Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

The Vaccines – Post-Break-Up Sex

Iain Mew’s not finding much common ground with people this week, is he?…



[Video][Website]
[2.92]

Jer Fairall: She Wants Revenge on The Bravery of the Editors of the White Lies of Interpol.
[4]

Zach Lyon: vaccines + “post break up sex” + lyrics
[0]

Jonathan Bogart: The chorus goes: “Post break up sex/Helps you forget your ex/What did you expect/From post break up sex.” If they’re not going to try, neither am I.
[0]

John Seroff: Faux-worldly jangle-emo heavily larded with the fat of snide novelty. Adam Green does the inflated lizard emcee routine with more gusto. The hook could’ve been cribbed from any twenty obscure B-sides gone by. Timeless, musty and flaccid.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: Awakening with the most awful hangover, I discovered to my delight that Pulp were playing somewhere across the hall. I turned to embrace Jarvis, love and light of my dwindling life, whereupon I discovered to my eternal dismay that it was really just the Vaccines, playing from inside a running shower in the adjacent bathroom. Endorsing a rip-off this shameful and poorly produced is sad enough, but pretending it’s any kind of new is just appalling in the hubris department.
[1]

Tom Ewing: After working up a healthy head of contempt for the Vaccines based on other people’s write-ups I have to sheepishly admit this is more than competent. More wry than grubby, which is a good look. Would have cleaned up in 1996, since on first blush it sounds like a better Shed Seven doing worse Pulp lyrics. Yes, THAT GOOD!!
[6]

Iain Mew: Reverbed up rock which does little new but is thoroughly enjoyable regardless. This is partly due to how tight and hooky it is and how good the guitar sounds, but mostly for the collision between the throwaway silliness of the lyrics and the intense seriousness and cool of everything else. “Post break-up sex that helps you forget your ex” is kind of an appealingly funny sounding phrase to begin with, but every time it’s repeated with stern concern it only gets more so.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: There’s nothing really wrong with the verses of this song; they’re tuneful even despite the singer’s lifelessness. There’s enough wrong with the chorus to ruin at least an entire album though.
[2]

Alex Macpherson: Yeah, what the world really needs is another self-absorbed, self-pitying nonentity who cries after he cums and thinks that makes his utterly banal, uninsightful observations on human emotion worthy of being heard outside his disgusting student hovel of a bedroom. I guess he thinks his flat, uninvolving voice signifies ennui? Remarkably, it drags the song, already squarely hitting the shitspot between whinge and dirge, even further into the mire.
[0]

Martin Skidmore: The tune sounds hideously mechanical and lifeless, but even a great song could hardly survive this vocalist.
[2]

Mark Sinker: “Helps you forget your eggs.” See, sometimes when I forget MY eggs — for example when I’m on the internet — the water entirely boils away and they explode! Ruining yet another pan! Though obviously any pan you’re boiling an egg in is on the way to being ruined anyway. Is the white stuff a calcium deposit? Is Mr Vaccine here a calcium deposit? I know I always say this, but his Ex is VERY MUCH BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIS WHINY SELF-IMPORTANCE. Reboil in dilute vinegar, that should shift it.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: Some paths in rock ‘n’ roll are well trod for a reason, and the thoroughfare that is songs exploiting the collusion between sex and heartbreak is deservedly well-trafficked. If ten thousand boys with guitars are to be believed, little is more romantic than the squalid midpoint between emotion and eroticism. There’s always the Strokes debut for those who doubt that they’re right, but the pose is not an automatic winner: this is a romance best exploited with a sharp melody and a smart hook. “Post Break-Up Sex” shows some spark during the bridge, when frontman Justin Young sings “Oh when you love somebody but you find someone,” but he completes neither the thought nor the melody, and with a flat “oh uh-huh,” the tune is sent back to the doldrums. Bored cool is meant to be exuded by the band, not felt by the listener.
[4]

Alfred Soto: “Don’t tell me who you lost it to,” the singer implores in his best diffident-Chris Martin imitation. The novelty here is the adaption of UK angst-rock cliches — down to rhetorical tropes that the songwriters probably adduce “ambiguity” — to psychobabble. Any guy who wastes valuable post-coital spooning time to wonder if his lover’s thinking about other lovers either hasn’t learned a thing from therapy or assumes said thinking shows his maturity. In short, a strong hook, but you’ll hate yourself in the morning as much as the singer does.
[5]

7 Responses to “The Vaccines – Post-Break-Up Sex”

  1. I had quite high hopes for the Vaccines based on Wreckin’ Bar, but this isn’t very good at all. Feels like a hangover from the last decade than a New Rock Dawn.

  2. I am the second biggest Vaccines fan on the Jukebox! THE SHAME!

  3. I feel like this is better than a 2.7 out of 10, but I can’t really find any genuinely likable qualities in this record, other than its general listenability. Given the band’s apparent Pulp/Oasis ambitions, my litmus test for this sort of song is – would I want to actually listen to this performed live? I can’t imagine this being anything more than padding for a live performance.

  4. I like how Tom brought out such an amazing zing in service of a broadly positive review.

    I honestly did not think, when we started this exercise, that I would find TWO acts I hated more than Jessie J! And LOL @ how it took less than a day for Yuck’s low score to be beaten. I consider this a tremendous indictment of the stupid list and all involved in it.

  5. As I said over on The Bad Place, this feels like a third or fourth single off a disappointing second album rather than the single you use to launch a new rock band with a load of buzz around them. Either whoever is behind them hasn’t got a clue what they’re doing or the album is rubbish with the exception of two songs.

    They should just stick to aping the Ramones, it’s a winning formula. And weirdly considering the fascination with all things retro and New York for most of the last decade, it doesn’t feel like the Ramones, musically, were much of a touchstone.

  6. how has no one mentioned NORTHERN UPROAR yet? Surely this is what Tom means by “a better Shed Seven doing worse Pulp lyrics”???

  7. Actually it just sounds like the Killers, when the Killers REALLY can’t be arsed.