“Drove my Chevy to the levee…”
English indie rock band The Vaccines just released their sixth studio album, Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations. The title is a reference to the song “American Pie” by Don McLean, and each tune carries the same euphoric, main character feeling as driving down a coastal highway. Its dreamy anthems are momentous and cinematic. The band borrows influence from other pop-rock icons like The Kooks, The Wallows, Cage the Elephant and The Strokes. The Vaccines stay in their lane while sharing individuality with this new album.
They open with the melancholy intro of “Sometimes, I Swear” which explodes into a head-banging garage rock performance. Any suspicious tension is released with the line “It feels like I don’t belong anywhere.” This heavy hitter transitions into track 2 “Heartbreak Kid” a passionate cry about how to handle looming pain. “Let your heart break, kid / Oh, you never thought they’d leave you, but they did.” This singable chorus is instantly catchy and deeply cathartic. In a way, it’s like “singin’ bye-bye Miss American Pie” to a lover or a dream.
Keeping a similar tone, track 3 “Lunar Eclipse” has a pulsing pre-chorus that releases with a quick drum fill into pure bliss. Its lyrical imagery compares a relationship to a road trip in the desert, “The road fell and twisted into cracks in our lips / Out on a trip under the lunar eclipse.”
A similar reference appears in the next track “Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing).” Vocalist Justin Hayward-Young sings “I’ve been thinking about all of the times you used to fill my streets / Until I got deserted, like I’m boarded up with nowhere to eat.” The cure to his sorrow is to “keep on dancing / Don’t care if I’m the last one standing.”
Track 5 “Primitive Man” is a claim of change, “I wanna get better / As soon as I can.” A moment of clarity appears after attending an ex’s wedding and “you’re not taking my name.” This experience sends Young into an overwhelming sickness caused by lingering love. As mentioned in Track 6 “Another Nightmare,” it’s “Taking everything to forget ya.”
Even the songs “Sunkissed” and “The Dreamer,” which have an upbeat, whimsical instrumentation, take a dark lyrical depth. Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations doesn’t deviate from the band’s previous work. The album is steady with little variety in production; however, their lyrics are clever in the ways they tackle heartbreak.
The album concludes with a track called “Anonymous in Los Feliz.” This song combines themes from the albums entire course:
Heavy emotions, “Ran my fingers through all your anger,”
Guilt, “Can you see it’s not my fault,”
Restlessness, “I can’t sleep with a memory,”
Letting go, “Held us by a thread,”
and returning, “Come on back for me.”
Leave a Comment