What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? [Explicit]

For the past 5 or 6 years, perhaps longer, I've really struggled to get excited about any British guitar bands. America, Canada and Scandinavia have been churning out really inspired music, whilst the UK scene has produced bands that either seem to be either stuck in 2001, or intent on trying to break the mould without any real idea how, just so long as they get famous for a bit.

If I'm being honest, The Vaccines are doing nothing new. Their blend of post-punk, garage rock, new wave, noise pop and power pop follows that of countless bands to emerge during the last 10 or so years.

Where they differ however is that they don't try too hard. It's genuine, it's fresh, it's fun, it's not being made by some teenagers trying to be the next Strokes and pretending that they remember the Velvet Underground being together.

Quite simply, the songs are excellent, and they put to shame some of the embarrassingly average wannabees that Britain has produced in recent times.

It's not a 5-star album. That would be over-reacting. Around the middle it sort of tails off a bit, but it recovers well at the end, leaving the listener most satisfied.

If you like guitar-based indie rock, you'll really enjoy this record.

There are many reasons why one might be unimpressed by this over hyped album. Some of the lyrics are puerile rubbish (Wetsuit is a stunning example of how not to imitate Leonard Cohen.) The music is unoriginal and sounds like a mix of twenty long forgotten brain dead bands. Two of the tracks are ridiculously short (Wrecking Bar ra ra ra is only 1:22). The final track, Family Friend, is rather pointlessly chopped in half with a silence in the middle. All in all, this album is about as sophisticated as a drunken orgy in a brothel. And yet, curiously, it's one of the best things I've heard for a while. I'm not sure why I like it so much. My brain tells me to give it only one star. But that would be to miss the point. Music is fundamentally visceral. This album is full of raw energy and it has an undeniable feel-good factor like the early hits of the Beach Boys. It's also completely unpretentious. I just want to play it over and over again. I can't help singing along to Wetsuit despite the crap lyrics. My advice is to suspend your critical faculties; pretend you're thirteen once again and give it a go. Fun fun fun.

If you look at the music press reviews for this album you get the predictable comparisons spouted forth (Ramones and The Strokes in particular, ad nauseum) however this simply detracts from the genius that are The Vaccines. What they have achieved here is surely an indelible mark on the music industry with their debut album. Yes, the comparisons are there, but it is impossible these days to be pigeonholed in a particular genre and at the same time not be compared to the champions of that genre.

So, rant over - to the music then. Well, either The Vaccines are ridiculously consistent, or they have a veritable goldmine of songs from which they have handpicked these 11 nuggets (or 12 if you count the bonus track Somebody Else's Child). You only need to listen once to songs such as If You Wanna, Lack of Understanding, Wetsuit or Post Break-Up Sex to be singing along like a lifelong fan by the last chorus.

The album doesn't stop there however. Album tracks such as Blow It Up and All In White are incredibly good. As for the album opener and closer (Wreckin' Bar and Family Friend respectively), what a fantastic intro and closer to the proceedings. You can tell that this band is striving to be so much more than 3 minute post-punk/indie clones.

Yes, under close scrutiny some of the lyrics can be nonsensical at times, but who cares? The Vaccines get away with it because they simply pull it off with a large helping of charm and mouth wateringly catchy tunes. What's more, they seemingly achieve this effortlessly, something that cannot be said for many of The Vaccines' contemporaries in their genre in recent years.

Simply put, this is one of the best debut albums I have heard since 1994, something that I don't actually recall saying all that often in the preceding 17 years.