Lunar Vacation, a five-member band, based out of Atlanta, masters the art of wrapping delicate and honest lyrics around instrumentals that pull listeners in with a wave of upbeat, indie-pop sounds.
The band, consisting of guitarist and vocalist Grace Repasky, guitarist Maggie Geeslin, bassist John Michael Young, keys player Matteo DeLurgio and drummer Connor Dowd, began playing music together in high school.
The members of Lunar Vacation met through their high school, St. Pius. Repasky started the band with Geeslin in 2016 and then later added Dowd, DeLurgio and Young.
When Lunar Vacation was in its earliest stages, the band would record music and upload tracks to SoundCloud before releasing their 2017 debut Ep “Swell.”
“I had songs, and I was kind of making music by myself. I only had like maybe two songs,” Repasky said. “Then I started talking to Maggie, and I told her we should form a band. We found Connor through our guitar teacher, and then Matteo came about a year and a half later.”
Their most recent album, “Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp,” contains themes of growing out of the teens and into adulthood. Within just a couple of years, a person grows, learns, and experiences many valuable life experiences.
Repasky’s lyrics do a magnificent job of capturing just how chaotically real and beautiful these moments of growth can be. The honestly in her lyrics resonates with listeners as she describes the ups and downs of reaching early adulthood.
The band released “Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp” on October 29th, 2021. The band recorded the album in less than a month and spent a lot of time creating an original and unique album in the studio.
The band spent as long as 12 hours a day in the studio recording pieces of music that would soon become songs.
“We started recording a couple of partial songs back in January of 2020, but we finished it [over] about three weeks in July,” Repasky said. “We worked Monday through Saturday 12 pm through 12 am. We were in full band mode, and that was a trip. It was so crazy.”
From the new album, “Peddler” became a favorite amongst the band members due to its upbeat vibe and groove. “Peddler” was the first song recorded when Lunar Vacation started working on the album.
“When we play ‘Peddler’ live, we all just feel so connected,” Geeslin said. “It starts off our new record like it’s the first full song on the new album. It’s hype.”
When Lunar Vacation is working on new songs, their process usually begins with Repasky writing bits and pieces of music, which she then sends to Geeslin who messages Repasky back, informing her that the songs are “hype.”
After Geeslin’s approval, the song is sent to the rest of the band for added instrumentals and melodies to fully taste the music. Once the song has a good structure, the band will send the track to their producer, who weaves the song into a finished Lunar Vacation song.
“Sometimes we’ll add stuff on our own, and sometimes we’ll all get together and flesh it out with the band,” Geeslin said. “I feel like half of the album was written in the studio.”
“A lot of it we’ll change in the studio, too,” Dowd said. “Like, instead of worrying about it outside of a studio setting, we’ll work it out there instead of doing a ton of planning. For this album, it is different [from] anything we have ever done before.”
The songwriting process is tedious and extensive; however, Lunar Vacation seems to have it down to a tee. While not every song goes through the same process, the band put significant time and effort into every song released on the new album.
While some of the songs formed quickly, others took years to develop. Repasky began writing the first song on “Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp,” “Purple Dreams No.4,” five years ago, returning to the pieces back in July when compiling the album.
“We would have like, one part of a guitar line and a vocal line, maybe about fifteen or twenty seconds. I compiled all of our demos and recordings into a folder, and then I sent it to our producer,” Repasky said.
“He would send us back notes after he sifted through it like ‘oh, you guys should work on this,’ or ‘oh, this caught my ear.’ Then we would work the rest out in the live room.”
Lunar Vacation will be going on an international tour starting in January, hitting several US states, some parts of Canada and Europe. For some of these shows, Lunar Vacation will open up for New Zealand indie-pop band “The Beths.”
This tour is the biggest Lunar Vacation has ever been on, leaving for about three months and playing shows in several new and exciting parts of the world. On tour, the band is excited to hit places such as the pacific northwest and Norway, hoping to gain cultural knowledge and experience.
As several band members are Georgia State seniors graduating in December, the band is excited to have the freedom to explore the world and play music with no strings attached.
“Hopefully, we can gain worldly perspectives after touring for so long in so many new places,” Geeslin said. “All of us will have graduated by then. We’ll be done with school, and we’ll have nothing really tying us to Atlanta. We can explore and just see what feels right.”
“Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp” is an album for those learning to grow up and go into adulthood. It wrangles with themes such as individuality, gender, sexuality and self-worth.
The album touches on relevant topics all-the-while, allowing listeners to engulf themselves in an indie-pop sound with undertones of bright instrumentals.
