The Vaccines Are Right Where They Belong on Back in Love City

Naturally, if your chosen band moniker happens to be The Vaccines, timing is everything when you’re trying to schedule your latest album release during a dark, harrowing pandemic. Only Danny O’Reilly’s Celtic combo The Coronas might have had to face more hurdles in the public-sensitivity department. Appear on the pop-cultural radar before the actual Pfizer and Moderna anti-Covid shots are ready, and you look like gauche opportunists; too late and you’re grasping at vanishing coattails. But either way, it became obvious that both panaceas were sorely needed as 2020 wore on. And just as the actual hypodermic jabs were ready, word leaked out that Back in Love City, The Vaccines’ stunning new fifth outing, was in the pipeline, too. And it may not cure everything that ails you, but it stands as a timely little reminder that great music—especially in a time of grave despair—can truly save your life.

It seemed like an eternity since 2018’s Combat Sports had come out. And the more you heard about the worldwide search for vaccines in coronavirus news, the more you thought about the band itself—where were they? What were they up to? Had they seized the lockdown day and penned a slew of patently cynical, pun-peppered pop-punk anthems, a la their definitive 2011 debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? Or was something far creepier going on? A bit of both, it turns out. Singer/songwriter Justin Young and company (guitarist Freddie Cowan, keyboardist Tim Lanham—no relation—bassist Arni Arnason, drummer Yoann Intonti) had actually completed work on Back in Love City pre-lockdown, recording with keen-eared producer Daniel Ledinsky at the Sonic Ranch residential studio outside El Paso, Texas. “So we had a finished record when the pandemic hit, and the plan had always been to actually sit on it for a while and think about the creative side and think about the visuals, and how we wanted to create this world around it,” says Young. “So we had always planned to wait a whole year to release it, so not much changed for us, other than that we ended up having to wait a lot longer.”

Instead, they spent 2020 celebrating the 10th anniversary of What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? with a special demo version of the disc, which stands as a wonderfully scratchy, equally energetic template of their entire philosophy. In these careening, less-polished takes of future hit singles like “Norgaard,” “If You Wanna” and “Post Break Up Sex,” the energy is there, glaringly obvious, and sparking like a live third rail. And it was a concept so deceptively simple that it was dumbfounding that no one had arrived at it before them: Young, a failed troubadour from Britain’s Mumford & Sons neo-folk movement, teamed up with the equally frustrated post-Strokes punk guitarist Freddie Cowan, and like that old “You got peanut butter in my chocolate!”/“But you got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Reese’s commercial, the former’s warm vocals and clever composing skills blended seamlessly with the latter’s buzzy, hornet-in-a-jar power chords, until the two actually seemed to converse with each other on every song, with the shapeshifting Cowan changing tones to complement every track differently. The Vaccines were probably the first band since R.E.M. to achieve that rare distinction.

Young swears that he’d almost forgotten how brash and swaggering The Vaccines had appeared on their debut until he dug up those demos and started listening to the original 14 tracks again—a dozen slated for the album and two great B-sides, “We’re Happening” and “Somebody Else’s Child.” And even without the final blistering electric solo on this acoustic version of the minute-long classic “Wreckin’ Bar,” their unique vocal-vs.-six-string oomph is present, and foreshadows all the remarkable music to come. No one sounded quite like The Vaccines back then, or now; their future, if they could maintain such high artistic quality from album to album, was instantly assured. “So we released the demos because we thought it would be a nice thing for some people to hear,” Young says. “And it was nice for us, as well, because I really hadn’t listened to a lot of that stuff for 10 years, and the longer it goes on, the more it continues to essentially lay the foundations for our career. And the fact that I’m sitting here now, talking to you after 10 years and you still give a shit?” He sighs, contentedly. “I feel increasingly appreciative and proud of it, and I love that record now. I was very insecure and kind of nervous and edgy when it came out, so it was difficult, seeing everything that everyone said about it, and it made it hard to love. But I am very proud of it now.”

