The Vaccines

They're riding into town to reassert rock's fundamentals and they haven't even got time for a website.
Imagine the Mary Chain on happy pills ... The Vaccines

 

They have been nominated as the Sound of 2011 by BBC.


 



The songs are all short and bittersweet, some even coming in at under the two-minute mark, and they make a sound that is a sort of poppy west coast take on dour'n'dirty New York drone-rock. If You Wanna, the demo that got a lot of blog attention at the end of the summer, rattles along at a surf-pop pace, but there's squeal in there, and feedback, and reverb/echo/delay.
The first single proper, Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra), is one minute and 24 seconds' worth of Ramones-style ramalama, which now that we think about it, was a New York drone-rock take on west coast pop – again, it's like the Drums with squall, more fierce than fey. Imagine the Mary Chain on happy pills, Spiritualized on speed, or the Strokes jamming with the Shadows. It starts virtually at the chorus, then it ends before you've had a chance to decide whether it's CBGBs revisited, a burst of pop noise worthy of Creation Records circa 1986, or merely tiresomely derivative.
The signifiers are certainly tried and tested. The Vaccines? What, you mean, like, drugs an' that? Hypodermics, heroin? Right, OK. Not much is known about the Vaccines, they have no web presence apart from the sites and blogs that have featured them, and they've been keen to heighten the hype by withholding information about themselves and their lineup, to the point that the rumour mill went into overdrive and some were even suggesting various members of the royal family were involved. Not quite. There's Justin Young aka the handsome indie hunk who effectively was Jay Jay Pistolet on vocals/guitar, and Freddie the kid, brother of Tom Cowan/Tomethy Furse of the Horrors on guitar. Young's got a good voice for this kind of thing. It's just strong enough, almost soulful, but it's also got the requisite blankness to convey – and we're guessing at their lyrical concerns here – numbness, nihilism and all the other stuff appropriate to the milieu. And the milieu is back-to-basics rock'n'roll, the Vaccines riding into town to reassert rock's fundamentals and kick all those prissy Klaxons and Vampire Weekends – and Drums – into touch. Brother, Mona, and now the Vaccines: which revivalist will be first to revive the chances of the four-square rock band? Watch this space.