Vacant Weekend – ‘All Over’
If The Strokes and Two Door Cinema Club had a baby who really loved funk, that baby would grow up to become Vacant Weekend.
The three-piece band (Isaac Dobson, Connor Ryan-Williams and Alexander Beston) are a youthful bunch of genre-hoppers who came together on the pleasingly wholesome premise of being three outsiders who could collaborate creatively without fear of judgement.
Vacant Weekend’s first official offering, ‘All Over’ is a sun kissed indie funk tune with a heavy rock influence. Virtuosic guitar playing is its trademark – something that one fears could veer into the obnoxious, but actually gives the group their pleasingly catchy trademark sound.
The riffs are jam-packed and explosive, working in tandem with tight drum beats to create something infectious – add a some slap bass on top and you’ve got yourself a hit. Beston’s vocals have an urgency that keeps the song's narrative running along at a nice pace. He’s in tune with his instrumental companions' rhythmic precision, mixing a breathy delivery with a powerful chest voice to give his line its own interweaving rhythms.
Apparently, the song came about when the trio decided to jam after a gig in Shap. When you hear the track, that origin story isn’t surprising. ‘All Over’ is innately danceable – a performance that feels like its feeding off the energy of an electrified crowd. It’s got a live-ness to it that’s really irresistible. It’s almost like you can feel the musicians themselves dancing around on stage, giving the track an indefinable energy and sense of movement. Thankfully, we can all experience this first-hand as the group have a few shows lined up for the summer.
Particularly for a first musical outing the track is deeply impressive. It touches the four-minute mark without becoming dull. The melodies are sweet and manage to strike a balance between repetition and variation – just enough to get the hook across, but never too much so as your ear loses interest.
Vacant Weekend shimmer with promise. ‘All Over’ allows the band’s skilful, idiosyncratic song writing to shine through. It’s clearly a summer anthem, a song you can easily imagine hearing at a festival, in the park, at a party – basically any setting where you can imagine yourself holding a nice cold beer.
Words by Izzy Rowley
