VACCINES BOOSTER
THE VACCINES’ FREDDIE COWAN TELLS DAVE FREAK ABOUT THEIR FUTURISTIC NEW ALBUM
HOW time flies. It’s ten years since the exuberant What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? crashed into the Top Five, powered by indie anthems If You Wanna, Post Break-Up Sex and Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra). Looking back at the debut, which has just received an anniversary vinyl repressing, The Vaccines’ guitarist Freddie Cowan reckons the collection has weathered well.
‘I think it stands up and, to some extent, I don’t think we could recreate that moment now,’ he says. ‘We were hyper-focused, had nothing to lose, and no expectations of ourselves. Which is a pretty potent mix of intentions/circumstances.’
The release catapulted the band into the spotlight, and a decade on, they’re still selling well (two million albums and counting), and as popular as ever. ‘I find it remarkable we still get to do this and call it a job,’ Freddie smiles. ‘It’s the best job in the world! We are highly, highly blessed! I feel gratitude every time we get together and play.’
That ‘gratitude’ was something he felt in buckets when the band (from left, Arni Arnason, Timothy Lanham, Justin Hayward Young, Yoann Intonti and Freddie Cowan) returned to the live stage in July, at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town and Latitude festival. ‘It’s incredible how it felt totally normal to be back on stage, as if the events of the previous 18 months had happened in an alternate time-line. I‘ve missed the euphoria.’
Freddie and comrades are readying to hit the road with a string of dates in support of their surprising fifth album, Back In Love City (out today). Initially recorded in Texas with producer Daniel Ledinsky (Tove Lo, Zara Larson, Rihanna), it marks a step up for the five-piece after the solid though perhaps predictable indie guitar-led anthems that peppered 2018’s Combat Sports and 2015’s English Graffiti.
‘It’s much more colourful,’ says Freddie. ‘With Combat Sports we felt we were making something more expansive than it ended up being. Perhaps we have been trying to make a record like BILC for years now and finally it’s happened.’
BILC is the sound of a band breaking new ground, but it’s not forced, more of a natural progression. ‘It’s not possible to force this kind of growth, it comes to you when you are ready,’ Freddie says.
Featuring the layered El Paso, impressive title track and twangy Alone Star, each song on the album reflects an over-arching theme. Inspired by sci-fi megatropolises and cities such as Las Vegas and Tokyo, the tracks explore how we are all more connected, yet equally disconnected, and how an imagined Love City could provide our emotional nourishment.
‘I think we are playing with the idea that love will become the central commodity of the future – technology companies have become so effective at satisfying our needs (which infantilises society to a degree), so what if in the future we don’t know how to generate love ourselves, but instead rely on being sold it like a drug? AppleLove, or GoogleLove?’ he quips. ‘Imagine what the world would look like to those who couldn’t afford love. It would be an ugly place, with escapism available on tap at a price.’
‘There are so many iterations to play with. We all have slightly different interpretations of what the album means to us.’
The pandemic has meant that the long-player has taken longer to arrive than anticipated. But The Vaccines (whose name has rocketed up in search engine rankings of late), used the extra time wisely.
‘We thought we had finished it in 2019, but given some time away from it, we decided we could improve what we’d recorded in Texas. The pause taken from the pandemic really benefited us as a band; we spent basically a decade on the road and we needed some time away to gain perspective on what we had done and how we might take it to a new level.’
‘The riff in Wanderlust is gargantuan, and having an opera singer on Paranormal Romance is an amazing departure from the norm for us! That kind of stuff keeps it fresh for us, which I think is key.’
‘I find it remarkable that we still get to do this and call it a job’