The Vaccines are currently touring to mark the fifteenth anniversary of their debut What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?, and the opening stretch of the set is given over entirely to that record. It still holds up remarkably well. Track after track lands like a hit, and judging by the reaction at the Bataclan, this is an album that has lived with people for a long time. Every chorus is met with a wall of voices, every hook gets a response. There is no easing into it, the room is already there, clapping, singing and dancing.
Like most great debuts, it is over quickly. and after forty minutes or so, they move on, and the energy does not dip. If anything, it broadens. Plenty of bands peak early and spend the rest of their career circling that first statement (The Stone Roses come to mind) but The Vaccines never boxed themselves in that way. Songs like “I Always Knew” or “Lunar Eclipse” keep the immediacy of the early material while showing a firmer grip on structure and pacing. Call it maturity if you like (the word still sounds suspect in this context) but the progression is there.
After an hour and a half that feels less like a retrospective than a reminder of how consistent the catalogue has been, they offer a glimpse ahead with the new track “Ten Years Too Far.” and if it's any indication of the direction the next record will take, fans are going to be very happy.
They close with “All My Friends Are Falling In Love,” a standalone single that draws the same response as everything else in the set. There is no sense of hierarchy in the setlist, no obvious peaks, just a run of songs that all hit with the same force. Over fifteen years, that kind of consistency accumulates. The body of work stops being a collection of tracks and starts to take shape as something more coherent, more durable. An oeuvre.
SETLIST
(+ new song "Ten Years Too Far" before "All My Friends..."
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