14 Music Week 10.08.12 FEATURE THE VACCINES
AN INJECTION OF EXPECTATION
Little over a year after their platinum-selling debut album arrived, The Vaccines are back - and they’re feeling confident in their sound
TALENT BY TOM PAKINKIS & TIM INGHAM
W
ell, what did you expect from The Vaccines? The success of the West London
band’s challengingly-named debut album flew in the face of those who dared write them off. Some said they were too posh. Some said their
Velvets/Ramones concoction was too derivative. 320,000 disagreed - via that most satisfying of metrics, their wallets. Released in January last year, WDYEFTV is
now comfortably platinum in the UK – becoming 2011’s biggest-selling debut by a band. It’s spawned modern classic singles such as Post
Break-Up Sex and If You Wanna, whilst its choicest cuts have never failed to land on Radio 1’s A-List – no mean feat for an indie guitar band in 2012. Meanwhile, the LP was named the winner of XFM’s New Music Award in February this year. On the road, The Vaccines have supported the
likes of Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, The Stone Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kasabian - and they played over 150 shows last year, despite singer Justin Young taking time out for three operations on his vocal cords. Typically from a band so steeped in the urgent
magic of 1-2-3-4 DIY rock‘n’roll, it hasn’t taken The Vaccines long to get back in the game. Come Of Age, their new album, is due for release on September 3. It has been produced by the fast- becoming-legendary Ethan Johns, who has “drilled The Vaccines as a proper rock and roll band and honed their musicianship” according to manager James Sandom. New tracks including singles No Hope and
Teenage Icon have already been applauded by festival crowds from Field Day to T In The Park and Isle Of Wight. The buzz is definitely growing. Here, frontman Justin tells us why the band has
plumped for a ‘live’ sounding second record, why a US invasion might be on the cards – and what, exactly, we should expect from The Vaccines this time around…
What’s been the reaction to the new tunes across Europe so far? Really good actually. We’ve been really careful to sort of pick ones that make sense between the current Vaccines set so we’ve picked quite fast up- beat rock and roll songs. We’re playing the first two singles, Teenage Icon and No Hope and a song called Ghost Town, plus a song called Bad Mood.
ABOVE The Vaccines Come Of Age The band’s second album is released via Columbia on September 3
The two you probably haven’t heard of have a pretty good groove.
Ethan Johns is producing the album. What’s it been like to work with him and what’s he brought to the sonic table? It’s been amazing. Growing up, in my head he was one of the most famous producers in the world. It was always going to be a dream to work with him. He’s a producer in the old fashioned sense of the word and instils a lot of confidence in us. To begin with he said we’ve got to make a live record because we’re a live band. I guess a lot of bands these days don’t make a record [until they’ve] worked out how to play it. He said: “You should make a record, you already know how to play.” That approach has really breathed a lot of life into the songs. They’re really alive - the adlib vocals, mistakes, they speed up, they slow down.
You had the biggest-selling debut album from a band last year. What are your ambitions going into the second record? It’s really important that we’re getting better. If we can do that then there’ll be nothing more we can do to build on our success. It’s been an amazing couple of years. We want to get better and better and I think we are. We’ve got a lot of belief in our own
“Ethan Johns is a producer in the old- fashioned sense. He has instilled a lot of confidence in us. He told us to make a live record because we’re a live band.” JUSTIN YOUNG, THE VACCINES
taste. We’ve got a bunch of songs on this record we like even more than the first record. I don’t think there’s any reason why it can’t reach as many people if not more people. I feel quite strongly about that.
Do you have US success in your sights at all? I definitely think we’ve got the potential. The US is a scary place that swallows you up. It’s less like a country and more like 50 countries. But we never really got to tour there properly last time, because I had problems with my throat. We’d really like to go there and play to people and visit weird places.
You’re a rarity: a guitar band that often gets on popular radio. Why is guitar music in the state it’s in? Well firstly ‘guitar music’ is a term which is way too broad. I don’t really know what it is; I don’t know where you draw the line because there’s guitars in
most music. But in terms of rock and roll bands I feel like it’s thriving. I don’t understand [the concern]. I don’t think there are many bands who are having a great deal of commercial success but I also don’t think there are bands aspiring to have commercial success. In this world we’re living in at the moment, people in a lot of indie bands are lacking ambition. I think people are more concerned with being cool than they are with being successful.
Perhaps more bands need an almost business-like drive to succeed? No not at all, because one finds their place. I don’t feel the charts are lacking in anyway whatsoever because if you want to listen to [guitar] music then you can find it elsewhere. I suppose it’s like the Eighties, when the charts felt like a barren place in terms of alternative music - but it was there, and now that era’s remembered as like a thriving time for rock and roll and indie rock.
You were once signed as a solo act [ Jay Jay Pistolet] on Stiff Records, now you’re on Columbia/Sony in a band. What’s the big difference between working on an indie and a major? That’s a good question. There’s not much they have in common across the board, but I suppose a lot of
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