F
ans will have to forgive the cheesy film reference, chortles Justin Young. But for a while there recently, the anchor for brainy British folk-punkers The Vaccines actually came to believe that he’ d somehow lost his magical inner mojo, just like Austin Powers in Mike Myers’ hilarious espionage spoof The Spy Who Shagged Me. And no mentions of the flick’ s villain Fat Bastard, either, if you don’ t mind – he’ d grown chubby enough himself during this dark, depressing period.“ I put on three stone – you can do the conversion rate yourself,” reveals the singer, 30, of the bloated 42-extra-pounds period following the group’ s third aesthetically-adventurous – but ultimately energy-snuffing – English Graffiti in 2015.“ All I was doing was drinking beer and eating cheese snacks, and apart from making our next record, I didn’ t really feel like I had any purpose.” He sighs, dejectedly.“ I was drifting, feeling very lost, until I well and truly lost my mojo, socially, emotionally, even spiritually.”
What could lay low such a stellar talent as Young, a former acoustic London folkie who called himself Jay Jay Pisttolet before he found his spark in 2009 when he met Strokes-edgy guitarist Freddie Cowan, who was equally frustrated with the UK music scene? As The Vaccines, the symbiotic team burst out of the gate with 2011’ s snark-titled What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?, a bracing bombastic tonic for the tepid times that – like vintage R. E. M. – featured jagged, jolting guitar lines from
22 illinoisentertainer. com march 2018
The Rediscovery By Tom Lanham
Cowan that seemed to converse with Young’ s conversely rich and sonorous vocals. They followed it up a year later with the equally frenetic Come of Age, and-- as they began acquiring nominations for Q, NME, MTV, Brit, and – ahem – MOJO Awards, several of which they won – they were suddenly an irresistible force to be reckoned with, with no immovable objects in sight. What could possibly go wrong?
Young is self-reflective to an almost OCD fault. And – hindsight being 20 / 20 – he can clearly identify the turbulence into which The Vaccines were insouciantly flying with English Graffiti, and exactly when it knocked them out of the sky – a course they’ ve carefully corrected with a rollicking new mojo-reclaiming comeback Combat Sports, which hits shelves later this month and is preceded by buzz-sawing hallmark single“ Nightclub,” a reason to be cheerful this year if ever there was one. The ambitious Graffiti project had started innocently enough, with the composer leaving the comfortable confines of London for a rented apartment in New York City’ s bustling Chinatown, where he hoped to capture the pace and the splashy neon-hued color of the neighborhood. He invited Cowan to join him in his experiment, while bassist Arni Arnason and drummer Pete Robertson( who would later quit, replaced on Combat by Yoann Intonti; touring keyboardist Tim Lanham also officially joined) stayed home. As produced by Dave Fridmann, some of the material(“ Handsome,”“ 20 / 20,”“ Radio Bikini”) was as rip-roaring as early singles“ Teenage Icon,”“ If You Wanna,” and the definitive“ Post Break-Up Sex.” But a good portion of the record was comprised of gentle, navel-gazing ballads, which – if you viewed the group as a speedboat powering maniacally across the choppy waves – was like the sound of the engine sputtering off into an eerie dead calm. Not at all what you would expect from The Vaccines.
Young returned to Britain, couchsurfed with friends with no home to call his own, and promptly fell into a funk. Had he over-thought the third record? Been too dogmatically determined to become an uptown artiste with an E on the end? He laughs.“ Yes, definitely, definitely,” he can now admit.“ I think we felt like we’ d been pigeonholed, and that we were functioning within these small parameters that we’ d set up four ourselves. And we really wanted to prove that we were more than that to people – we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could make a production-heavy record, that we could make pretty songs, that we could make songs with weird, understated chords. I mean, it was written and recorded over a very long time, and there are some brilliant songs on there, songs that are some of my favorites.” He pauses, weighing his next words carefully.“ But the record lacks focus. And in trying to find ourselves, I guess we lost our way. So then we started trying to figure out what defined us. What’ s at the heart of what The Vaccines do that nobody else does? What is at the core of our identity?
And this new album is our journey of rediscovery.”
It’ s not an easy thing to pinpoint, all told. But it’ s there on track one of the What Did You Expect bow, the pell-mell punker“ Wreckin’ Bar( Ra Ra Ra),” which scampers past in only 1:34. Midway through it is a six-second guitar-solo bridge from Cowan that sounds like an angry, Masonjarred hornet fighting to escape that is truly one of the greatest moments in modern rock. In rock and roll history, period. It’ s nothing that was over-analyzed – it’ s just Cowan sensing the innate flame his comrade had lit with the anthem, then ratcheting it up to a roman-candle intensity, like all great collaborators have been doing since Lennon / McCartney, Jagger / Richards. And the axeman’ s instrument actually speaks in different pedalaffected tones from cut to cut, until there really does seem to be a conversation going on between his textural statements and Young’ s warm, woodsy delivery. It ' s a 50 / 50 arrangement that’ s musical symbiosis at its most enthralling.“ We need each other, and its good to be reminded of that sometimes,” Young says, thoughtfully.
Friends saw Young struggling to find himself and made a few helpful suggestions. Stop crashing on people’ s sofas and get your own home, or – as George Carlin once termed it – a place for all his stuff. And he did.“ I have now got my own house in London, and it’ s nice after being in such a weird space,” he says.“ Everyone kept saying,‘ You’ ve got to get a room with continues on page 26