As both a friend group and as a band, Lunar Vacation take leveling up seriously. Gep Repasky and Maggie Geeslin have been sharing musical ideas ever since becoming best friends in eighth grade, making demos in their bedrooms and going on the road before adding Connor Dowd on drums, Matteo DeLurgio on keys and percussion, and Ben Wulkan on bass. After touring in support of their dreamy, inviting 2021 debut Inside Every Fig Is a Dead Wasp, the band’s five members started living under the same roof – and sharing a single bathroom. Wulkan turned the living room into an ad-hoc studio where Lunar Vacation wrote and demoed their just-released sophomore album, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire, which also meant they had to practice a greater degree of trust, communication, and vulnerability. Repasky hardly had to talk about the emotional turmoil that inspired a lot of the songs and led to a psychiatric hospitalization – everyone was there to witness it. Untangling those mixed feelings – despair, resentment, warmth, optimism – into an indie rock record was not an easy process, but it seems to have come organically. Produced by Drew Vandenberg, Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire doesn’t progress the band’s sound by making it more pristine or in any way perfect, but rather finding the right pace: it builds up, steadies itself, hurries, lets go. Everything Matters might be the opposite of nihilism, but it’s an embrace you have to open yourself up to, even if it burns a little.
Following our Artist Spotlight interview, we caught up with Lunar Vacation’s Gep Repasky and Maggie Geeslin to talk about their house, Yo La Tengo, running, and other inspirations behind their new album.
The Lunar Vacation house and garden
Maggie Geeslin: Coming off the Fig album tour cycle in 2022, we were kind of living at our parents’ houses, Gep and I had just graduated college, Matteo graduated. We were all in this floating space where we were touring so much that it was fine if we were sort of placeless. After that tour ended, we realized we’d probably have a year with some shows but mostly focusing on making the next record. We didn’t have a solid process for writing together yet, so we were like, “Why don’t we all just move in together?” Ben dropped out of NYU music school to come live with us and be in the band full-time, which was kind of the start of this album era. Ben is a really great engineer, he has his own studio, so he spearheaded the demoing process. I think Gep found the house on Apartments.com—
Gep Repasky: Or something like that. [laughs]
MG: We found it pretty quickly and were like, “Alright, let’s do it!” It’s kind of not really meant for five people, but we make it work.
GR: Talking about the house feels like just talking about our friendship – it feels like a metaphor for it. This was the first time we’ve all been under one roof, especially after touring – it was crazy to go back to the same place together and we’re like, “Well, we literally can’t escape one another.”
Did you debate the decision at all?
MG: I think it was more out of necessity because we all needed a place to live. Also, it makes the rent cheaper because there’s five people in one house that’s not really meant for five people. That was a huge incentive. Also, we knew we needed to make an album, but didn’t know where to start, so it seemed like the best way to jump into it.
GR: Like, we were making demos in the living room, so everyone had a chance to share ideas. It felt like more of an open invitation for any demos or opinions, which wasn’t the case with our last album. With our first album, I feel like we imposed a lot of boundaries and rules, even if we didn’t realize it. And by “we,” I mean also me, because I was definitely pretty protective over some of the songs. But I learned to stop being so… I don’t know, annoying?
MG: Protective.
GR: Yeah. I used to feel – sometimes I still feel this way – like, “Yup, this is the last good song I’ll ever make. It’s over. It’s done. Well, now I’ll have to get a corporate job.” But trying to get away from that idea was literally opening up the process to everyone, being more vulnerable, laying it all out and not being so secretive and worrying about, “Is it gonna transform into something I don’t like anymore? It is gonna lose its magic?” But that’s just not true. It made all the songs better, and it made all of us better at what we’re doing.
Was it a slow process?
MG: Oh, yeah. It took us like four months to even get started demoing. We were all settling into a pretty new phase of life. Gep and I were trying to work in the real world for the first time since graduating college and going on tour, and we all had to get different part-time jobs. We still wanted to prioritize the band, but we had to pay rent and we weren’t playing shows, so we had to get other jobs. I feel like there were a few months of us just figuring out how to exist, but in January 2023, we locked in and made a plan, listened to a bunch of old demos and ideas, and scheduled more time to write together. From January to about July last year, we were writing. And then we booked studio time in December, so we had a few months where we toured for a month and let the songs sit a little bit. Because it kind of got to the point where we were overworking them, trying out so many different versions. Our manager was like, “I think you guys should just let it breathe a little bit.” Same with our producer, Drew. He helped us tie it all up and finish it in the studio in December. It was definitely a year-long process.
