Whether it’s simple chord progressions, festival-ready melodies or Justin Young’s vocals slathered in reverb, there’s a sense of familiarity that is hard to escape each time The Vaccines return with a full-length album.
Now over a decade on from their debut ‘What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?’ that thrust the four-piece up festival line-ups and into the public’s consciousness, the Vaccines have taken everything that audiences have grown to love about them and drenched it in sunshine on the American west-coast.
Whilst you may have to whisper it amongst their most-loyal fans, their sixth album ‘Pick Up Full of Pink Carnations’ may just be their most cohesive album yet, as themes of love, loss and moving on are sprinkled across 31 minutes of dreamy yet yearning music that slants more indie pop then it does rock. With the album title taken from a misremembered lyric from Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ (I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck/ With a pink carnation and a pickup truck), frontman Justin Young follows McLean’s lead with a collection of songs that are littered with pop-culture references, namechecking everything from Bruce Wayne to American poet Edgar Allan Poe. With the help of pop-producer Andrew Wells (Phoebe Bridgers, Halsey) who helped provide framework for several demoes Young made in a creative flurry between November 2021 and May 2022, ‘Pink Carnations’ is as breezy as the Californian air the album was recorded in, which in turn allows the heavier themes to hide behind.
Opener ‘Sometimes I Swear’ is a slow-burner reminiscent of an early Vaccines hit ‘Wetsuit’ as Young’s vocals take centre stage before the kick-drum of Yoann Intoni signals that whilst they may be nursing a few more grey hairs then they were a decade ago, The Vaccines are still alive and well. Meanwhile, ‘Heartbreak Kid’, the first teaser we got of ‘Pink Carnations’ back in September has Young musing on heartbreak as a painful yet necessary experience with guitar tones and synths that are as adjacent to the sound of Los Angeles as beeping horns on the ever clogged up 101 freeway. Furthermore, if ever there was a song that represented the nostalgia attached to a lost love that is no longer around, ‘Lunar Eclipse’ takes the cake. The centrepiece of the album which has characteristics of music you could imagine being played on a coastal drive not too dissimilar to the one pictured on the album cover, ‘Lunar Eclipse’ is a song of pain and guilt dressed up as a big Springsteen-esque get out of town anthem. ‘You took me to the desert and left me there haunted’ sings Young as the drumming performance of Intoni is not too dissimilar to surf-rock legend Dennis Wilson, who ironically is another one of Young’s pop culture namechecks on the groovier, funk inspired ‘Sunkissed’. (We were so in love, we booked into The Hilton / grew my beard to look like Dennis Wilson).
‘Another Nightmare’, a song that would undoubtedly be a chart and indie disco mainstay if it was released 20 years ago, recounts Young getting over an old flame with ‘pills and percocets daily’. An infectious and euphoric number with a chorus that was surely made with their live-show in mind builds to a final crescendo in which the band takes a breather, allowing for a poignant moment in which a lone and vulnerable Young yelps ‘I don’t wanna take a year to get better / taking everything to forget her’ before the rest of the band returns, catapulting the song into Vaccines setlists for the foreseeable future.
Whilst there is undoubtedly a cohesive vision for how the band wanted ‘Pink Carnations’ to sound, the lack of variety does stop the album from fully reaching its potential. With the themes of loss and moving on so incredibly prevalent, by the time closer ‘Anonymous in Los Feliz’ comes around, it’s hard to imagine how you could conclude an album that feels like it has been wrapped up 10 times over. The similar chord progressions, melodies and song structures also play a part, but nobody is listening to a Vaccines album in search of something avant-garde are they? ‘Pink Carnations’ is undoubtedly an enjoyable listen and is some of the strongest Vaccines material since their debut, even if there is a feeling of repeated sentiments.
What you see is what you get with The Vaccines and ‘Pick Up Full Of Pink Carnations’ takes the themes of loss that lingers and dresses it up in linen pants, ray-bands and a car that drives on the wrong side of the road. While it may be a quintessentially American coastal album, it seems that the sun is far from set for a quintessentially important English band.
Words by Romesh Cruse