The Vaccines- What did you expect from the vaccines?



The Vaccines Debut album



The Vaccines are:

Justin Young - Lead Vocals

Árni Hjörvar - bass

Freddie Cowan guitar

Pete Robertson- drums

Bargain buy from HMV for £5.99 the new album from The Vaccines- What did you expect from the vaccines?. Released on March 14th I wonder what to expect from a band that formed in the summer of 2010 with sold out UK tours and supporting the likes of Arcade Fire and Mumford and Sons.

I first discovered The Vaccines on Jools Holland and was instantly attracted to Justin Young's relaxed, nostalgic tone and the band's nonchalant attitude on stage. At some points you wonder if Young has recorded the album two feet away from the microphone especially on tracks such as 'Blow it up.' The whole album offers a mixture of upbeat instrumentals combined with confessional lyrics and has a real sense of beginning, middle and end. This is not only represented in a candid account of life after a difficult break-up but also musically with a punchy start, a solid fluid centre and on the final track an angsty crescendo.


The band's writing style is similar to singer/songwriter Frank Turner who with more poetic flair offers a frankness (sorry) about topics of rejection, finding love and loosing friends. The Vaccines also take a personal approach to writing especially in track such as 'Lack of Understanding' and 'Post Break up Sex' as Young writes 'I can't believe you feel good from post break up sex.' The simplicity of the lyrics is one of reasons this track is my favourite on the album. The vulnerability of the words suggests it has come straight from Young's diary unlike mainstream artist Rhianna, somehow I find it difficult to believe that she enjoys whips and chains as much as she claims on her top ten hit S & M.


My only criticism would be of the first track 'Wreckin Bar.' It's a potentially good starting track and introduces the album well but at the same time I feel it could be tweaked into an amazing song in its own right, especially as the album itself is 33.17 minutes long. But I'm not going to dwell on this as I love all 1 minute 24 seconds of it. It is obvious they are a band who love and take influence from some of their favourite artists such as Beach Boys and openly admit "none of us listen to much contemporary music" and who blames them when we have to listen to songs about S & M....no thanks.
www.thevaccines.co.uk