None of this, of course, can adequately prepare you for the streamlined sonic sheen and general earworm genius of Love City. Like Vampire Weekend’s similarly complex and painstakingly constructed Modern Vampires of the City Grammy winner, it’s so intricately plotted that they should teach an entire college course on how to scientifically parse it. And Cowan matches Young, blow for blow, on every boundary-pushing number, starting with the opening title track, which puts a sinister spy-movie-guitar spin on “Mr. Blue Sky”-ish ELO vocoder plaints, as Young spits out reams of ultra-snarky couplets that set up the album’s loose dystopian-future theme: “Seven years sober, couldn’t give you up for Lent / So I never even questioned if your cookies had consent.” His wordplay just gets sharper, more eviscerating from there; two cuts in, he’s juggling more modern allusions in the crackly, twin-chorused “Headphones Baby,” with “Can’t pop the question if you’re live on Reddit / Until your father’s back on carbon credit.” Beneath his confident style of blurt-crooning these observations, there’s a surreal stream-of-consciousness quality to what he’s singing that borders on the James Thurber absurd.

And at this point, Cowan instinctively understands how to best complement his vocalist’s shifting moods, getting Morricone-booming on “Wanderlust,” letting his Ventures surf side simmer in “Paranormal Romance,” going full Sabbath-growling tilt on the propulsive “People’s Republic of Desire,” then reining the angst in for a straight-face acoustic tribute to America called “Heart Land,” wherein Young forgives us our knuckleheaded trespasses by charmingly equating the States with “milk shake and fries,” “warm apple pies” and “king-size Coke with lots of ice.” “I’m not giving up on my love for you, America,” he warmly assures us, in one of rock’s most charismatic voices, still strong after some scary throat surgeries a few years ago. But just when you think you’re comprehending the new Vaccines direction, they pull the rug out with the punk-manic barnstormer “Jump Off the Top,” in which Cowan actually manages to one-up his succinct “Wreckin’ Bar” lead with an arpeggiated bridge that feels downright demonically possessed. Rock bands just don’t come any more inspiring than this these days, and they just keep getting better and better. Back In Love City is a standout album on its own merits, and not many groups can offer illuminating before and after pictures of their growth with two back-to-back releases. Trailblazers like The Vaccines can quite possibly keep you alive through the coronavirus era, along with those requisite shots, of course. Young had more to share with Paste on all of the above.

Paste: Jumping forward, have you written any new songs?

Justin Young: Yeah. Lots of new songs. I actually have a folder on my computer with the last 25 or 30 songs for whatever follows this record, and I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily lighter or darker as a result of, or a response to, what happened. But one thing I’ve spoken a lot about with friends who write songs and make music and create art, more generally, is that I think this last year, it’s been very difficult to stay inspired. I mean, it’s life, and you can separate between motivation and inspiration in a sense, but it’s very difficult, because normally you’re kind of traveling to the edges of life’s extremes, and you’re drawing on that for inspiration. And in not being able to live life, I think the world is kind of drying up for me, lyrically, as well as a few people I’ve spoken to. So you have to be figuring out new ways to find that inspiration from somewhere. But I will say—because we pushed the album release back when the pandemic hit—as it has done everything, it definitely reframed the record. And on the odd occasion that I listen back to Back in Love City now, I am sort of struck by how the last 18 months have given it new meaning. But I suppose you can probably find that new meaning in pretty much anything, can’t you?

Paste: Every time we’ve talked, you never could make a relationship work. Do you have a significant other yet?

Young: Actually, I do! My girlfriend moved in with me just a week before Covid, before lockdown. And so we were placed into this, uh, quite intense situation together. But not only did we survive, but I would like to say we thrived in it. It was a baptism by fire, and it was amazing. I genuinely feel so lucky to have been locked up with someone who I loved and who loved me, because I know plenty of people who were alone. And we were here together for the whole time in London, and we also met in London, actually, met at a party. And I’m in London now, too.

Paste: You namecheck all sorts of technology here. And not in a good way.