The Best Indie Songs of 2015 - The Vaccines

The Vaccines Handsome (Jan’15) isn’t just an English version of a Ramones song but its cunt hair close. Two minutes and thank you ma’am? Check. The singer’s phrasing and r-r-r repetition? Check. Recycled 50’s pop melodies. Check. Instrumentation? Well I don’t remember the Ramones for keyboards but fuck knows. Three chords? Actually four you tired old clichéd hack. Tongue planted so firmly in cheek a change of wind would leave ‘em with a cock sucking face. Check. A tune as sticky as a rapist in church… fuck this, my job is done here.

More bop than blitzkrieg, The Vaccines have created a blast of deceptively fun pop with copious handclaps that just won’t quit. The tune is about pricks they have met who have celebrity thanks to not hitting all the branches on the ugly tree when they fell down, and yet wanna whinge about it. Handsome is blow job on a Saturday night driving through big city streets exhilarating and a dead cert one of the best indie songs of 2015.

“…my body is a temple you can worship at my feet

But I might kick you in the teeth…”

 

 

The Vaccines are an indie rock band from London, England and Handsome is the first barrage off their third campaign English Graffitti (May’15). The band have been extracting the urine since 2010.

Shit you need to know:

The new album was produced by Dave Fridman who’s put his nose to the grind forWeezer, The Cribs and Tame Impala.
The band have been compared toThe Ramones, Elvis and The Kinks. Others mentionThe Jesus and Mary Chain and The Strokes.

The band have saidtheir main influence is the Phil Spector sound and 1950's rockabilly.

The new album English Graffiti was inspired bySleater-Kinney and the singer has mentioned early influencesbeing The Monkeys and The Strokes.

Quite complicated souls The Vaccines are. In one breath, deep as a puddle,“music to meis entertainment and escapism” and describing their lyrics as “…stupid fucking clunky lyrics” and then saying the album title references the singer's counter-intuitive concerns about globalisation and online socialisation, "We live in a really weird time. We're voyeurs. We're constantly looking at this constructed reality online. We feel super-connected but I don't thinkwe are". 

The singer Justin Young fully supportsillegal downloading and despises their music being diminished by labelling it‘lad rock’.

Need another shot? Here’s a trifecta of classics from The Vaccines, Norgaad, Teenage Icon and Dream Lover.

 

Slippery seconds goes to the Canadian punk band Needle//Pins who, without a lick of fuckin proof, I’m gonna say are named after the Ramones song of the same name. Almost the same fucktard.

The song is Drop It (2011) and is actually a clever low-fi gem with a killer melody and not a million miles away from the Vaccines.

 

“I still got your photograph in a heart shaped locket

I’ll still follow you my friend…”