Dave Simpson 

The Vaccines: English Graffiti review – high-octane dystopia with monster riffs

Reinvention in the form of new production values and song themes has energised the Vaccines’ sonic palette
  
  

The Vaccines.
Certainly not one-trick ponies … the Vaccines. Photograph: Ben Rayner

The reinvention the Vaccines promised on their second album, Come of Age, has been delivered by their third. Handsome, Radio Bikini and 20/20 offer the sort of high-octane, Ramones-meet-the-Everly Brothers material that could have fitted on their debut – but producers Dave Fridmann and Cole MGN add cut-up noise and the whirring energy of what sounds like a food processor to transform the band’s trademark sonic palette. Elsewhere, the songs themselves undergo the makeover, as dreamy pop tunes reverberate with unlikely influences, from ELO to Duran Duran. Want You So Bad is sensually funky; Gimme a Sign has a giant chorus; (All Afternoon) In Love has something of the gossamer melancholy of 10cc’s I’m Not in Love. The album’s lyrics tackle dystopian themes about social media-era dislocation, and the monster-riffed Dream Lover nods to the imaginary partner imagined in Bobby Darin and Mariah Carey’s songs of the same title. English Graffiti may win some new fans and lose some old ones, but it shows that the Vaccines are certainly no one-trick ponies.

 

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