Vacation “Southern Grass: The Continuation of Rock ‘N’ Roll Vol. 1&2” 2017. Recess Records. Double LP on purple marbled vinyl. Today is my friend Claire’s birthday and this past Saturday was her birthday show at Promises bar here in Milwaukee with Vacation headlining. Unfortunately I had a work weekend and couldn’t go but Joe went and said “a good time was had by all.” I was super-bummed to miss them; the show we caught last April 2022 at Cactus Club was killer.

Vacation, from Cincinnati, are self-described grit-pop. Their sound is punky, punchy garage rock and highly danceable especially if you’re into high speed pogo’ing. Southern Grass is their fourth full-length (I think, they have a ton of singles and EP’s as well), jam packed with a whopping 32 tracks of all-out fun (though they do slow down occasionally, like on the melancholy “Without You”). My top tracks are the fun ones, though. On Vol. 1 those include the opener “Sharptooth Tinsel Town,” “El Bako” and the high-end psychedelically fuzzed “Blueberry Patch.”  On Vol. 2 my top picks are “Sleepyhead,” the Pistol-esque “Lose Interest” with lots of snot and swagger, the darkly buzzed “Everyone Can Touch Me” and the post-punk dissonance of “The All.”