A Shot at Greatness: The Return of The Vaccines

After two high-quality albums in as many years – and an impeccable reputation as a live band secured – it seemed as though The Vaccines had the world at their feet. They’d toured the globe, supported the Stones; everyone was waiting to see what they’d do next.

And… they did nothing.
“It was important to us,” explains drummer Pete Robertson. “We made a conscious decision to take some time completely off. We’d worked incredibly hard, three years of almost non-stop touring. We needed to get out of the eye of the storm for a bit; it got to a point where we started to hit auto-pilot. A lot of the gigs we played, and places we went, I can’t remember. By the end, it had definitely become a bit of a grind.”
Enjoying the unseasonable London sun, Pete is now revitalised; chomping at the bit, in fact, to get back into the swing of things. Indeed, from the second that the six-month hiatus came to a finish and the band regrouped to work on the forthcoming English Graffiti, the decision to take a break was vindicated.
“It did us a world of good,” he smiles. “The next time we got together we were so up for it, all really eager to play each other stuff. We’d started writing quite quickly after coming off the road, but it wasn’t even Vaccines oriented. It was writing for fun, and making music with no pressure.”
It was a feeling the band had – albeit briefly – experienced before, when recording their 2013 EP Melody Calling. Decamping to LA, it was the final act before their time off; Pete now describes it as “a musical question mark”.
“OK,” he laughs, “the question most people asked was ‘What are you doing that for?!’ It was, perhaps, against the wishes of our label, but it was about getting things out of our system, especially for Justin. He was going through some stuff, and writing incredible songs. It doesn’t sound like anything else we’ve done, but it probably opened up the possibility that we could look beyond the plug-and-play, ‘three chord wonder’ type of thing.”
That approach, he says, set the tone for what was to come.
“It contributed a lot to the new record. We went through loads of phases – we’ve probably thrown away two albums worth of material – but all of that was instrumental in creating what we ended up with. The fearlessness in our writing was something that we were all keen to retain.
“We branched out, using different instruments and different sounds,” he continues. “We wanted to use the studio as a creative tool. Previously we worked with engineers and producers who were fantastic at getting us to sound as good as possible; we’d get a good take and move on. But we wanted to push ourselves this time. It’s difficult – it can definitely result in some disagreements along the way – but you’re trying to do something that doesn’t have a name yet, something that hasn’t really been invented. When the canvas is that blank, it can be hard to know where to start. We were trying to find what you might call a distilled version of ourselves.”
To assist, they recruited Dave Fridmann, the ex-Mercury Rev man who produced Weezer’s Pinkerton, along with just about anything ever recorded by The Flaming Lips.
“He was a great influence on us,” Pete reports. “Very chilled out, and eager for us to take our time and explore avenues that we ourselves might have closed off. We all agreed that we should be doing things we’d never done before, so he was raiding his bag of tricks. There were moments where it almost sounded too good, if you get me; we needed to make it sound different. Sometimes it wouldn’t work, but every now and then you’d land on something to blow your mind.”
Slowing the recording process down was a positively foreign concept to a band who had recorded their previous efforts in a matter of weeks.
“We found it a little hard to let go,” Pete admits, “but we definitely learned that it pays to take your time. Even something as simple as recording a song in pieces; before, we’d try to do a song and finish it before moving on. Here, we were recording bits and pieces, and coming back to a song three or four weeks later if someone had a new idea. It was great.”
Indeed, from the preview of May’s release that Hot Press was granted, it looks like being worth the wait. From the post-punk energy of ‘20/20’ and first release ‘Handsome’, to the swaggering menace of ‘Dream Lover’ or the languid rock of ‘Want You So Bad’, there’s a lot to look forward to.
“For me, it’s quite concise and cohesive,” Pete reflects. “But then, it comes as the product of four different people writing over the course of 18 months; it makes sense that it would run the gamut. Certainly, the range is more broad than before.”
Just don’t bank on English Graffiti signalling a definitive new direction; even the band themselves don’t know what’s coming next.
“We’ve all got super-short attention spans!” Pete laughs. “When you start to second guess what makes you sound like you – if that’s not too convoluted an idea – it can get dangerous. At the core of it, we just keep on pushing ourselves.”

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