Photo credit: Nathan Grimes
Virginia indie-rock duo Vacation Manor return with Back To Town, a six-song EP that leans into stripped-back songwriting and emotional presence. It’s a record shaped by new chapters—marriage, fatherhood, and 10 years of playing together—and it shows.
Every track feels intentional, pared down to what matters, and delivered with the quiet confidence of a band that understands when to hold back.
In this interview, they break down how simplicity plays a role in everything from lyric writing to production choices. It’s less about being minimal and more about knowing when something’s enough. These aren’t demos or sketches—they’re fully realized songs that earned their shape by being wrestled with, broken down, and reimagined until only the right pieces remained.
What have you learned about the power of simplicity in your music?
Simplicity and complexity are two sides of a tension we try to hold in writing, recording, playing live, etc. In a four-minute song there’s only so much time to get a lyric, melody, or feeling across to someone—and we’re usually looking to do all three of those things.
I think one thing we’ve tended to do well (or at least strive to do well) is boiling down ideas to their essence and building them up from there. A great goal most of the time is to try to make things sound simple even if executing it isn’t.
Do you find it hard to strip things down?
For us, stripping things down is all about listening and identifying what’s compelling about a melody or a lyric. We’ve typically carried in the mindset that a good song will feel good with just a piano or guitar and a vocal—if it passes that test we usually feel like we’ve written something that can stand on its own.
Once a song has its identity in a simple form it’s a lot more fun to add something seemingly unnecessary or ornamental, but more times than not I find that even those things are there to reinforce something essential in the song.
What’s your approach to removing unnecessary layers?
Early on I think we had a much harder time knowing what layers or parts were unnecessary. Sometimes I would have an idea for a part that would be cool in and of itself but not particularly supportive to the rest of the song. As time has gone on, I think our instinct for part writing and self-editing has gotten better.
A great trick is to just start muting different tracks as you’re recording and see if any parts are stifling the track.
[embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=1pW7xZV_oDk&si=Y3ckPxIZ0pUJhunT[/embed]How do you know when a track is saying enough?
The most basic metric is if a song is making you feel the way you set out for it to. There’ve been a few times where after adding part after part, a song still doesn’t feel great—and we realize it’s the song, not the production. If a song just isn’t working, there’s no shame in at least temporarily abandoning it for something that’s coming easy.
We’ve had a few scenarios where a great part from an okay song ended up being the start of a brand new idea.
Have you ever cut something that was “cool” but not essential?
Definitely. Sometimes an idea that’s great on its own but doesn’t connect to the broader vision has to be sacrificed in the interest of the song. Again, I love when parts that don’t make the cut end up inspiring a new idea or get used on a different song. I’ll usually keep parts like that in a voice memo, but I find that more often a really good part gets stuck in my head and I’ll remember it down the road when it’s needed.
What’s one simple idea that resonated far more than expected?
“You, In The Afternoon” was a song off this EP that came about while trying to write parts for a different song. I think we were looking for a cool tone and stumbled upon the rhythm guitar part. That song happened faster than any of the others and was so much fun to work on.
Every once in a while an idea comes out almost effortlessly—but is usually a result of showing up every day and working on the ideas that don’t come as easily.
Do you believe simple ideas are harder or easier to write?
It really depends.
Some of our favorite songs have been a fight to figure out, and others have just sort of fallen out of the sky. In general, I think simplicity is a really difficult thing to pull off and is the result of having a really clear vision going into writing—or being stubborn enough to keep chipping away until you find the essence or identity of a great idea.
The post Why Vacation Manor believe simplicity takes the most skill appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.