Earlier this year, news came that the longstanding Chicago post-punk band Chin Up Chin Up would be playing their final show. Chin Up Chin Up’s particular skill, for me, came from their ability to balance a relentless sense of rhythmic drive with vocals that were restrained, almost reassuring. Around the same time of that announcement came word of a new group, Vacations, comprised of Chin Up Chin Up’s Jeremy Bolen and Greg Sharp, and Make Believe’s Bobby Burg. Their first EP (or EPs — this is a question explored in the interview below), I Was Bikini/But Rain Afraid, expands on Chin Up Chin Up’s sense of rhythmic exploration while increasing the melodic sensibilities on display. The group has been experimenting with a sliding-scale payment method for their debut; there’s also a vinyl version in which one EP can be heard via tried-and-true analog methods, with both being downloadable. Bolen and I discussed distribution, the nature of this EP (or EPs), and the current state of indie rock in Chicago.

[Previous interviews in this series can be found here.]

The digital version of the I Was Bikini 7″ comes with an additional EP, But Rain Afraid. The file I downloaded from Flameshovel, though, was organized as one thirteen-track album. Do you consider the two EPs as halves of a larger work or as distinct entities?
The whole thing is really just a collection of all the early songs we have worked out, the idea is it is one record with many options of how to obtain it. We thought about a ton of ideas of how to get the music out there, and we thought a 7″with codes for the rest of the record was perfect, as it has an actual product with art and everything; most people are just putting music onto iPods and computers, CDs just seem like a waste at this point.

Were any of the Vacations songs written during Chin Up Chin Up’s time as a band? When these ideas came about, did you have this particular feel and use of instrumentation in mind from the beginning?
Yes, at least some of the ideas, and the general idea for instrumentation was conceived while we were beginning to write a new Chin Up record. We did have a particular feel we were going for, eventually it just made more sense to make it a new band instead of trying to push Chin Up into directions it wasn’t able to go; you really can’t force things like that to happen. I’m kind of sick of the traditional guitar/bass/drums instrumentation.

2/3 of Vacations were in Chin Up Chin Up; are there ever points where you find yourselves concerned that the music you’re making is veering too close to your previous band?
Not really, I don’t think were thinking about things like that. It seems totally different to me, but I’m sure to other listeners it seems similar and that’s fine too. Whatever it is we’re doing we’re excited about it.

A number of the I Was Bikini/But Rain Afraid songs reference community, either generally or through the “With” songs’ invocation of specific people. To what extent did you draw upon the people around you for either inspiration or points of reference?
Well the “with” songs were actually written with the people mentioned in the titles. Mahmood is a good friend of ours and me and Bobby wrote that song, and he stopped by my house while we were finishing it, so on the original take we had him play drums on a wood block thing. Same basic thing on “With Cale”. I think we’re always drawing from everyone and everything around us probably.

With an eye towards indie rock in Chicago nowadays, it seems like a number of the bands I’m listening to include combinations of members of the bands I was listening to a year or two ago, to a greater extent than I’ve seen in other cities. Do you think there’s something specific to Chicago that’s led to this sense of experimentation and collaboration?
Well I think the music world here, at least with people around our age, is pretty tight-knitand intertwined. People are always starting bands with and filling in for others, and everything kind of just evolves. I think it’s a pretty exciting thing to be a part of. It seems like in the last 2 years a lot of new bands have formed out of the remains of the main Chicago bands of the early 2000s. I can’t believe I just said ‘early 2000s’.