In Conversation: Lunar Vacation

Lunar Vacation are trying not to overthink. Since playing music together in high school, bandleader Gep Repasky, Maggie Geeslin, Connor Down, Matteo DeLurgio, and Ben Wulkan, have honed their sound, bypassing a tendency towards perfectionism. Their second album, ‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’, contrasts the bright-eyed optimism and coming-of-age nostalgia of their earlier music. The record is a darker body of work, influenced by a series of challenging life events that shaped the band and their creative process.

Lunar Vacation are based in Decatuar, Georgia. All living under one roof, the band jump between writing demos and organising bathroom cleaning schedules. Their 2021 debut album, ‘Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp’, consisted of shiny indie hits packed with synth and guitar, but there’s a tangible sense of growth in world-building throughout ‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’.

Spurred on by moving in together at the end of 2022, the band pushed to dispel the fear of making mistakes; working with producer Drew Vandenberg, Lunar Vacation went into the studio with the intention of making music to perform. Gep Repasky’s lyrics have always been marked by their raw honesty, and this album is no different. Exploring a seismically difficult time in Gep’s life, each song is fuelled by a noticeable duality – the cataclysmic moments of someone’s life alongside glimpses of light, humour and friendship. ‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’ sees Lunar Vacation embrace the vulnerability and maturity required to delve into tough topics, and ultimately create a unified sound.

Touching base from New York, Gep spoke with CLASH about living and ultimately thriving in shared spaces, drawing inspiration from Yo La Tengo, and how the band’s new full-length is a documentation of uncomfortable truths and abiding friendship.

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What was the process behind ‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’?

I feel like it started when we all moved in together. Living together was such an important part in making the record because I think all of us wanted to feel closer as friends, and as bandmates. The closer you get emotionally, the easier it’s gonna be to make songs, especially vulnerable songs.

We moved into a house together in 2022 and then got part-time jobs. So, the first few months of us living there was us trying to get our head on straight. Then we started demoing and writing in early 2023. Usually I just demo on my phone, show it to everyone and work it out in the studio. But this time Ben [Wulkan], our bassist, spearheaded the move. He has a studio here and he is such a good engineer and producer. I would show him songs, we’d make a little demo and then everyone else would come in just when they had time.

There’s one song ‘You Shouldn’t Be’ that came about when we were writing in the back of our van on tour. Ben somehow remembered the song, he and Matteo [DeLurgio] reworked it by taking two chords out, and then made the coolest drum beat I’ve ever freakin’ heard. I was like, “Oh my god, this is literally iconic and so perfect.”

So we did the demoing, got most of the songs to a near-finish, and then we met Drew, our producer. He’s based in Athens. We really hit it off! It was really helpful having an outside source guiding us and giving their input. Because with us, it can feel like an echo chamber, especially if we don’t talk to anyone on the outside and we’re in demo mode. We rework the songs too much. We just needed to have someone be like, “stop, it’s ok.”

Was it different from your first record in that sense then?

It was a very different process than the last album. I feel like I wasn’t as open with everyone in terms of sharing the demos of the songs; I would get way more protective and worried about the songs then. This time I was very open, and it was more of a collaborative thing. This time we were really close as friends and bandmates. I think that’s why the process is just so interesting, beautiful and different [from] anything we’ve done before. We levelled up as friends. There’s that baseline of trust that you have with your friends but moving in helped us level up again. We really needed to be around each other. Being in a band with four other people… it’s so crazy sometimes. You’re basically in a relationship with four other people. We had to learn how to communicate effectively. We have a bathroom cleaning schedule now because we’re like “ok, we have to be on the ball with cleaning.” Little things like that. We’ve been trying to learn to act as one unit and make sure everyone feels heard and respected.

When I think of the album I’m like “oh, this feels like all of us together”, but then the context and the lyrics are so depressing. It’s not “I love my friends,” it’s just really hard situations and things I had to deal with. It used to be just Maggie [Geeslin] knowing what the lyrics are about and what I was going through, because we were best friends and she knew everything that was going on in my life. But now, because we all live together, everyone knew what was going on and so there was already that understanding. I just feel like everyone’s parts fit in perfectly and we didn’t overthink the songs – we didn’t try to add ten layers of synth. We just tried to make it fair and concise.

There’s definitely moments where I think this is such a Lunar Vacation track and others where I can hear your growth as a band. How have the band dynamics shifted over time?

