By Dwayne | March 24th, 2011
It’s a peculiar twist of fate that indie’s latest saviours are releasing their debut in such close proximity to indie’s original saviours, The Strokes. A short comparison of this and Is This It tells you where the title was really justified.
Because of the huge amount of expectation around The Vaccines – with NME guilty as always – backlash started before the album was even released. It’s not a bad piece of work; certainly for a debut, it’s reasonably impressive. But it’s just far too middle-of-the-road to be saving anyone from anything.
There is no doubt that The Vaccines can write a good pop song – “Post-Break-Up Sex” follows in a noble British indie tradition, descending from such works as “This Charming Man.” The problem with this album is the other eleven tracks — they are listenable, but, alas, little more than that.
All that is left is to hope that The Strokes’ Angles covers the Is This It-shaped void instead…