My interview with Gep and Maggie of Lunar Vacation. Their latest album ‘Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire’ was released in September via Keeled Scales.

Diya: Good afternoon Lunar Vacation, it’s lovely to see you both. How are you guys doing on this fine November afternoon?

Gep: Very well.

Maggie: We’re doing wonderful. We’re driving through the mountains of Northern California. We came down from Portland yesterday….

Gep: We’re having a great time out here.

Diya: Awesome. Let’s start from the beginning.I did some digging and learned that Lunar Vacation’s origin story stems from your early teen years sharing music ideas in school and then being brought together further by a teacher suggesting you form a band. Can you please tell me a little bit more about your individual musical backgrounds and how they inform Lunar Vacation’s artistic philosophy to this point?

Gep: Well, I, you know, grew up loving pop music and female pop singers. And I just loved to sing so much. And I used to play piano when I was younger, but then I just moved to focusing on singing. And then I started learning guitar when I was 13. And then that was right before I went to high school, so going into my freshman year, we had a guitar class–and I really wanted a guitar class, but I wasn’t in the first year…But then the second year we got into it.

Maggie: I started playing guitar at 13 also, and I grew up listening to music–my family is really into music, so I grew up listening to a lot of rock and roll, and School of Rock was my favorite movie when I was a child–and I always wanted to be in a band because of that movie. And yeah, I also joined guitar class and that’s where we met Ben, and we all went to high school together. And so, yeah, we all went through the music program at our high school and that’s how we all got connected.

Diya: Very cute. Much of the music on Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire is filled with warmth and nostalgic sounding reverberation. Can you tell me about your creative process on this album, along with its sonic and emotional landscapes, and how they show up through some of your songwriting, vocal and instrumental choices?

Maggie: Thank you for the nice words. (Gep: Yeah.) Gep had a batch of demos that ranged from, like, 2020 to 2023. And we started sifting through those and picking the ones that we all liked, and then we started hashing them out in our living room. Since we all lived together, our bassist Ben set up a home studio in our living room and we spent about nine months working out all the songs and trying out a bunch of different versions. And then in December of 2023, we took the songs to a studio in Athens, GA. And recorded them in 14 days and did a lot of live tracking and–yeah.

Diya: With each of your backgrounds in music and years of collaboration with each other, how would you say the music on Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire is influenced by your past releases?

Gep: I think experience has been influential, you know? I don’t know if I can point to a certain, like, specific influence, but I think just all of us continuing to play together and write together and grow together as friends definitely inspired this whole album, you know?

Maggie: Yeah, we definitely had to learn to trust each other a lot more just by spending most of our time together, whether it’s touring or coming back home and then living in the same house. And it was definitely difficult at a lot of points because we were just a lot closer than we have been. And, you know, sometimes that creates more tension. But I think it also yielded a higher reward. And it felt really gratifying to be able to spend so much time together and make a record that way.

Gep: Yeah. And it felt pretty reflective of–I feel like–all of our ideas and our personalities, like,  through our own instruments or on parts or anything. Like I feel like we really feel the unity in this album.

Diya: Yeah, for sure. With warm guitars, post punk chord sensibilities, dreamy ambience and introspective lyrics, I can definitely see the influence bands like Yo La Tango have on Lunar Vacation. Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire features tracks with gazey walls of sound atop which smooth vocals and bright chorus-y melodies lay, reminiscent of bands and artists like Alvvays, Snail Mail, and Courtney Barnett–to me. I’d like to know what were some of the main inspirations for Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, and this could be other music, media, literature, film, spiritual occurrences, religious epiphanies, extraterrestrial dream adventures, perhaps etcetera.

Maggie: Well, yeah, Yo La Tengo is definitely a band we all listened to a lot and pulled from for this album. Also, we were referencing a lot of Radiohead for the drum sounds. But aside from musical influences, I think just our house–living together in an old house was a big part of the inspiration. And also your cat, probably.

Gep: Yeah, my cat Science. He is, like, the muse on this album because he’s just the light of my life and through whatever goes on in my life, he’s the one constant character. But yeah, I think a lot of the themes, like friendship and acceptance and love and commentary and thinking too much, but also trying to not think as much, things in that nature and such.

Diya: Yeah, I am interested in the album artwork for Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire. I’d love to know the story behind the cover photo and why it was chosen to represent these sounds.

Maggie: Yeah, my boyfriend Bran lives with us in our house. He’s also a musician and we wanted him to take the photos ’cause we wanted it to be like a lowkey photo shoot, you know? We didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. (Gep: We’re not that good at taking photos.) Yeah. And so we were like, “let’s just have Bran do it” and we don’t have to make it a big deal. So he took a bunch of photos of us in our living room and the one that ended up on the cover was actually through the bottom of the camera lens through a mason jar. I think having all of us in the picture, but it’s blurry, felt right. Like, this album was all of us coming together and living together, but I don’t know…We don’t want to be too high-def. And then our friend Leo, who’s done a lot of our merch and our last album cover–we wanted him to add his touch to it and so, in the top right corner there’s a red cat in a red moon, and the cat is Gep’s cat Science, who’s kind of our cat in a way, ’cause he lives with us. And the red moon is something that Leo has put on all of the art that he’s done for us so far, so on our last album cover, there’s a red moon and then for a single, “Unlucky”, there’s also a red moon, so it’s something that we wanted to keep going, so, yeah.

Diya: Yeah, it’s kind of like a signature that way.

Gep: Yeah!

Maggie: Yeah, totally.

