vacation forever - real life sux - kravenworks

Relentless creative restlessness is the dominant force when it comes to Vacation Forever. “I’m a really impulsive person, I get bored and I change my mind really quickly. When I’m writing, if the magic doesn’t come in an hour or two, I move on”. Says Zacharias Zachrisson, the mastermind behind the project.

Zachrisson grew up in a musical family, and played around with the instruments that surrounded him as a kid. But as he grew up it was skateboarding that took over his life: “I was skating all the time, it was the only thing I cared around”, he says. “But through skating and skate movies especially, I found a lot of the music that inspired me. It was only later I realised how important music was to me”. After a spell drumming in rock band Tussilago, he started his own project, Vacation Forever, and it was then that he craved out his own musical space with a series of EPs.

But now with his debut album, he’s taken the project to a whole new level. Thematically, there’s a lot of darkness in the new album – the songs are filled with the bruises and scars of life’s problems, vividly drawn by Zachrisson’s direct, raw lyrics. But there’s also brightness – the story of growing up, coming through hard times and coming out a better person on the other side.

The songwriting on the record is Zachrisson’s strongest yet - which he attributes to writing on an acoustic (“if you’re writing on an acoustic, you can’t hide - you need to make the songs work”). Every song has the melodies to pull you in on first listen – almost every one has a chorus that makes it easy to love. The production, which is expertly executed by Grammy-nominated Patrik Berger (Ariel Pink, Icona Pop), then pulls those simple, direct songs written on that acoustic guitar and transforms them into something completely new, soaring into epic space-rock, dreamy psych-pop or scuzzy punk. Zachrisson says: “I’m doing pop, but it’s just pop that’s really screwed up.”

And at the heart of those songs is the emotion that gives the songs their rawness and power. It’s deeply personal and powerful, and that’s what makes it work – intense both emotional and creatively, it delivers everything a Vacation Forever album should be.