What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?- The Vaccines

Fat-free but shallow debut from indie’s “saviours”

Let’s get something straight: alternative music is not dead. You can hold off the wake, but away the black armband, because there’s still enough of it around to fight against cynical naysayers.

Music in this country comes and goes in waves and always has done- just because pop is the ascendency in the mainstream doesn’t mean others aren’t catered for. Dubstep continues to look like the future for British music, and let us not forget the only act to break Adele’s momentous run at the album chart summit were a rock band...

We’ve also been here before. For a while in the early 00s, OK Computer looked to be the last great alternative album, before The Strokes punched through, ushering in Libertines, Monkeys and Bloc Parties.

And it’s The Strokes that The Vaccines find themselves rather presumptuously compared to: the new white hope to bring guitars back to the chart. There's a point there in many ways, as Vaccines trade is excitable rhythms, uninterested vocals and vaguely angular guitar riffs. But while What Did You Expect...is a fun, life-affirming album in places, it is far from an Is This It masterpiece.

Instead, we get a collection of twelve singles and would-be singles. Opener Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) along with Post Break Up Sex received substantial radio play before the album’s release and it’s unsurprising as the former zooms along at an exhilarating pace. It’s these moments that stand out the most, as the even more hyperactive Norgaard will attest, with added “ooh-ooh-oohs” as the hook. Both clock in at less than two minutes.

On the flipside, the album contains several moments to prevent it being too one-note. The likes of Wetsuit and Blow It Up slow proceedings to a woozy waltz, the latter providing a rarely engaged vocal from singer Justin Young, allowing his voice soar on the chorus. Best of all is the aforementioned Post Break Up Sex, showing the band of as highly effective songwriting, perfectly encapsulating the shame the title suggests.

As a whole, What Did You Expect...provides everything you’d expect from their high playlist value: this is a short, sharp indie-pop album that doesn’t waste a note. But in the quest for chart-bothering singles, it’s all rather transient, without much going on underneath. This album is designed to get you drunk, have a messy time with you then leave in the morning never to be seen again: it’s not going to make scores of teenagers pick up guitars and start bands, and it leaves a guilty feeling afterwards, but boy is it fun while it lasts.

4/5

Best Tracks:
Post Break Up Sex
Norgaard
Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)
Blow It Up