Diya: That’s so cute. I love that. I’m also interested in the music videos for Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire. The videos for “Fantasy” and “Tom” feature expansive handmade animation, and the videos for “Sick” and “Set the Stage” feature home-video-esque footage and ballet juxtaposed with stark surroundings, respectively. Across the music videos for this album, I do notice common themes of surrealism as well as the homespun quality in general. Can you tell me a little bit more about the choices to include these visuals in tandem with your album’s themes?

Maggie: Yeah, totally. So the first video, we knew was kind of going to be the highest production one. And so we had Ben’s sister–who’s a ballerina–choreograph a dance, and her friend Annie came, and then Gep was in it, and our friend Ben directed it. And it’s kind of like a family affair. We got everyone together pretty fast and pulled that off and, yeah, we wanted, you know–that song is pretty huge sounding and distorted. And we did want it to be pretty surreal, but also just like…It’s so awesome that we got to work with such a talented choreographer and dancers, and then, the rest of the ones we knew had to be smaller budget ’cause we spent most of our budget on the first one. And so “Sick” was–we used our friend Evan’s VHS camera and just filmed each other at our house and kind of wanted to capture our house vibe because that’s kind of, you know, part of the story for the album. So we just filmed everyone kind of like doing, you know– Mateo was like whipping some cream, and I was like, “OK, this is a good time to film your part for the video.” And we just wanted to make it kind of silly and fun and reflective of our day-to-day life. (Gep: Yeah.) And then the Tom video is our friend John Andrews, who made a video for our last album too. We just love any hand drawn animation. Gep told him the story of the song and the inspiration behind the song. And he just animated it. Gep wrote that song about a co-worker they had at a grocery store job. And so if you watch the video in that context–

Gep: Like, the whole story just plays out exactly.

Maggie: And then, yeah, the “Fantasy” visual–we reached out to Gaia. Gep found her on Instagram a long time ago.

Gep: Her work is amazing. So beautiful. That was just, like, a shot in the dark. We were like, “I hope she could do it” ’cause we didn’t know if we had enough money or if she would even want to. And she just created like the most beautiful loop and, oh my god–

Maggie: I feel like it fits the song so well.

Gep: I think so too. It was really cool to work with her.

Maggie: Yeah, I feel like there’s a through line of all the videos, of kind of this surreal darkness, I guess. Even the “Sick” video–most of it we filmed at night. (Gep: Yeah) It’s kind of like, they’re joyful, but there’s also…You know, maybe it’s like finding light in the darkness or something. (Gep: Yeah, totally) That’s kind of what it feels for all of them. So yeah.

Diya: Yeah, definitely. So Lunar Vacation is touring. What are some of the venues and locations you each look forward to playing at the most?

Maggie: Well, we just finished some shows in Seattle and Portland that were awesome, and we’re on our way to San Francisco right now. (Gep: Yeah.) I’m excited to play in San Francisco. I love that city.

Gep: Me too. We’re playing in Vegas for the first time, which is super cool, and then we’re playing at a hotel, and then we also get to stay at the hotel for free–I’m pretty sure so I’m excited for that.

Maggie: Yeah, that, like, never happens to us, so yeah.

Gep: It’s fun.

Maggie: Most of us have never been to Vegas. So we were just talking like an hour ago on whether we’re gonna gamble or not, but we’ll see.

Gep:
Yeah, we’ll see. We don’t have that much money so we’ll see.

Diya: Awesome. Let’s talk gear. What would you say is the most essential piece of gear to the particular sound of Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire.

Gep: Ooh, I have an answer! I have this, like, $100 baby Yamaha nylon guitar that all of the songs are written on and that actually made its way onto the album a lot of times, just to have some extra texture, which we have not done before. We’re usually just electronic, electric guitars, whatever. Yeah. I feel like that represents itself pretty well. I will say, adding on to that, there’s this one pedal distortion pedal called the Klon that we used on a bunch of songs. We don’t actually have it on our pedal boards for the show ’cause they’re kind of expensive and kind of rare, but they had one at the studio and as soon as we used it, we wanted to use it on everything. So that was the star of the pedals for sure, yeah.

Gep: Yeah, totally.

Diya: Definitely. So for the last question, I normally ask people what music gear they’d bring if they were stranded on a desert island, but in this case, I’m going to ask–if you were each headed on a lunar vacation and could only take three pieces of gear with you, each what would they be and why?

Maggie: I would bring my lefty Jaguar that I play, and I guess that means I’d have to bring an amp. I don’t really care what amp. I’m not very partial to an amp. And then maybe…It’s hard to pick one pedal. (Gep: I know.) Maybe if I could just bring my whole pedal board (Gep: No.) I’d be fine, but if not, maybe like maybe like my MXR delay pedal?

Gep: I was gonna say, that would be cool. That’s a good one. I’d have to bring my baby nylon–duh–because I worship that thing. I would also probably bring, like, one of the toy Yamaha little keyboard pianos–or the Casios, those are really cool. And probably some kind of recording contraption. Like a four track, if I ever learn how to use one ’cause right now I just use my phone, which is so, like, not cool. I’m like, ugh, I wanna be cool, but I have to use my phone and the app BandLab, because that’s what all the demos are recorded on. So yeah.

Diya: Hm, I don’t know if I’ve heard of that one.

Gep: It’s, like, off-brand GarageBand (Diya: Oh, I see.) I don’t know, I think I used it in place of GarageBand like once a few years ago and I just never…I’m like, “that’s what works”, I guess. Yeah.

Diya: Awesome, thank you all so much for chatting with me.

Maggie: Thank you so much for chatting!

Gep: Yes! Thank you! Thanks for bearing with us with all the [technological] complications.

Diya: Of course!

Maggie: It was nice to meet you!