For music fans, January is traditionally spent frothing about next big things, predicting stars of the future such as the new winners of the BBC Sound Poll, The Last Dinner Party. But what of the third-placed act of 2011, London indie rock quartet The Vaccines? The hype machine has long since moved on and the band’s last two albums both left the top 40 within a week, but if the world isn’t paying attention to their sixth release, it’s missing a treat.
They had lost their way more recently. The fifth album, Back in Love City, and a six-track EP last year, Planet of the Youth, were all over the place stylistically, relying more on electronic elements and often sounding like a different band entirely. This one is a tight return to the source, a fun regression that never overthinks things.
Although it resembles their first album, the self-deprecatingly titled but platinum-selling What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? – guitars to the fore, Justin Young hurling his vocals at the listener, 10 tracks racing past in half an hour – it’s a different group making all the noise. Drummer Yoann Intonti joined in 2016, and Tim Lanham, formerly a keyboardist and unofficial member, is now on guitar after Freddie Cowan left for a solo career earlier this year. That might be a reason why it sounds like there’s still so much energy and excitement in this elementary indie pop.
The lead single, Heartbreak Kid, is the standout, a fizzing riot that seems to be made entirely of choruses. A menacing bassline and bitter breakup lyrics on Love to Walk Away can’t stop it from feeling like another big singalong. It’s hard to sound completely unique in the time-honoured four-piece band format – Lunar Eclipse has the wiry guitar lines and propulsive dynamism of The Strokes, while Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing), with its shimmering keyboards and a chorus that advises us to “keep on dancing”, could fit nicely into The Killers’ repertoire. But the songs are strong enough to stand on their own.
When describing the themes here, Young said: “There’s a sense of nostalgia and looking in the rear view mirror and wondering if what you left behind is better than what you’re heading towards.” On the grandstanding Sometimes, I Swear, he frets: “You can't find your feet/Say your best work's behind you.” It may well be that they’re now considered old hat. Even so, there’s no denying they’re still extremely good at this.
