All Immune Systems Go

"I spent my first night in a tour bus last night," confesses Vaccines guitarist Freddie Cowan (the one with the pin-up cheekbones and Bolan hair) when we catch up with him on his band's first major UK tour. "You've got me in my little cubbyhole, all I can see is a brick wall. But I'm very excited, I've never been in a sleeper bus before!"

He'd better get used to it. The Vaccines have been anointed It-band for 2011, championed by Auntie Beeb, Jools Holland and Zane Lowe before they'd even reached their first birthday. This is a bit like discovering you've got psychic superpowers or the ability to communicate with the dead: short-term blessing, long term curse. Sudden fame or notoreity, even the localised London sort, can be as jarring as a car crash. But going by their debut album, the rather pointedly titled What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?, the London quartet have the stuff to back up the Strokes/Franzian buzz.
"We didn't tell any of our friends we were in a band, didn't want anyone to hear the music, because we were so happy with what we were doing," Freddie reflects. "We didn't want anyone to derail that, and we kind of feel the same way now. We don't need outside influence on what we want to do, so we don't really pay any attention to it. It doesn't really factor into our goal as a band. You can't say you don't care what the world thinks, because you're a human being – if someone screams at you in the street you’re going to care about it – but it’s definitely about having our goals first, because we’re passionate about what we do and we really love it, and music is the most important thing in all our lives.”
And, as Freddie admits, it doesn’t hurt that they’re signed to Columbia.
“Look at the CBS umbrella: Elvis, The Clash, Miles Davis and Springsteen and Dylan. We’re really proud to be on Columbia. Aside from the heritage they’re a really good label to work with.”
What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is an album of clean lines, scuffed surfaces and classic design, combining '50s teen 'tood, '60s surf and girly pop, '70s Ramones and '80s Jesus & Mary Chain, although its cathartic noise is frequently tempered by a lingering melancholia akin to Interpol or The National.
"We're just big music fans," Freddie says. "I think if you wanted to do it consciously, it's not possible. These things just come out of you. The range of emotions and influences makes it cathartic and honest and real."
Fair enough, but given that the band has been together for little more than a year, how did they refine their sound so quickly?
"We started playing together in late 2009 and it was a little bit more experimental. I was really interested in Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca, more experimental New York stuff. (Singer and guitarist) Justin (Young) was very into the Beach Boys and Phil Spector – it was a lucky combination of all those loves. I don’t think it was ever conceived. I think the basics of a song are the most difficult thing to get. Justin tends to demo songs, and it’s usually a thirty second section, and you can hear a good song in those thirty seconds. That’s the most difficult part, you don’t rely on guitar lines or post production or any of that stuff. You’re working with something very simple, but it’s very difficult to record something that fresh and exciting. When I started listening to someone like Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestra stuff, it’s incredible, it’s just octaves and one note. That can be very powerful.”
Shades of Jack White’s rigidly minimalist aesthetic. Three colours, three instruments, no costume changes.
“He’s a big fan of Billy Childish, who was the king of that, I love what he does. And no matter how much recording has come on, no one’s made better records than Brian Wilson on a four-track or eight-track.”
Mr Wilson is a useful reference. The Vaccines run the gamut from teenage riot (‘Wreckin’ Bar’, ‘If You Wanna’) to ache and heartbreak (‘Post Break Up Sex’, ‘Wet Suit’). A tune like ‘A Lack Of Understanding’ indicates more than a nodding acquaintance with the Spector boxset.
“I think that stuff comes from just the age we are,” Freddie reasons. “I mean I’m 22, Justin’s 23. It can be difficult to leave your adolescence behind and face adult reality. There’s a sad nostalgia for adolescence – I think everyone feels that. Everything’s new, it’s the first time you fall in love. Brian Wilson encapsulated and reinvented that Americana, the importance of what it is to be a teenager and be in high school and in love. The Beach Boys are the fathers of it.”
When it came to recording that debut album with producer Dan Grech, Freddie says, the band stuck to a naturalistic, unforced approach.
“It was really important that we captured what we were doing,” he says. “We felt really excited from the word go. We didn’t necessarily think of it as a debut, it was more about bottling what we have as four guys together in a room, making sure it was honest and sounded like us. Dan had worked with a band our manager used to look after, who said really great things about him. He worked a lot with Nigel Godrich, so he did all the Beck records and (Radiohead’s) In Rainbows. What we realised about Dan was he was a very well-schooled and very proficient engineer and he was at a point in his career where he was happy to take something on and not necessarily make it all about Dan Grech. We wanted someone who could capture what we were doing and make it sound like we sounded, without trying to put a producer’s mark on it. He was the perfect guy for that. He did his training in a studio called RAK, which is a very old studio, a very historical studio, a lot of great records have been made there. We were touring for half that period so a lot of energy came off the road. The live shows are fun, that’s actually the main reason we do it. I won’t lie, the recording process did feel effortless, but I think our musical history individually wasn’t. It was such a relief and a release for us to find each other.”
At the risk of being obscenely previous, any thoughts of pre-empting difficult second album syndrome?
“To be honest we’ve started playing with new ideas we’re very excited about. Where it’s going to progress I don’t know, but we are on it!”
Good lads.

What Did You Expect From the Vaccines? gets a live airing when the band play the Academy on March 25. You can listen to 'Wreckin' Bar' on hotpress.com now.