Posts Tagged ‘The vaccines’

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The Vaccines have returned with ‘Headphones Baby’, their first new music since 2018.

The release marks their first original release since 2018 single “All My Friends Are Falling In Love”, the single is the first taster of the band’s forthcoming fifth album.

“I wanna live inside your headphones baby/ I wanna live inside a world wherever you are,” Young sings on the track, which began life with the two words that make up its title written in his phone notes app. “I didn’t know what or who ‘headphones baby’ was, if it was a person or an idea,” he explained . “Before the song was written, I imagined it to be like my ‘Plug In Baby’ , but now it’s more like a concept or a feeling.”

The feeling contained in the song is one of escape, presented in a blast of classic Vaccines energy that has the power to instantly change your mood. “It’s about cocooning yourself from the outside world,” Young said. “Which is a topic I’ve always been mildly obsessed and, I suppose more broadly speaking, is probably a topic that a lot of musicians and artists are also quite obsessed with.”

‘Headphones Baby’ doesn’t quite present your typical picture of escapism though. The idea of burrowing away inside a partner’s headphones is a getaway from the tedious obligations of modern life (“Why go for beers when these people bore us?” Young sings on the first verse), but things take a surprising turn as the song continues. “I wanna die together like we’re movie stars,” the frontman fantasises. “They’ll bury us in leather in Hollywood Forever/ Don’t you wanna die together?”

The tone shifts from A to Z quite a lot in the song, but I think there is still this overarching theme of pure escapism and red button-ism, like ‘Fuck it’,” Young said. “[It’s more about] the idea of mortality – less the act of dying, but more what would come with an icon dying in a big ball of flames.”

The track – and the album it lives on – were inspired by the idea of dystopian or ‘sin cities’, and the notion of emotion as a finite resource that might one day leave us feeling empty and numb, with ‘Headphones Baby’ as the imagined antidote to that. “It’s like Roxy Music’s ‘Love Is The Drug’ and this idea that you can plug into a feeling and therefore plug out and just become overwhelmed with emotion at a time or in a place where you thought you were devoid of all that,” Young explained. “It’s essentially about wanting to feel alive. The pandemic has obviously brought new meaning to it, but I think it’s something that rang true to me pre-COVID.”

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The British indie-rock juggernauts released this single Wednesday, the first full cut from the band’s forthcoming fourth studio album, Combat Sports, out on March. 30th. With their last album, 2015’s English Graffiti, the band improved on their sound with a more colorful, expansive record, but Combat Sports is said to be a return to the band’s rock ‘n’ roll roots. “I Can’t Quit” is an anthemic indie-rock track led by Justin Hayward-Young’s rousing lead vocals and peppy guitar riffs, sprinkled with backing vocal “ooh ooh”’s.

Live at Leeds Festival have added further artists to our 2018 line-up, huge additions including:

The Vaccines, Idles, CABBAGE, Nadine Shah, Rae Morris, Superorganism and Bad Sounds.

They and around 70 artists will join the already announced Ash, Sunset Sons, Pulled Apart by Horses, Dermot Kennedy, Circa Waves, Peace, British Sea Power, and The Horrors on 5th May in Leeds City Centre. Live at Leeds is the ultimate place to hear the essential new sounds of 2018, join us on Saturday 5th May- we’re sure you will find your new favourite band!

Check out all the artists on our Artists page, where we have social and listening links on every artist on the line-up. Live at Leeds is part of Leeds International Festival.

A booster shot from Justin Hayward-Young and cohorts has been a while coming, as befits a band on their third album and feeling the need to shake things up a little. They began their journey as scuffed underdogs, blamming out dirty romances like Post Break-Up Sex and Blow It Up with the early support of Zane Lowe (who named their early demo If You Wanna the Hottest Record In The World).

That sound grew steadily more muscular and strong with the arrival of the albums What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? and Come of Age, and they soon started gathering a huge following, climbing the running order of the In New Music We Trust stages of 2011 and 2012’s Big Weekends and graduating from the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2011 to the Pyramid Stage in 2013. And now, with the eventual delivery of that widescreen third album English Graffiti, they’re a highly polished pop machine. Better inoculate than never.

1.- Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) 2.- Dream Lover 3.- Wetsuit 4.- All In White 5.- Post Break-Up Sex 6.- Melody Calling 7.- No Hope (Acoustic) 8.- Teenage Icon 9.- 20/20 10.- Give Me A Sign 11.- I Always Knew 12.- If You Wanna 13.- Nørgaard