Our guest music blogger Verity Vincent stopped by Plymouth’s Pavillions earlier this month to check out The Vaccines. For those that haven’t seen The Vaccines perform live before we recommend you put it on your to do list for 2016.
Justin Hayward Young, Freddie Cowan, Árni Árnason and Pete Robertson took to the stage at Plymouth’s Pavillions and treated the crowd to 90 minutes of pure musical indie-rock goodness. The nice thing about watching The Vaccines is their ability to create a musical arc of their material, giving fans exactly what they want. Playing songs from their first two records, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? and Coming of Age, as well as their latest offering, English Graffiti.
The initial mild mood of the crowd quickly changed when the boys kicked off their set with ‘Handsome’, ‘Teenage Icon’ and ‘Ghost Town’. If we were talking in sandwich terms, the filling of the gig was a meaty concoction of hit after hit including ’20/20′, ‘I Always Knew’ and staple track, ‘If You Wanna’. Cue the flying beer cups, bodies being launched onto shoulders and the Pavillions, in general, coming alive. Justin’s vocals seemed to just effortlessly float out and fill the venue while he controlled the stage with honest, natural charisma. He has a way of not giving too much away with idle chit chat, but still connecting with the crowd.
A mid-set highlight was ‘Post Break-Up Sex’ which had every sweaty body in the building singing along to the lyrics that, if we’re honest, everyone can relate to.
Bring the set to an end with the outstanding anthem ‘All in White’, Justin then returned to the stage solo and softly launched into an acoustic version of ‘No Hope’ with the entire room hanging on his delicate notes.
Before fully closing off, Justin divulged that they’d actually forgotten, until now, to offer up a track choice to the crowd. It mattered not – the choice was unanimous and the band went out with a bang, with ‘Blow It Up’. Palma Violets front man Sam Fryer burst back onto the stage and darted around in quite possibly the most enthusiastic duet you could witness. High energy would be an understatement and it brought the night to a perfect end.
love the vaccines! everything they have written puts me in a great mood. bet that was a lovely show!