Translation.

"It's very much a road trip kind of album," he says. "It's going on a journey as people and as individuals.

"A lot of it also deals with my own experiences with mental health and being diagnosed with pure OCD in the past year or two.

"My journey through therapy and navigating that as well."

Burns long suspected he suffered from some kind of social anxiety, and at times, depression.

But a diagnosis of pure OCD while writing No Place Like Home took him by surprise.

Unlike regular obsessive-compulsive disorder, pure OCD involves intrusive thoughts, images or urges without any visible physical compulsions.

"I didn't expect it, but you go to therapy for three years and you have this person you talk to once a month and you get really personal, and you both come to the conclusion that maybe it's this," Burn says.

"It took a lot of hard work and it was confronting at first, with a mix of relief. I'm grateful for the work I put in and the diagnosis.

"I understand myself more now and I translate that into music and translate everything I've been going through in my life and being more empathetic to others and helping them through their journey."

For Burns, the rising success of Vacations and his songwriting had no bearing on his pure OCD.

"The career and everything is more adjacent to it," he says.

"I mean it can inform it and I have experiences I can pull from. It would be no different if I worked in an office job or if I was in a kitchen. It can really relate to anything."

While Vacations have a foreign fan base eagerly anticipating No Place Like Home, waking up Australian audiences to their music remains a challenge.

Their albums Changes (2018) and Forever In Bloom (2020) failed to move the needle with taste-masters like triple j.

Their last Australian tour in 2022 drew healthy hometown numbers at the Cambridge Hotel, but the remaining shows lacked the enthusiam of their US crowds.

Next month could be the turning point. Vacations are booked for the Brisbane (February 3) and Sydney (February 4) legs of the Laneway Festival, which will be the biggest stages they've played in their home country.

"I would like to, and I think the other guys would like to more than myself," Burns says of touring regularly in Australia.

"But I think it would be in the way of doing a support tour or a co-headline, rather than our own dedicated tour.

"Also I'd like to be doing festivals because with the current climate of the Australian music industry, it's difficult. People are struggling to make ends meet with the living crisis and it's the best way for us to get the most amount of exposure and to be comfortable."

Vacations' third album No Place Like Home was released on Friday.