I feel like it was me and Maggie a lot of the time. I would show her all my ideas and we were the ones talking the most about music just because our whole friendship was based on music. We met because we were both obsessed with Twin Peaks and Mac DeMarco in like 2014. Like that was our God, you know? Now, it feels more of a level playing field. Every member understands each other way more. I mean we’re learning every day, it’s not like we’ve figured it out and now it’s fine. Friendship is work. You have to work on it, you have to work on yourself and it’s hard but it just feels like we’ve reached a really nice spot. I’m a little piece of a whole. We’re all necessary and important parts of being what Lunar is.

We talk about this all the time. Me, Maggie and Connor [Down] were all in a band together while we were in high school. We would literally walk through the halls, we would play shows with Connor. Then the next day we would see him in the hallway and be like “Oh hey Connor.” It was like we weren’t even really friends. I feel like that weird barrier is fully gone because we grew up and went through so much stuff together. I have travelled more with them than my own parents! We all share one hotel room when we’re travelling, so we have to be so comfortable with everyone at all times.

What albums and artists influenced the record? Does your taste overlap?

There’s some common ground for sure about what we can all appreciate, and I think for this record there’s a lot of Yo La Tengo references. The whole idea and vibe of Yo La Tengo was just so inspiring to us because they just don’t give a fuck. They make so many songs. I just love the idea of cranking out songs and having them be genre-less. They can have a twenty-minute, crazy distorted song, and then the next one is a cutesy little fifties cover, or a really beautiful emotional ballad. I also love how they dress; they dress so normal, like normal people.

They seem very approachable, real and relatable, and I think that was a good reference for us to remember to slow down and not overwork things. We wanted to go into this record with the idea of [playing] every single song live. With our last album we did a lot of the songwriting in the studio. For this album we had everything written already, it was better to get all those ideas out and not overthink.

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The lyrics are noticeably more cynical, and even more funnier in places. Especially on tracks like ‘Fantasy’.

Oh yes! I wrote it in November of 2022. I’d got out of a relationship and we were going on tour. That’s when I bought [my] baby nylon because I [wanted] a little guitar to have on tour just by the off chance that I would want to write on tour. Immediately I wrote so many songs. I think it was interesting to be out of a relationship… It’s not like I’m thinking about the next person but you do begin to think well if that person wasn’t my person I wonder what’s gonna happen next. I met someone on the tour and was like “Oh, so cute. I have such a crush.” I think I was just exploring that feeling.

Some of the verses are kind of funny. Like obviously I don’t know this person, so I’m just speaking to the absurdity of a crush. It’s where your brain ventures to, where there’s a whole other world that I haven’t even thought of. I thought I was gonna be with this person forever. Will I always live in some kind of fantasy where I’ll never truly understand what my reality is? Am I never going to be able to understand that because I’m just too busy making up scenarios and making up whole lives with other people? Am I ever going to really be present? Yeah, that was a really cool song.

‘Inside Every Fig…’ felt like a coming-of-age album to me, but this record feels much more organic in its evolution. The last track on the album really encompasses that, and obviously features the title of the record.

I really wanted to have the title fit into a song somewhere. It was always jumping out at me. Like in the demo, the only line was “everything matters,” and that was it. All the songs on the album are talking about situations, or thoughts, that even if it’s not that significant in the grand scheme of things, it’s everything that’s been happening. It all matters because it’s shaping how I think, or it’s shaping who I am. It’s literally every single thing that you do. All of it matters.

I feel like all the lyrics are very emotional and fiery. It also has an ambiguous meaning: think of it as everything’s fire like everything’s good, or fire like everything’s emotional, kinda chaotic, or ruined. Everything’s going up in flames, it’s done, it’s crazy. I like that because I want everyone to put their own meaning behind it.

Do you have a favourite moment on the record?

I’m just very proud of this album and very proud of our band. I feel like we worked through a lot of internal things together and that translates into the music. The song ‘Erase All the B’s’ is probably one of my favourites because it was created in response to a really horrible situation. We all really loved the song. It felt really special and real, because everyone was with me experiencing everything that was happening. They all knew what the lyrics were about.

That song was recorded in one-take, which is wild because we’ve never done anything like that. We’re all very nit-picky and like to control things. We did seventeen takes of it, all at once after we’d had dinner, and then we came back to the studio for the night session. It was so dark and nice, we just kept playing it over and over again. We listened to all seventeen of them and landed on one we knew was the one. It’s pretty magical and cool.

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‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’ is out on Friday.

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