Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

IT'S ALL GOOD!

Well by now every person with a quill bic or ipad will have written a review of The Vaccines debut album so I'll try to keep mine brief - "It's all good" you can ignore what follows.

Now I've been a music punter a long time. I was alive and in this world when the Rolling Stones walked down Cleveland Street in Wolverhampton on their way to play a gig at the Gaumont Cinema and my Dad opened his office window and shouted "get your bleedin hair cut!" at them. And as a music punter I've witnessed some hype in my time, so I know what it looks like. U2! When they first burst forth they were hyped like f'in billio. The most hyped band of my life time? Definitely. Artic Monkeys come a close second though, but I think mass delusion also had a hand in their deception. Now they say that The Vaccines have been hyped, no no no they haven't been hyped, not unless playing lots of gigs and propping up dieing magazines by appearing on the front cover every week is termed as hype nowadays. No The Vaccines haven't been hyped they've just been managed well. Or is that the same thing? Either way it's all good coz there's only been enough time to blink before the debut has been produced and is here and is called "What did you expect from the Vaccines?"

Now if you'd bothered to see The Vaccines play live or taken possession of any of their singles or heard the "Live in London" recording, then what you'd have expected from The Vaccines is "What Did You Expect from The Vaccines". How good is that you've gotten exactly what you expected - The shipping forecast:

Guitar, deep reverb occasional tremolo twang, steady.
Drums snapping bass plodding, Viking South Utsire.
Cold North European increasing to vocals unassuming,
moderate or rough,
becoming cyclonic later.

So there's nothing more to say really "It's all good". The fanciful music journalist - "the embroiders of bullshit" are redundant as far as The Vaccines are concerned. They can't spout wank like, "the spiralling rhythmic cadent chord structures intermesh and pixelate with the fleshy melodic structures in a serial confluence of chromatic tapestries". They'd like to but they can't coz The Vaccines are just what they are. Hyperbole is obsolete. The album is played straight. There's no massive mood swings no musical interludes, just a handful of chords and a side A4 for lyrics. OK so I'm sure in thirty years time the pen pushing myth makers at MOJO will be shutting each others dicks in drawers and marvelling at "the innate simplicity of The Vaccines debut", but for the now "What did you expect" is just a breath of clean unadulterated oxygen. Nothing is overworked nothing is half baked. You either love it or your Liam Gallagher there's nothing more to say. It sounds like walking into a room where The Ramones are there watching Joe & Mick play table football and where The Strokes are sitting round the bar swapping baseball cards with the Modern Lovers, what is there not to like? I don't need to mention any of the tracks or say any more it's all good, so go buy a copy.

*****

PS: So it's all good. Yes? Well actually no! Coz everything is actually pretty shit. You see I bought my CD of "What Did You Expect?" off CD WOW, and what I expected was not this!

I returned my copy and then I got this!

Happy? I am not. So as I sit here now writing this utter drivel I don't have a copy of "What did you expect?" And I have no idea when I will get one. What I do have is a very wobbly bottom lip. Is that good! Like f*ck it is! I bet this sort of thing doesn't happen to those gimp reviewers at the NME!