I think we already know that the older we all get – the less new music we like. So it’s no surprise to hear that as each year passes me by there are fewer and fewer new kids on the block that really get me excited.
My trusty Sky+ box is set to record NME TV’s weekly New Noise – if only to remind myself; just how out of touch I am with today’s new wave of indie hopefuls. I regularly spend as much as eight crestfallen minutes trawling through the 60 minute show, ever optimistic that just one single video will shine out from my screen like a sonic beacon of audio wizardry. I’m certain this used to be the same when I tuned in to LWT’s Chart Show.
It doesn’t happen often, but art-rockers EverythingEverything wowed me last year on Later with Jools Holland, they sound so damn odd, yet so damn right. I imagine the majestic Roxy Music would have hit me square between the eyes with same bemused excitement, had I been around when they first landed from art’n’space in the summer of 1972.
But it’s the Vaccines that have really tickled my fancy lately – They may not be otherworldly or show any signs of reinventing the musical wheel, but they do have a potent and edgy pop sensibility that I have so dearly missed over the last flaccid decade.
Firstly, their previous single ‘Wreckin’ Bar (Ra-Ra-Ra)’ has forced me to rethink my dismissal of New York goofballs, the Ramones. I guess that punk has never been my thing, but this track, a whopping 1min 22sec in length; is the kind of urgent and freewheeling dumb-ass rock‘n’roll that makes me wish I was young enough to hot-foot it down to the nearest indie disco and strut around the dance floor just like Iggy would (had he come from the SE London suburbs and been bloated by a hearty diet of Mummy’s home cookin’!)
The other half of this double A-Side, ‘Blow It Up’ is another super smash, sounding like Noel Gallagher never joined Oasis in 1993 – but had instead opted to sing lead vocals for a shoegaze band that knew how to hold their heads high. It really is all life-affirming stuff – I think we’re alive again! If a good pop song is defined by its chorus, then the Vaccines appear to have been busy studying at the Royal College of Hookmaking.
New single ‘Post-Break Up Sex’ recently broke in to the pop charts, not that it makes any difference at all these days. But what it does do, is fill this 30-something with glee, that our great nation’s music buying yoof still have an ear for a cracking tune.
So roll on the 21 March release of the Vaccines debut album, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? I have great expectations.
