EP Review: Jet Lag Motel – No Vacancy
Judging by its title, No Vacancy suggests a full house. Fittingly, Jet Lag Motel's debut EP packs a lot into a short stay: alt-rock hooks, pop-punk momentum, and a heart-warming '90s influence.
Behind the name are Brian Salmon (vocals, bass), Steven Jasik (guitars), and a rotating crew of friends and collaborators. Production, drums, and engineering duties were handled by Jason Murgo, giving the record a polished yet endearing edge.
“Better Place” that kicks off the EP instantly puts a stupid grin on your face and, once that initial rush wears off, gives you even more to enjoy when you pay attention to the lyrics. At its heart, the song celebrates the kind of relationship that brings a sense of ease and clarity to everyday life, where trust comes naturally and even the most ordinary moments feel richer simply because they're shared with your kind of person. As the band put it, it's “almost like being blind without glasses and you finally put a pair on and you see things you've never seen before”.
Built on a sturdy power-pop chassis, the song feels like it’s drawing from a lineage that stretches from Big Star to the more streamlined, hook-heavy Guided by Voices albums of the ’90s. There’s a warm organ humming away in the background that gives everything a pleasantly vintage glow. The guitars are deceptively simple, saying a lot with just a few well-placed notes—a trick that brings The Strokes to mind — while the instantly likeable melodies have more than a little Weezer DNA in them. Put it all together and “Better Place” feels like the musical equivalent of finally finding the person who makes life easier: no crazy over-the-top production, no unnecessary drama in the vocals, just a few simple joyful parts – and everything suddenly makes a little more sense.
If “Better Place” dealt in comfort and certainty, “Mexico” heads in the opposite direction. The song follows a psychedelic trip that turns into a whirlwind romance, only for one person to become far more invested than the other.
That imbalance informs the track: the arrangement spends much of its runtime building tension – as usual, with enjoyably simple means. A sparse guitar part carries a surprising amount of drama, creating a sense of unease and anticipation with a handful of carefully chosen notes. Beneath it, the drums hit with relentless force, pushing the song forward like an event that has already been set in motion and can't be avoided. Every element seems to tighten the screws a little further until the whole thing finally erupts into a cathartic finale. It's an exceptionally effective piece of songwriting, one that understands how to make the music and the story feed each other to creative something vivid, emotional and explosive.
Contrastingly, “Never Again” feels surprisingly light on its feet. The emotional stakes remain high, but instead of spiraling inward, the song channels its energy into movement, replacing anxious anticipation with a groove that sounds strangely liberated. “Never Again” moves on a lean, funk-inflected groove that recalls the more melodic side of Red Hot Chili Peppers, particularly those moments when the band balanced restless momentum with romantic sensibility.
A layer of airy keyboards hangs over the arrangement, giving the track a faintly psychedelic, almost supernatural atmosphere. The standout moment comes in the form of a blazing guitar solo that seems to tear a hole in the fabric of the song. For a brief stretch, the track leaves the ground entirely.
The lyrics deal with the aftermath of an abusive relationship, not from the perspective of someone still trapped inside it, but from someone who has finally reached the point of acceptance.
Still, not every relationship on No Vacancy is actively falling apart. “Listen” is built around a subtler problem: the realization that comfort and connection aren't necessarily the same thing. The narrator finds themselves stuck in a relationship that's enjoyable enough to maintain but somehow incapable of moving forward.
That tension informs the song's structure. The verses are carried by a beautiful, easygoing melody that feels almost dangerously comfortable, mirroring the kind of situation where it's tempting to ignore what's missing because everything seems pleasant enough on the surface.
The choruses give voice to the hidden feeling of dissatisfaction. Suddenly the song starts reaching beyond its own boundaries, opening up into melodies with an arena-sized sense of scale. You can hear the yearning in the music itself: the desire to push past routine, to see farther, to experience something deeper than simple companionship. One part of the song wants to stay exactly where it is; the other keeps looking toward the horizon. That push and pull gives “Listen” a great deal of its emotional power.
