Once again stu­pid me was way too late notic­ing that a new record by Cincin­nati, Ohio's pop wiz­ards Va­ca­tion has hit the shelves via Sali­nas Records, re­peat­ed­ly prov­ing their knack for craft­ing re­fined jew­els of melod­ic noise at the in­ter­sec­tion of old­school nineties-style in­die rock, grace­ful pow­er- and noise pop. This shit is catchy as fuck with­out ever get­ting too for­mu­la­ic or pre­dictable. A rare breed these days and even more rarely does it ever come across as pow­er­ful and flaw­less­ly ex­e­cut­ed as here. An al­bum of twelve hits and ze­ro miss­es as for this group, "pret­ty good" sim­ply doesn't cut it.