In terms of the vulnerability, Gep, was it a learning curve for you?
GR: Yeah, definitely a learning curve. I don’t know if I’m a full control freak, but I definitely like to be in control. All of it was learning to trust everyone on a different level. We already had the baseline trust with everyone, but I feel like we just needed to reach a higher level. Living together was part of that, sharing songs was part of that, and we now split all the songwriting credits and everything equally, which we didn’t do in the past, either. Now, fully, everything is equal. I feel like we’ve totally leveled up as friends and as a band. It was a necessity for us to keep growing and for everyone to feel good about what we’re doing.
Maggie, a term that you used in the bio is “homemakers.” What does it mean for you to make a home together while being in a band?
MG: I think it really goes along with what Gep was saying about leveling up as friends. We live together and make music together, but we’re not doing that 12 hours a day, you know? Our garden is part of the inspiration too. Matteo definitely took the lead on being like, “We have a front yard, let’s try to grow food,” and everyone tended to it and put thought into it. While we were writing, there were a lot of times when three of us, or whoever, would step out into the garden, look at everything, and talk about the music. You can have the whole metaphor for music and nature, and I’ll save that for people who know about that, but just letting things grow – we all did a lot of growing during this time. Gep and I got into a lot of crafts. I learned how to crochet, Gep learned how to make rugs, I’m learning how to sew right now. I feel like we didn’t just want to occupy this space, but really live in it and be intentional with every part of our lives together.
It’s difficult – we’re sharing one bathroom and one kitchen for five people, so part of homemaking is that we had to make a bathroom cleaning schedule that’s taped inside a cabinet, and you have to check off what you do. Part of homemaking is our communication, too. You can be a passive roommate and ignore people when they’re not cleaning their dishes, or you can be straightforward, like, “Hey, you need to clean this up,” or, “Hey, I’ve emptied the dishwasher for the past three days, can you do it?” I feel like that really fed into how we communicate on tour and how we communicate when we’re writing – trying to be respectful but also straightforward, so we can all be closer.
Science (Gep’s cat)
GR: Science will always be an inspiration to me because he’s the first animal that was really mine. We had dogs growing up, but they were family dogs, more my parents’ dogs. I’m not sure if I had Science the last time we talked?
MG: Yeah, I think you did. That was 2021.
GR: So maybe I did. But honestly, he’s just getting older. I got him when he was six, and he turned nine this year. I don’t want to be dark, but it kind of makes me think about death sometimes. He can’t talk to me. He can’t be like, “Hey, I’m feeling bad and need to go to the vet.” The only way I know is if he hides from me or won’t eat. I’ve kind of had to take on a parental role, which is amazing because I feel like he’s my kid, but it makes me sad because he literally could die any second, and I have to be okay with it. He’s gonna die, probably, before me, and I know it’s gonna be such a horrible loss to experience. It sounds so dumb, but sometimes I’m like, “I can’t die yet because he’s there.” You know what I mean? Sometimes I’m like, “I need to die,” but Science is there, and I cannot. He is my world. I just love him so much.
MG: You also got him at a time – I feel like a lot of this record is about mental health and trying to get better and accept things. Ever since Gep got Science – I mean, I’ve lived with Gep and Science even before we all moved in together – I feel like Gep will be like, “I’m feeling really depressed, but I have to live for Science.”
GR: It’s true. I literally am like, “Yup, sorry, I can’t dip out on that guy.”
MG: But since we’ve all moved in together, he’s kind of become like the band’s pet, and he really spreads his love around. He’s such a good guy; he’s in my room right now. Whenever Gep is gone, I’m his Gep. [laughs] We told Leo, who did the art, if he wanted to incorporate Science in some way, because he’s kind of like the band’s mascot now. So, there’s a little cat on our record cover. And there’s a red moon – ever since we started working with Leo on our song ‘Unlucky’, which was before Fig, he’s included a red moon on everything we’ve done. So, we ended up with a cat and a moon, which feels like our two little symbols.
GR: We’ve never met Leo in person.
MG: Only over the phone.
GR: But he was sending cats, and we were like, “Oh my God, this is Science!” And he was like, “Yes!” I feel like he spearheaded that. I loved that he was so into it, and I was like, “Wait, this is a good thing.” I would love Science to be memorialized in everything we put out in the future.
