Opener Congratulations is Vacations in a nutshell: Campbell Burns’ creamy, offhand voice, Nate Delizzotti’s shiny guitar lines, Jake Johnson’s limber bass and Joey Van Lier’s jazz-inflected drumming. Is that a woodblock in there?
Yesterday is woozy, with percolating synths that owe The Avalanches a drink: “If you could see yourself now, what would you say?” Holy Grail is for slow dancing, or pashing, at the formal.
Last Call is the one. It’s boppy, jangly and sun-drenched, made for jumping around in a hugging circle, and at a minute and a half it’s over before you’ve caught your breath. Underneath sits timeline panic over missed milestones. Burns, pushing 30, signs off repeating “Don’t get left behind.”
Punchline takes on the checklist – “Get a job, move out, fall in love” – and tries to make sense of it. On I See Myself In You, co-written with Morning Silk’s Frank Corr, Burns wonders whether he’ll be a father one day: “Like father like son/Will my time come?” He wrote the closing ballad, Lucky Forever, from the point of view of bandmates Johnson and Van Lier after going to both their weddings.
Across the record, Burns weighs up what moving to the US to chase this has cost him. He writes from his own life and the lives of the people around him, and he never dresses up the honest version.
Pursuit Of Anything is out now via Nettwerk Records.
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