Adrian Thrills Writes: The Vaccines Deliver an Exhilarating Album with “Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations” to Cure January Blues

The Vaccines – Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations 

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The Vaccines might have become standard bearers for a punchy strain of British guitar music in the 12 years since they topped the charts with their second album, Come Of Age, but they’ve never quite shaken off their debt to the storytelling traditions of the folk scene.

Singer Justin Young began his career as a sensitive singer-songwriter and adopted the stage name Jay Jay Pistolet as he cut his teeth in West London indie-folk clubs alongside Laura Marling and his flatmate Marcus Mumford’s banjo-toting Mumford & Sons.

And, in searching for a title to sum up The Vaccines’ sixth album, he turned to a celebrated folk-rock single, Don McLean’s 1971 hit American Pie, taking McLean’s line, ‘with a pink carnation and a pickup truck’ and readjusting it.

‘American Pie is a song about disillusionment with the American dream and I was coming to terms with similar things,’ he explains.

Not that Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations is a folk record.

With its razor-sharp guitars and tuneful hooks in thrall to the Tin Pan Alley pop of the 1960s, it’s an exhilarating rock ’n’ roll album that should banish any January blues.

But it’s also — and this is where Young’s acoustic roots come into play — a thoughtful, poetic set of songs about the loss of innocence.

The Vaccines have been reinvigorated by two major changes. With the departure of original guitarist Freddie Cowan, touring member Timothy Lanham has taken on a more central role.

A new producer, LA-based Andrew Wells, has also brought a tight, fizzing sheen to ten songs that hurtle by in a shade over 30 minutes. It’s a vibrant, fresh start. The best tracks mix introspection with rousing hooks. The Strokes-like Lunar Eclipse laments the passing of time, while Young, 36, wrote the bittersweet Sometimes, I Swear after visiting his childhood bedroom in Southampton following a festival show in Portsmouth.

‘Sometimes, I swear, it feels like I don’t belong anywhere,’ he sighs.

But the overriding mood is buoyant. Sunkissed is a Californian love song in which Young becomes so enamoured with the surf culture of the Pacific coast that he grows a beard to look like former Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. ‘Something good is going to happen,’ he predicts elsewhere. That something is an album to kick-start 2024.

The Vaccines start a UK tour on February 5 at O2 Institute, Birmingham (ticketmaster.co.uk). Shed Seven play Millennium Square, Leeds, on July 15, followed by two homecoming shows at York Museum Gardens on July 19 and 20 (shedseven.com). 

Shed Seven – A Matter of Time 

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Despite hits such as Chasing Rainbows and Going For Gold, Shed Seven operated in the shadows of Cool Britannia’s big-hitters Oasis, Pulp and Blur in the 1990s.

Naming themselves after a railway hut in their York home town didn’t exactly boost their hipster credentials, but the Britpop underdogs have enjoyed a fruitful second coming on the nostalgia circuit since reuniting in 2007.

New album A Matter Of Time is the quintet’s first in six years and it sticks to tried-and-trusted guitar styles. The songwriting is workmanlike in places, but it’s hard not to be won over by the chiming riffs and Beatles-like harmonies of Kissing California, or the puppyish enthusiasm of Let’s Go, a song about on-the-road shenanigans that is clearly so pivotal that it gets a second airing as Let’s Go (Again).

With frontman Rick Witter and guitarist Paul Banks in their early 50s, there’s a touch of age-appropriate reflection, plus three guest cameos that reiterate the band’s pulling power.

Rowetta (of the Happy Mondays) and Laura McClure (of Reverend & The Makers) supply backing vocals, while long-term fan Pete Doherty duets with real intent on the country-rock ballad Throwaways.

Track of The Week: John Squire and Liam Gallagher – Just Another Rainbow

The Oasis legend and ex-Stone Roses guitarist Squire combine on an all-Mancunian collab that owes plenty to Squire’s former band. Crunching power chords and psychedelic guitar solos are pointers to the duo’s forthcoming album.

New Releases 

Bill Ryder Jones: Iechyd Da (Domino)

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The former Coral guitarist decided to lighten up after a 70-year-old aunt told him his music was too dour, and Iechyd Da (‘good health’ in Welsh) is the upshot.

It’s a record rooted in hardship and loss, but one with a positive outlook and warm heart. Ryder-Jones, who also produces film scores, is a writer and arranger of rare talent.

He taps into his native Merseyside’s tuneful pop heritage, but also works in references to Lou Reed, James Joyce’s Ulysses, 1970s soul act Flashlight and late Brazilian singer Gal Costa, sampling the latter’s 1960s tropicalia hit Baby.

Marika Hackman: Big Sigh (Chrysalis)

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Hackman, a multi-instrumentalist and one-time Burberry model, covers plenty of bases on her fifth album. Dark piano ballads rub up against scratchy guitars and more progressive pieces that nod to Radiohead and the pastoral passages of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

The results are scattergun and some of the tunes undercooked, but Hackman — who plays everything bar brass and strings — has an ear for a lyrical couplet and, on No Caffeine, tongue-in-cheek advice on how to avoid a panic attack: ‘Take a day off work, call your mum, have a glass of wine, stay away from fun.’ 

Kali Uchis: Orquìdeas (Geffen)

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A sister album to last year’s Red Moon In Venus, Orquìdeas (‘orchids’), finds the American singer upping the tempo as she pays homage to her Colombian heritage.

Switching between Spanish and English, she mixes genres with soulful aplomb, dipping into R&B, electronic pop and salsa to make the most of her impressive vocal range.

There are shades of Sade on the sultry Te Mata, while party beats are to the fore elsewhere. Mellow horns and folky accordion add to an exotic blend, while Muñekita combines rap and reggae.

Saint Saens: Carnival Of The Animals

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This set is headed ‘Symphonic Poems’ but it will sell on the merits of an absolutely spiffing Carnival Of The Animals.

Perhaps intuiting that his witty series of satirical squibs would come to dominate his reputation, Camile Saint-Saens never let the Carnival be published in his lifetime.

This 2021 recording has all the hallmarks of Francois-Xavier Roth and his splendid group of players Les Siecles, who always use instruments of the appropriate period.

The two pianists play on a 1928 Pleyel double or ‘vis-à-vis’ instrument, rather like a push-me-pull-you with a keyboard at each end, so that they can see each other easily.

The actual Symphonic Poems include Danse Macabre (with Francois-Marie Drieux a characterful violin soloist); Phaeton, The Youth Of Hercules and Le Rouet d’Omphale.

Roth also gives us the Bacchanale from Samson Et Dalila and the music the composer wrote for a 1908 silent movie: it is thought to be the first film music in cinema history. 

Durante: Magnificat & Psalms

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In the Naples of the 18th century, the sacred music of Francesco Durante ruled supreme — and one can hear why.

Nine Psalm settings and a Magnificat, sung one-to-a-part by the all-male quartet Nova Ars Cantandi directed by Giovanni Acciai, create quite a profound impression.

Your reaction will depend a lot on how you take to the soprano countertenor Alessandro Carmignani, who tends to dominate the musical texture more than is strictly ideal.

Four of Giovanni Salvatore’s organ pieces, very well played by Ivana Valotti on the 1565 Antegnati instrument in the Palatine Basilica, Mantua, make nice interludes.

The Magnificat comes at the end of the programme and has a better vocal blend than the Psalms; a 2010 positive organ built on 17th-century lines is used in the vocal pieces.