Big Scary: Vacation

Wow. How did we get here? At what point is a record this successfully accessible, artistic and engaging kept this quiet. In Australia the band has made waves but in America, they’ve been relegated to word of mouth, mostly via indie blog praise and commercial placement. Hopefully, the official US release of Vacation changes that, because I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the outright finest debuts I’ve heard in years. Marrying elements of dream-pop and garage-rock in a more complete fashion than any act I’ve come across, Big Scary have touched upon a fascinating new sub-genre and, over the course of a debut LP, already fully exploited its potential. Vacation is sequenced to perfection, maintains a compelling atmosphere throughout and is successful in virtually every minor experiment it takes a stab at. One of the best releases of the past two years, no matter the country or release date.