This time last year, LA-based singer Lewis Grant was still living in his native St. Louis, frustrated with life not moving how we wanted. He chose to write about the experience, seeing what would come out instead of letting the irritation fester inside."I was in a very different time in my life. The stuff I was making was so minimal," he told me in a recent phone conversation. "I wasn't ready and willing to dive into really experiencing and learning who I was. It was a point where I was very unsure about, not just my surroundings, but what I was doing. I had this idea of vacation of not necessarily physically going anywhere but completely mental."Grant grew up around music. He has vivid memories of his parents walking around their home, making up songs on the fly. But he says his official introduction to his craft was musical theater. As a kid, he played in a local adaptation of '60s musical Oliver!, which sparked his interest in performing. He eventually learned to play the guitar and piano.The song that he wrote about escape is "Vacation," in which he dreams of getting away from the lifetime of pain weighing him down through hi-pitched auto-tuned crooning not unlike early Bon Iver. But Lewis ended up leaving mentally as well when he and childhood friends decided to relocate to Los Angeles in October of 2016. In the Dylan Brady-produced track's video, which we're premiering today, Grant replays the whole experience.At the video's beginning, he stumbles through a warehouse room, and analyzes himself in the mirror. He then ends up struggling to get out of a body of water, before rising up to a beach, bewildered, yet refreshed. "I did feel submerged in this world that was kind of like, not necessarily where I wanted to be. I didn't necessarily feel like myself," Grant recalls. "I didn't feel free."Watch "Vacation" above.Follow Noisey on Twitter.
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