MG: He’s a symbol of peace, honestly, and being loving and chill.
GR: He is literally the symbol of everything good. That’s why he inspires me.
In the credits, you call him “the greatest cat who ever lived.”
GR: I fully believe that. For my job, I cat-sit and dog-sit, so I’m around animals all the time. There are some close seconds, but no one holds a candle to Science. He’s perfect. And he’s only hissed at one or two people, and they were bad omens. He just picks up the vibes.
The grocery store
You reference the grocery store on the song ‘Bitter’, which is probably the most self-critical song on the album. Were you working at one at the time?
GR: Yeah, I did. I feel like the grocery store as an umbrella, so many of the songs are under that. A lot of the songs are about the demise of a relationship, and it was a relationship I had with someone I worked with. When that went to shit, I had to quit and couldn’t be friends with some of my coworkers – they say never date coworkers, and then you actually do it and it’s like, “Wait, this is gonna work out.” And then it’s so horrible and you have to quit your job and find a bunch of new friends.
A lot of the songs came from that: ‘Bitter’, and also ‘Just for Today’ has that grocery store vibe because I would get really depressed working there. There were times where I was just stocking cans, and I was like, “I hate my life.” Not even because I was stocking cans, but it just gave me too much time to think sometimes. It was good when I was at the register, talking to people. It felt really good to be social; I was forced to be very friendly and social, and that was nice. I feel like if I hadn’t worked there, this album wouldn’t have happened because so many of those songs are about my relationship or the grocery store life intertwining with my other life.
MG: Yeah, Bitter’, ‘Just for Today, ‘Tom’ – because ‘Tom’ was about one of your coworkers you had a crush on, but then he’s gay. John [J. Andrews], who did the video for it, basically told the story through the animation. But you working at the grocery store – when we moved into this house, we all had to get part-time jobs, and that’s the job that Gep got. Just experiencing post-college, post-pandemic, you’re being a social person again, and I feel like a lot of those interactions got you to start writing again.
GR: ‘Tom’ is all good though, because I love my coworker who that’s about. No bad vibes there. Some of the other songs detail not-so-fun experiences, but that’s life.
Yo La Tengo
What aspects or era of the band were you drawn to?
MG: Definitely And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. That record stood out to me. Gep was in a Yo La Tengo phase, which got me into it, and then Ben. That was a band that all five of us, who all listen to different things, could rally around and be like, “This rocks.” They record themselves now, and they just do whatever – sometimes they have 10-minute-long, ripping songs that are super distorted, and the next song will be a gentle lullaby. That was really inspiring for us. It showed that to be a band, all you have to do is be people who make music together. You don’t have to stick to a genre or be a happy band or a sad band. Because we started making music so young, some of the songs we made when we were 16 people still request, and they’re really upbeat and surfy, and sometimes we don’t feel like playing them. Seeing a band with so much variety is just really validating.
To get into the technical stuff, their drum sounds were a big inspiration on a lot of our songs, especially ‘Better Luck’. The guitar sounds, too, the spacey distortion mixed with a lot of country-like pedal steel. They’re just not afraid to be simple, and that’s something we needed to let ourselves do in order to serve the songs. Like I said, we overworked them, and sometimes it’s like, “Let’s just play this like a Yo La Tengo song.” They’re like a band’s band. We also got to see them live. We had a serendipitous moment when we were driving into Pittsburgh, we were opening for Rubblebucket at this venue called Mr. Smalls – we’re getting in the day before the show, and I was like, “Oh my god, Yo La Tango is playing here tonight.” I texted the venue guy and was like, “Hey, this is Maggie from Lunar Vacation. Any way you have some spots for the Yo La Tengo show tonight?” He got us all into the show, which was pretty amazing.
GR: I feel like using that phrase, “Let’s just Yo La Tengo it,” it’s like, let’s just chill out and not think too hard, just jam on it and see where it goes. I feel like that was a good mantra to have in our heads, because it’s not like we were taking specific things from certain songs. It was just the overall vibe and aura of Yo La Tengo. That was a fun reminder for all of us to come back and stop overthinking.
Tascam M-308
I’m assuming this is the mixer you used to demo the album?
