Vaccines - English Graffiti

What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?

I’ve got too much time on my hands

But you don’t understand

Music and art have always been part of Justin Young's life. An Englishman from Southampton, Hampshire, great-grandson of a painter and son of a film director, he's been playing guitar since he was a kid. Before becoming the future founder of the Vaccines, he performed as Jay Jay Pistolet, backed by his flatmates Marcus Mumford and Winston Marshall of Mumford and Sons. In 2008 he decided to stop playing indie-folk under that moniker, and the following year he met fellow guitarist Freddie Cowan (brother of Tom Cowan, who plays in Horrors): the core of the Vaccines was formed. Arni Arnason on bass and Pete Robertson on drums soon joined the pair.

We're in West London, and the early chapters of the Vaccines' story unfold as quickly as one of their soon-to-be hits. In 2010 they uploaded the demo of "If You Wanna" online - met with a positive response from both fans and industry insiders - and played their first show. More gigs followed, in ever-bigger venues, with ever-bigger crowds. Among the onlookers were illustrious peers with whom they'd soon be sharing the stage at the world's biggest festivals… Things moved at breakneck speed: from a promising new act, the band suddenly found themselves with an album ready to present to the world. And right from the title, you can sense a transition as significant as it was sudden.

Now that ten years have passed since its release, with both the hype and the skepticism that greeted it long since faded, let's see what the Vaccines' debut still has to offer. Without reinventing anything, in its energetic simplicity, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? (2011) manages to capture all the enthusiasm of a band just starting out, shaping a record that remains a fan favourite to this day, thanks to that mix of naivety and surprisingly mature flashes.

Produced by Dan Grech-Marguerat, the album opens with a barrage of tracks just as ready to become hits as they are potential stadium chants. The opener "Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)" has, in brackets, exactly the chorus you're meant to scream along with the band, while the instruments take off at breakneck speed towards a blistering guitar solo. Direct and effective. Along with "Blow It Up", the track was released as the first single on 22 November 2010. The second song on the tracklist, ready to kick in the instant "Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)" ends, is "If You Wanna", the very song with which the Vaccines introduced themselves to the world. The formula is always the same: relentless drums driving the rhythm, pulsing bass, a knockout chorus and razor-sharp six-string solos.

A few minutes in and the euphoria is already running high. Anyone wanting to let loose and dance can keep going with "Nørgaard" (written after a couple of dates between Young and Danish model Amanda Nørgaard) and "Post Break-Up Sex". More reflective, melancholy souls, meanwhile, will revel in "A Lack Of Understanding" and especially "All In White", the album's finest moment, thanks to its build and intensity.

However hard they push the accelerator, what defines the record is a clear melodic streak that makes the songs instantly catchy: this blend of indie-rock and pop would go on to define the band's most successful work. The rest of the tracklist is made up of less striking songs, acting as a buffer before the pop-punk ready to throw open the doors to success for the band. "Family Friend" closes out the half-hour: at the 5:35 mark, the hidden track "Somebody Else's Child" kicks in, a slow piano ballad.

Reading Young's lyrics, a touch of veiled depression stains the rapid-fire rock bursts ("Well, I don't want to wake up in the morning/ But I've got to face the day", he sings on "If You Wanna"), but the thematic core is the relationship between two partners. A relationship on its last legs in the first two songs on the tracklist, while in the third the thoughts of two exes who run into each other shortly after the break-up emerge: "Are you ready, are you ready, are you ready for this? Should I shake your hand or should I give you a kiss?".

Every fan will then have fun drawing up their own personal list of bands that may have influenced the Vaccines' sound, a band smart enough to realise that, in order to stand out in such a crowded scene, it pays to keep a close eye on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Young is a huge fan of US punk-hardcore; on the British front, the bond with Jesus and Mary Chain is sealed by the fact that some of their videos were directed by Douglas Alexander Hart, the first bassist in the lineup that made "Psychocandy". Not to mention the path of "older siblings" who started out just like them and managed, album after album, to reach genuinely significant artistic heights (see Arctic Monkeys).

What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?  is a debut album greeted with enthusiasm by critics and audiences alike, allowing the four-piece to enjoy magazine covers, radio airplay and the chance to play an astonishing number of festivals, sharing the stage with some of the darlings and benchmarks of the indie scene, including Franz Ferdinand.

Come of Age

And I could make an observation

If you want the voice of a generation

But I’m too self absorbed to give it clout

Now we arrive at a point in the story that's "already been seen and heard": the infamous Second Album. The step/crossroads of many careers, or simply that negligible passage between other, more significant chapters in a discography. For the Vaccines, it's the latter. They choose to strike while the iron's hot, and just a year after their debut they're back (even if, on the cover, androgynous young models have taken their place), once again playing ironically with the title, with their coming-of-age record: Come Of Age (2012), produced this time by Ethan Johns.

The roar of the opening seconds of "No Hope" takes us back to the party of its predecessor, while the sonic palette widens with the western flavour of "I Always Knew". Euphoria runs high on "Teenage Icon", and things still hold up with the pop-rock of "All In Vain" and "Ghost Town", but from "Aftershave Ocean" onward the decline begins.

A fun opening quarter-hour, in fact, is followed by a second half that's uninspired, with results that are, to put it mildly, not exactly excellent ("Weirdo", "Change Of Heart Pt. 2", "I Wish I Was A Girl"). The clattering of "Bad Mood" and the closing "Lonely World" aren't enough to rescue the fortunes of a record that, while still offering a few pleasant flashes of life, sadly lacks the genuine intensity we tasted a year earlier.

