The Vaccines
When The Vaccines uploaded their track “If You Wanna” to YouTube back in 2010, the respected DJ at BBC 1, Zane Lowe, named it the “Hottest Record in the World.”
01. April 2016
A year after that, they released their debut album What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? which became the best selling debut of 2011. Their follow-up album Come of Agereached no. 1 in the album chart and was certified gold in the UK. A year ago, they released their third studio album, English Graffiti, and in three months, they will be playing at Pohoda. Clash Magazinebriefly summarized why it’s worth seeing them right after band’s first gig: “it’s fairly unimportant what or who they sound like, it’s just fantastic, exhilarating and exciting.”
The Vaccines were the first band to perform on Later with Jools Holland prior to releasing a single. In 2011, the band was placed third in the BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll and appeared on the cover of NMEfor the first time. During this period, the band was nominated for an MTV Award – ‘Best New Band of 2011’ – and a Critics’ Choice Brit Award. In 2012, the NME nomination turned into an award in the category of Best New Band. The period following the release of their second album was no less successful: they received a nomination in the Brit Awards for Best Live Act (along with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Muse, Coldplay and Mumford & Sons). What followed were two NME Awards nominations: Best British Band and Best Album. Each one of their eight most popular tracks on Spotify has more than 5 million listens.
Their music is not just a collection of prestigious nominations, chart ranks and millions of views on the web. As The Guardian puts it in the review of their third album, the tracks “offer the sort of high-octane, Ramones-meet-the-Everly Brothers dystopia with monster riffs.” The band say that they mix rock ‘n’ roll of the fifties, American punk and hardcore of the eighties. According to reporters, their shows have a good deal of rock ‘n’ roll to offer. With a bit of generalization, you can say that while The Vaccines receive positive feedback on their albums, journalists save superlatives for reviews of their shows. You’ll figure out why this is so at Pohoda’s 20th edition.