The Go-Go's
Vacation

THE REVIEW

Second album in 1982 for the Go-Go's that doesn't stray too far from the previous record, perhaps less immediate in impact and requiring more listens to be appreciated. Much of the material had already been recorded or written in previous years, the exhilarating title track was in live repertoire in 1981 alongside "Beatnick Beach" in a medley with the instrumental "Surfing and Spying". The sound is the same, lots of surf mixed with a very well-played pop punk and great rhythmic energy with a concession to a very well-crafted ballad, "Worlds Away", to close the album. What's perhaps missing is the homogeneous quality that positively distinguished "Beauty and the Beat"; the tracks that compose "Vacation" are leftovers but are still good songs. The debt to Blondie's first album is always marked, listen, for example, to Charlotte Caffey's surf riffs or Katy Valentine's rhythmic bass, not to mention Gina Shock's drum rolls that immediately recall Clem Burke's, the most representative track in this sense is "It's Everything But Partytime". "The Way You Dance" is the single that however fails to become a hit like "Vacation", while "Get Up and Go" and "This Old Feeling" are strong tracks along with the cover of "Cool Jerk"; the bassline of "This Old Feeling" would be reused by Carlisle for "Mad About You" a few years later.

Along with the first record, it's a top-party album, too bad for the absence in the reissued edition of exhaustive live material documenting the band's notable and fiery concerts. With the subsequent "Talk Show" one would start to hear different sounds, then the separation until "God Bless The Go-Go's" in 2001, the first album of new material since 1984.