MG: Yeah, Ben bought it on Facebook Marketplace for pretty cheap. He brought it to our house, and then they had a bigger board, so we took that one as kind of our band board. Every time we demoed, it was either just Gep’s iPhone demos that we were going off of in the studio, or we’d gone straight into a computer through Ableton or something. With this record, we really wanted it to sound more organic and warm, and I feel like that board was kind of the gateway to achieving that, making the demos feel that way right off the bat instead of waiting 12 months until they sounded like that in the studio. The warmth of plugging straight into a board and mixing in an analog way is something we hadn’t really explored much on our own. That was one of those things that made it a lot easier and instantly sound nice. We needed that to get started with the writing process and to imagine the soundscape.
Running
GR: I love to run, and I figured that out last year. I feel like it gave me a lot of time – maybe a little too much time – to think through things I was stressed about or thinking about. It just made me feel better. When you go on a run, you’re kind of forced to finish. It’s been so hot so I haven’t been running as much as I used to, but running just makes you feel so good. You have to come back somehow, and I love the idea of putting yourself in a situation where you have to complete whatever task you’ve set yourself. Not even in a rigid way, but just like, “I can’t chicken out.” When you run, it’s so cathartic, and sometimes I would cry when I ran, too. I went through a bad, weird breakup, and running really helped with that. I would just take an hour or however long it took and maybe try and get my frustration or anger out by running, and then I’d go really fast, and maybe I’d slow down, but I would always want to keep going. And I feel like by the end of it, I would always be crying about something – in a good way.
It helped me really think about my health. I don’t drink anymore, which is good. Also, making sure to eat regularly and not just be like, “I’m going to smoke cigarettes and then go for a run because they cancel each other out, and I don’t have to have dinner.” Like, what is that? That makes no sense. So I was learning how to incorporate running into my life in a healthy way. It just gets your ideas flowing and makes you feel less worried about your entire life, you know.
MG: In general, all of us living together, we don’t drink that much, and then when Gep stopped drinking, we really didn’t drink much as a household. If we’re in such close quarters, if one person starts taking care of themselves, it’s a chain reaction. Ben and Matteo go on runs together, and Gep running really inspired me to start running; I also love to ride my bike. It’s so easy when your friends are doing it. But it’s funny, Gep, what you said, you write these songs to get over situations and process them, but that doesn’t stop once you finish writing the song. You have to deal with that in another way, and I feel like running is how you dealt with it – and going to therapy.
That could be its own inspiration, I’m sure.
GR: Oh my God! We can’t even begin to talk about that because it’s so layered.
A baby nylon guitar
You play it on several songs on the album, including ‘Sick’, ‘Better Luck’, ‘Tom’, and ‘Just for Today’. Is it usually the starting point for songs?
GR: Literally, yes. Getting that nylon guitar changed my life. It was only $119 from a guitar shop near our house. It’s just a Yamaha, super basic, chill, small guitar.
MG: Is it a child’s guitar? It’s really small.
GR: I think it is. It’s so tiny, but I love it because usually the necks of nylon guitars are huge, but this one neck is super small. That guitar helped me write on the road, and there’s one song I actually wrote in the car while we were touring in late 2022. I wrote ‘You Shouldn’t Be’ in the car, and it was completely different. It had three extra chords that made it sound so different. Ben would be like, “Oh, this demo you sent two months ago that’s ten seconds or whatever — I have a whole idea for it.” Basically, he took out two chords, and then he and Matteo made the drum beat – it blows my mind! That’s my favorite drum beat, it’s so freaking cool. They were like, “Look what we did! I think this could be ‘You Shouldn’t Be,’” and I was like, “Whoa, I love it.”
The second song I wrote on that tour was ‘Fantasy’. I wrote it at our friend Violet’s house in Tennessee. It was such an easy, fun way to keep writing. It’s so versatile, and it’s easy to tune the strings to different tunings. I love the warmth of the nylon; it has the most beautiful sound in the entire world. And I love that we could put it on the record so much because I was worried it had intonation issues or just wouldn’t fit the vibe. But it worked really well, like ‘Just for Today’, there’s the nylon picking in the back while the main guitar lead is electric. Having that guitar has made me less scared to write songs and got me out of my songwriting rut.
Another song that features the nylon guitar, although Ben is credited with playing it, is ‘Erase All the B’s’, which is probably my favorite on the album right now. How did that one come about?
