Basic Vacation

One listen to Basic Vacation’s debut single “I Believe,” with its chanty, sing-along chorus and uplifting lyrics, and this up-and-coming trio’s mission is clear: to make emotionally charged, alternative pop-rock that burrows its way deep into your brain. The song is an anthemic foot-stomper that Neon Gold has called “a straight-ahead summertime smash.” Upon hearing it, Idolator remarked: “This kind of effervescent indie-pop would be a baked shoe-gazer’s delight if the chorus wasn’t so relentlessly upbeat.” Basic Vacation’s music pulses with the dynamic chemistry between the band’s three members, vocalist-guitarist Chris Greatti, bassist Jon Paul, and drummer Mike Montalbano, who have played in nearly a dozen previous bands between them. Chris met Wellington, FL, native Jon when the two got hired to perform with a New York solo artist. “After I moved to New York, I pretty much hounded Chris into starting a band,” Jon says. The two began to jam together on their own in early 2012 and by Spring, Chris was taking a bus from Philly to Manhattan twice a week and sleeping on Jon’s floor. “Actually, I slept on his roommate’s dog’s bed on the floor because there was nowhere else for me to crash,” Chris explains. A few months later they asked Saddle Brook, NJ, native Mike to join. “Since I met Chris, I remember thinking, ‘Man, I need to be in a band with this guy,’” Mike recalls. The band members bonded over the classic rock artists they were raised listening to, like Led Zeppelin and Queen, ’80s New Wave acts like Tears For Fears, Soft Cell, and Talk Talk, as well as bands with whom they feel a musical kinship, like The Killers, New Radicals, and Foster the People. In the early months of Basic Vacation’s existence, “we were poor as hell,” Jon says. “We were scraping by and stealing from convenience stores just so we could eat.” Times may have been lean, but musically everything was clicking. They recorded rough demos of songs they had written, like “I Believe,” which found its way to Grammy Award-winning producer David Kahne (The Strokes, Regina Spektor). Impressed, Kahne agreed to produce the track on spec, helping to solidify Basic Vacation’s electrifying pop-rock sound, which gets especially raucous during their live performances. (Basic Vacation have shared stages with fellow indie-rockers New Politics and Twenty One Pilots.) “When I exit the stage after a show, I’ll sometimes forget everything that just happened because I go into another world onstage,” says Mike. Basic Vacation’s self-titled EP is out now. In addition to “I Believe,” songs like the chiming, arena-ready “Worlds Collide” and “It’s All Happening” radiate with an optimism that the band members say comes from feeling like underdogs. “Nobody thought this was going to work but us,” Jon says. “Thus ‘It’s All Happening’ was us saying, ‘Yeah, this is working out,’ before it actually happened,” adds Chris with a laugh. Chris, Jon, and Mike are currently in the studio working with Brendan O’Brien on the full length album, set to be released in 2014. http://smarturl.it/basictunes http://www.basicvacation.com http://www.facebook.com/basicvacation D • E • B • U • T |†| A • L • B • U • M http://smarturl.it/basicitunes http://smarturl.it/IBELIEVEVEVO