“London Pub” is the emotional center of the album. It is a song grounded in a very personal loss. As Brian puts it directly:
“One of my best friends of over 2 decades, Luis Moreno, was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was a pro water polo player and writer/photographer for US Rocker magazine. I live in San Antonio and he lived in my hometown of Los Angeles. I spent 18 months going back and forth until we lost him. This song is a homage to his love of life, travel and his love of life. I miss him very much.”
The vocals bring you to tears. The guitars have a lot of reverb on them and feel like they’re coming from somewhere far away. It gives the song a feeling of looking back on something, like hearing an old memory echo around in your head.
With "One", again, a direct quote from Brian explains the song best:
“This song is so fun to me. I wrote it on the couch joking with my wife as she was doing a puzzle. We have a secret language of numbers. So I started goofing and singing the patterns while playing guitar. It actually felt so good. I sent it to Steven and we ironed it out. In the studio we had Jason flush out that huge bridge with us. This song was an absolute joy. My writing is inspired a lot by my best friend, my wife, Carisa.”
You can totally feel the flow of inspiration – the music itself feels like an avalanche of joy and love, a stream of pure pleasure. This feeling reaches its peak in the choruses with the emotional drumming, unchained character of the singing and an almost gospel-like organ.
No Vacancy works best if you look at it as a sequence of shifts in mood and perspective. Across the tracklist, Jet Lag Motel move between comfort and tension, attachment and release, often within the same song, using fairly minimal musical ideas to carry those changes.
What ties everything together is the band's unique gift of storytelling. Vivid personal stories work as emotional maps of human existence and as testaments to the band's power of fantasy and grasp of details that make even the most surreal moments feel real, endearing and warm. No Vacancy gave me a rare and valuable feeling that I found a friend in the songs' narrator – he is not perfect, he can be hard to understand, but he's someone you can love and trust, a guy with a bag full of melodies and riffs you can't help wanting to come back to, like you long to come back home.
Behind the name are Brian Salmon (vocals, bass), Steven Jasik (guitars), and a rotating crew of friends and collaborators. Production, drums, and engineering duties were handled by Jason Murgo, giving the record a polished yet endearing edge.
“Better Place” that kicks off the EP instantly puts a stupid grin on your face and, once that initial rush wears off, gives you even more to enjoy when you pay attention to the lyrics. At its heart, the song celebrates the kind of relationship that brings a sense of ease and clarity to everyday life, where trust comes naturally and even the most ordinary moments feel richer simply because they're shared with your kind of person. As the band put it, it's “almost like being blind without glasses and you finally put a pair on and you see things you've never seen before”.
Built on a sturdy power-pop chassis, the song feels like it’s drawing from a lineage that stretches from Big Star to the more streamlined, hook-heavy Guided by Voices albums of the ’90s. There’s a warm organ humming away in the background that gives everything a pleasantly vintage glow. The guitars are deceptively simple, saying a lot with just a few well-placed notes—a trick that brings The Strokes to mind — while the instantly likeable melodies have more than a little Weezer DNA in them. Put it all together and “Better Place” feels like the musical equivalent of finally finding the person who makes life easier: no crazy over-the-top production, no unnecessary drama in the vocals, just a few simple joyful parts – and everything suddenly makes a little more sense.
If “Better Place” dealt in comfort and certainty, “Mexico” heads in the opposite direction. The song follows a psychedelic trip that turns into a whirlwind romance, only for one person to become far more invested than the other.
That imbalance informs the track: the arrangement spends much of its runtime building tension – as usual, with enjoyably simple means. A sparse guitar part carries a surprising amount of drama, creating a sense of unease and anticipation with a handful of carefully chosen notes. Beneath it, the drums hit with relentless force, pushing the song forward like an event that has already been set in motion and can't be avoided. Every element seems to tighten the screws a little further until the whole thing finally erupts into a cathartic finale. It's an exceptionally effective piece of songwriting, one that understands how to make the music and the story feed each other to creative something vivid, emotional and explosive.
