When The Vaccines released their debut album, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?, in 2011, they were hailed by NME as the band that was essentially saving British indie rock. They played more than 150 shows that year and were nominated for awards by MTV, the BRITs, Q and more. The band continued their run into 2012 with Coming Of Age, released about a year-and-a-half after their first album, and less than a year after that, released their Melody Calling EP. The end of 2013 saw the band take time off from touring, which would ultimately stretch out to more than a year, as frontman Justin Young explains.
“For the first time in our career we had a bit of time off to recharge and rediscover what it was we wanted The Vaccines to mean and what we wanted to do. We’ve never had the opportunity to explore, even to re-approach or redefine our own ethos. We were constantly pushing the approach of just plugging in and playing, and it was that simple. We never had the time to sit back and go, ‘Ok, we don’t want to do this any more, let’s do something different.’ There was about 18 months of not playing shows and exploring other avenues and writing and recording and making mistakes. We wanted to genuinely make the best record we could instead of just a plug-in and play record, y’know?”
"We’ve never had the opportunity to explore, even to re-approach or redefine our own ethos. We were constantly pushing the approach of just plugging in and playing"
It’s a nice place for Young at the moment, at least as far as ‘celebrity status’ goes. Having taken time off, it’s easier to blend into crowds these days and that makes life a little simpler. “I think that what’s really nice is that we’re at this level where I feel like if I’m watching music television I might see myself on TV but I won’t see myself on primetime, or I’ll be wandering around a festival I’m going to get recognised, but not necessarily walking down to the shops,” he chuckles. “It means that you’re able to justify what it is and what it means.”
2015 has already seen some defining records make their way to the fore, with the likes of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and more sending the likes of hip hop down a new path. Is it harder to do that in this day and age with guitar music? Young argues in the affirmative. “I don’t say this from a personal perspective, I say this more objectively, but I don’t think rock music is the most important music happening at the moment, and I think it’s for many reasons. I think it’s ironically restrained by more boundaries, I don’t think it’s as anarchic as–” Young pauses, searching for the right word. “It’s naïve almost, because it’s been around for so long in comparison to hip hop or certain types of electronic music, where I don’t think they follow any rules.”
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
The Vaccines’ latest work, English Graffiti, sees the band doing their best to tackle that issue – experimenting with different sounds and ideas, thinking about how to evolve. A lot of that moving forward can be credited to co-producers Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, MGMT) and Cole MGN (Ariel Pink, Beck, Nite Jewel), who brought plenty of experience and opinions to the table; so much so that Young felt like welcoming them in as family.
“It was amazing. I’m a massive fan of both of theirs for years and they both had really defined roles. I developed an amazing working relationship with Cole about a year, or 18 months ago. We felt in really safe hands. Dave is this crazy genius – there were no rules with him, they wanted to make things sound as extreme as possible, which was great, coming from such a traditional background. Cole had this amazing focus and vision – he just about became a real member of the band, like, we’d argue about song titles and things like that. Everything was about cohesion and minimalism, it was great.”
Their first single, Handsome, is admittedly “a bit of a throwback to the first record” but to Young, it’s all about giving people time to adjust to a new sound. “It felt like a nice bridge – it was exciting, sharp and short and felt like The Vaccines of old, but it still has this new kind of frenetic energy and production value. It just felt like the best of both worlds; we weren’t throwing people off, it was just like, ‘here we are again!’
“We got so fried playing for two to three years non-stop. Then after about two or three weeks we realised we missed it already, so it’s so exciting to be back on the road again.”