GR: I think that’s probably my favorite song ever. It came out of that relationship dwindling. The day after everything happened, I picked up my guitar, and I was dog-sitting, too. I was literally dog-sitting and house-sitting 30 minutes away from everyone, so I was in this empty house, alone, so sad. I did not know what to do, I felt so horrible. I feel like those were just the first chords that came to mind, and the song basically wrote itself. I really didn’t have to do that much, it just came out. There’s a reference to a song called ‘It’s Hard to Get Around the Wind’ by Alex Turner, the lead singer of Arctic Monkeys. The song is on a soundtrack he did for a movie called Submarine that I love. And that song always made me feel so upset because it’s really depressing, but that line, “Trying to get to heaven in a hurry,” I would always think about that, especially when I was feeling really depressed. I was like, “I’m trying to get to heaven in a hurry.” So that line just came out, and the chorus, too, was just like, “This has nothing to do with me.” Because the situation was fucked up, that’s all I’m gonna say. I could not have done anything to prevent it, it was out of my control. And I feel like that goes along with accepting what happened and try to move on.
That also translates to the way we recorded it, because the whole song was done in one take. Which is crazy, because we’d never done that before, and all us are very picky about our parts. The fact that we could agree on one take – and the vocal take, too, which I was nervous about because I usually like to double the vocals or harmonize. But once we did it, we were like, “That’s it. That’s the feeling of the song.”
MG: We played it one night after dinner; we went back into the studio and tracked it probably like 17 times. Then we all went in the control room and listened to all of them. Drew, our producer, was like, “I have one that I think should be the one. You guys listen and pick which one you think should be the one.” And it’s the one that ended up on the album. I will say, though, everything is tracked in one take, but Ben’s nylon guitar, there was a day when Gep was sick—
GR: Oh, that’s right.
MG: Drew, our producer, really wanted a little bit of extra guitar in the chorus, so Ben tracked the nylon because Gep was gone. He was like, “You can’t hear it, but you can feel it.” I was like, “Okay, whatever!” [laughs] But that song we knew was very special. I almost feel like we were afraid to touch it because Gep’s demo was just them singing with a guitar. So we were like, “How do we honor this but also make it fit into the record?” We talked about a lot of different ways to do it in the studio, and Gep at some point was like, “I don’t even want to do it.” And then we ended up just playing it like we would play it. We didn’t practice any parts or anything; everyone just got in front of their instrument of choice, dialed in a tone, and then we just played it like we were sitting in our living room, just playing along to it.
GR: That song I think came out of the most sadness and despair. I feel like that song coming out of that was a little guiding light, you know?
MG: Also, in general for all the songs, but especially that one because it’s so emotional – because we all lived together when Gep was going through that stuff, I feel like we all witnessed it and understood the lyrics and material more than usual because we were so close to Gep, both physically and emotionally. We were alongside them while they were going through that, and I feel like you can really hear it in everyone’s playing in that song. Even though it’s really simple, it’s almost like everyone is sympathizing with you as they’re playing. We all knew – it used to be just me who knew what every lyric is about because I was best friends with Gep, but now I feel like everyone knows what every lyric is about. We understand a lot deeper than we would have before, and I think that really helped everyone shape their parts.
MG: I feel like that could apply to every song. Because we’re living together, everyone has all the context for the songs, and I was less scared to talk about them. I still get insecure when I talk about it because I’m like, “I feel dumb,” but it was nice that everyone was on the same page.
What was your reaction to that particular song, Maggie, and how did you feel when you were recording it?
MG: I honestly felt very proud, because I feel like the situation – it could have been like a revenge song. You could have gone Taylor Swift mode.
GR: Like a diss track, something really spiteful and mean.
MG: Gep wrote it one day after everything went down, and just that chorus of “What’s it got to do with me?” – when we play it live, it’s “Nothing’s got to do with me” – but it also feels very heavily intertwined. It’s about that messed-up relationship situation, but it also feels like it’s about Gep’s mental health journey and what they went through last year, which – our rooms are literally right next to each other, and we’re also just very close in general. I probably cried when I heard it. There are some songs that Gep sends that make me cry, even from when we were 16. I don’t think I’ll ever forget recording it, because there was that point where Gep was like, “I don’t even know if we should record it,” and I’m so happy we did because I’ll never forget what it felt like to be in the room with everyone, just playing and having no plan. We just felt really together. Even though that song is about a specific situation, it will probably resonate with a lot of people, and it definitely resonated with me, even though something like that hasn’t happened to me. It almost felt sacred. You have something beautiful, and it’s like, what are you gonna do with it?
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Lunar Vacation’s Everything Matters, Everything’s Fire is out now via Keeled Scales.