The Vaccines
The Vaccines Come Of Age
(Columbia)
With this second album, I'm beginning – very gradually – to forgive The Vaccines. Regular readers will know I've taken the young Londoners to task before, not merely for sounding like other bands but for sailing far too close to specific songs (ie the chorus of Post Break-Up Sex is Nilsson's Without You). They're not entirely out of the dock here (Weirdo barely even alters its name to disguise its debt to Radiohead's Creep), and you could play "spot the influence" on a track-by-track basis: Dylan joins The Strokes on opener No Hope; the band gallop through Joe Meek's Telstar on I Always Knew; Bad Mood's heavy riff is just The Ramone's Pinhead mashed up with Black Sabbath's Iron Man. But when you accept that this is what The Vaccines do, you've finally got to admit that they do it well. There isn't a song on here that doesn't lodge in your head after the very first play, which is a skill in itself – albeit one that might ring a bit hollow further down the line.
Alan Morrison
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