The Vaccines formed in London in 2010 around singer Justin Young, who had previously performed as the folk singer Jay Jay Pistolet. He was joined by guitarist Freddie Cowan, younger brother of the Horrors’ Tom Cowan, Icelandic bassist Árni Árnason and drummer Pete Robertson. The band were one of the most hyped guitar groups in Britain within months of their first gigs.
Their debut album, What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?, arrived in 2011 and lived up to the noise. ‘Post Break-Up Sex’, the song featured here, became one of its signature singles: a slab of fuzzy, two-minute pop with a heart-on-sleeve lyric. The sound drew on the Ramones, the Jesus and Mary Chain and the wall-of-sound girl groups of the 1960s, stripped down and played at speed.
Come of Age (2012) went to number one in the UK, and the band became festival regulars, though Young was frank in interviews about the pressure of following such a fast start. Later records, including English Graffiti (2015) and Combat Sports (2018), experimented with glossier production and bigger hooks while keeping the band’s taste for short, sharp songs.
Pete Robertson left in 2016 and the line-up has shifted since, with Young and Cowan remaining at the heart of the band. Whatever the line-up, the Vaccines have stuck to a simple, unfashionable principle: that a three-minute guitar song about a broken heart is still one of the best things a band can make.