Lyrically, the album is a step down from What Did You Expect from The Vaccines?, broadening its focus beyond love and relationships to take in adolescent unease and the dramas of youth, as the blunt titles suggest. Singles aside, Come Of Age isn't bad, exactly: it's skippable. But for the British press that's still good enough, sales are strong (number one in England), and there's no shortage of headline shows and tours.

Not long after comes a small but important shake-up. A year later, the EP Melody Calling (2013) arrives, with its cover art paying tribute to the Beatles. Though released hot on the heels of Come Of Age, the EP actually looks ahead, hinting at some of the new directions coming with the band's third album. Even the title is a significant spoiler: the band sets aside the rawer sounds of their early days and leans ever more into melody. Just three tracks ("Melody Calling", "Do You Want A Man?", "Everybody's Gonna Let You Down", plus a remix) make up a brief but not-to-be-underestimated release.

English Graffiti

When I shut my eyes, I’ve got another dream lover

Somewhere in the dark, I’ve got another dream lover

The seeds sown on Melody Calling blossom fully on English Graffiti. It's a record of fine indie-pop, distinguished by the production of Dave Fridmann of Mercury Rev and Cole M. Greif-Neill, capable of sounding vintage, modern, romantic and melancholic, fierce and sensual all at once. In short, there's something for every taste, and every ingredient is blended to perfection. Anyone expecting a return to the band's roots, given the outcome, can console themselves with a broad array of impeccable synth-and-melody-driven tracks. The relentless guitars of "20/20" and "Radio Bikini", along with the first single and opening track "Handsome", capture the Vaccines at their most unleashed, duly channelled into the record's glossy coolness.

Standing out among the fruits of this work, poised somewhere between Strokes and Phoenix, are "Minimal Affection", centred on real, concrete relationships in a world of hyperconnectivity, and "Dream Lover". While "(All Afternoon) In Love" and "Maybe I Could Hold You" are the slower, more seductive passages, the knockout chorus of "Denial" is propelled by metallic six-strings, as Young sings of another relationship nearing its end.

Closed out by the instrumental "Undercover" and rounded off with a generous bonus edition (which also features the title track) and a series of fun music videos, English Graffiti introduces us to the new Vaccines: a welcome acquaintance.

Combat Sports

The art of deception is contact sport

We wanted to make the best record we’ve ever made

We decided we needed to make it fun again

Still remember falling in love with you, America (America)

Hamburger, Adventure Land, America (America)

I'm not giving up on my love for you, America (America)

Favourite bands and Spider-Man, America (America)

So sing the Vaccines on "Heart Land": from English Graffiti to American Graffiti. If the visual and video "packaging" hinted at a drift into retro-wave territory – a choice adopted by many indie and mainstream bands in recent years, often with deplorable results – Justin Hayward-Young's band doesn't actually stray far from the sonic territory of Combat Sports. The songs, written not long after that 2018 record, set aside the grit and the unerring guitar solos that had soaked the most successful passages ("Rolling Stones" above all) in order to refine the pop-rock blend. It's a formula already tested on the more musically varied English Graffiti, and one that on Combat Sports spilled, with "Your Love Is My Favourite Band", into pop territory close to Phoenix.

If the previous record was the moment when the members "rediscovered" themselves as a band and tried to bring back the enthusiasm of their early days, this new release finds them out and about across the United States, helped along by the singer-guitarist's stint living in Los Angeles. Back In Love City was conceived before the pandemic, with Timothy Lanham back on keyboards and Yoann Intonti on drums. Behind the mixing desk, in place of Ross Orton, we find Daniel Ledinsly. Having reached the halfway point of their fifth album in ten years of career, the Vaccines, returning from their cinematic Love City, deliver a record of "Morricone indie-rock stuff", to quote a recent statement from Justin Young. Instantly catchy melodies, at times roughed up by the garage streak that has never left the English band since their 2011 debut, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?. So, choruses that are more radio-ready than ever ("Headphones Baby") alternate with rougher passages such as "Wanderlust", "XCT" and "Jump Off The Top": the classic short, lethal guitar blast typical of the Vaccines. We already knew the English band could wallow wonderfully in certain surf sounds and rhythms, so a track like "Alone Star" is no great surprise, but the blatant stars-and-stripes postcards of "El Paso" and "Heart Land" are more unexpected.

Justin Young keeps updating the power-pop arsenal of his The Vaccines with their sixth chapter, titled Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations (2024). The title is a quote from one of the defining anthems of American music, namely Don McLean's "American Pie": indeed, for some years now the frontman has left his native England to live on American soil. A choice that also echoed, compositionally, on the previous record, "Back In Love City" (2021). Born in the Hollywood Hills, Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations – the first record without longtime guitarist Freddie Cowan – is produced by Andrew Wells (who has previously worked with Halsey and Phoebe Bridgers) and sees Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala) on the mixing desk.

The result – with no major upheavals and in perfect Vaccines-style – is a burst of pop, often with engaging results. The prime example is the opening track, "Sometimes, I Swear", which once again confirms Young's skill at crafting perfect, irresistible choruses (often genuine stadium anthems/chants – remember "Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)"?), buoyed by the guitars. Having started off on the right foot, helped also by the following "Heartbreak Kid" and "Lunar Eclipse", you start wondering just how high the record will settle. And thanks to the short running time and the way the tracks are put together, the pick-up truck ride rolls along briskly and pleasantly, thanks to the retro and wave touches of "Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing)" and "Another Nightmare".

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