Contrastingly, “Never Again” feels surprisingly light on its feet. The emotional stakes remain high, but instead of spiraling inward, the song channels its energy into movement, replacing anxious anticipation with a groove that sounds strangely liberated. “Never Again” moves on a lean, funk-inflected groove that recalls the more melodic side of Red Hot Chili Peppers, particularly those moments when the band balanced restless momentum with romantic sensibility.
A layer of airy keyboards hangs over the arrangement, giving the track a faintly psychedelic, almost supernatural atmosphere. The standout moment comes in the form of a blazing guitar solo that seems to tear a hole in the fabric of the song. For a brief stretch, the track leaves the ground entirely.
The lyrics deal with the aftermath of an abusive relationship, not from the perspective of someone still trapped inside it, but from someone who has finally reached the point of acceptance.
Still, not every relationship on No Vacancy is actively falling apart. “Listen” is built around a subtler problem: the realization that comfort and connection aren't necessarily the same thing. The narrator finds themselves stuck in a relationship that's enjoyable enough to maintain but somehow incapable of moving forward.
That tension informs the song's structure. The verses are carried by a beautiful, easygoing melody that feels almost dangerously comfortable, mirroring the kind of situation where it's tempting to ignore what's missing because everything seems pleasant enough on the surface.
The choruses give voice to the hidden feeling of dissatisfaction. Suddenly the song starts reaching beyond its own boundaries, opening up into melodies with an arena-sized sense of scale. You can hear the yearning in the music itself: the desire to push past routine, to see farther, to experience something deeper than simple companionship. One part of the song wants to stay exactly where it is; the other keeps looking toward the horizon. That push and pull gives “Listen” a great deal of its emotional power.
“London Pub” is the emotional center of the album. It is a song grounded in a very personal loss. As Brian puts it directly:
“One of my best friends of over 2 decades, Luis Moreno, was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was a pro water polo player and writer/photographer for US Rocker magazine. I live in San Antonio and he lived in my hometown of Los Angeles. I spent 18 months going back and forth until we lost him. This song is a homage to his love of life, travel and his love of life. I miss him very much.”
The vocals bring you to tears. The guitars have a lot of reverb on them and feel like they’re coming from somewhere far away. It gives the song a feeling of looking back on something, like hearing an old memory echo around in your head.
With "One", again, a direct quote from Brian explains the song best:
“This song is so fun to me. I wrote it on the couch joking with my wife as she was doing a puzzle. We have a secret language of numbers. So I started goofing and singing the patterns while playing guitar. It actually felt so good. I sent it to Steven and we ironed it out. In the studio we had Jason flush out that huge bridge with us. This song was an absolute joy. My writing is inspired a lot by my best friend, my wife, Carisa.”
You can totally feel the flow of inspiration – the music itself feels like an avalanche of joy and love, a stream of pure pleasure. This feeling reaches its peak in the choruses with the emotional drumming, unchained character of the singing and an almost gospel-like organ.
No Vacancy works best if you look at it as a sequence of shifts in mood and perspective. Across the tracklist, Jet Lag Motel move between comfort and tension, attachment and release, often within the same song, using fairly minimal musical ideas to carry those changes.
What ties everything together is the band's unique gift of storytelling. Vivid personal stories work as emotional maps of human existence and as testaments to the band's power of fantasy and grasp of details that make even the most surreal moments feel real, endearing and warm. No Vacancy gave me a rare and valuable feeling that I found a friend in the songs' narrator – he is not perfect, he can be hard to understand, but he's someone you can love and trust, a guy with a bag full of melodies and riffs you can't help wanting to come back to, like you long to come back home.