Album of the Week: The Vaccines ‘Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations’

Album of the Week: The Vaccines 'Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations'
Album of the Week: The Vaccines

Our featured record this week is ‘Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations‘, the sixth studio album from London-based indie rockers The Vaccines.

Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations was recorded at producer Andrew Wells’ home studio in Los Angeles, with mixing from Dave Fridmann (Tame Impala, The Flaming Lips). Featuring 10 new songs packed with hooks and melodies and pop smarts, the record is the epitome of what they do best: 60’s-inspired classicist guitar pop filtered through new wave, with equal parts euphoria and melancholy.

In a previous press release, lead vocalist Justin Young elaborated on the album, “It’s about loss. And coming to terms with that loss – not necessarily grieving for it, but trying to get a new understanding of it.” The album’s title comes from a misremembered lyric in Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song that for Young fittingly evokes the death of innocence and the American Dream. After he moved to Los Angeles Young was forced to confront the disillusionment that comes when expectations, dreams and reality don’t quite meet. Though Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations is an album about reconciling with that loss, it’s also filled with gratitude for the people and places we once loved. 

Favourite tracks: Heartbreak Kid, Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing), Sunkissed, Lunar Eclipse…

Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations is out now via Thirty Tigers. Buy it here and take a listen below.

 

Tracklist:
  1. Sometimes, I Swear
  2. Heartbreak Kid
  3. Lunar Eclipse
  4. Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing)
  5. Primitive Man
  6. Sunkissed
  7. Another Nightmare
  8. Love To Walk Away
  9. The Dreamer
  10. Anonymous in Los Feliz

Torchbearers for British guitar music, The Vaccines have released five UK top five albums since their 2010 debut (the country’s best-selling debut that year), and toured with everyone from The Rolling Stones and Muse to Arctic Monkeys and Red Hot Chili Peppers.The band will make their return to the US this spring on a coast-to-coast tour with The Kooks.

The Vaccines 2024 Tour Dates

29 Feb – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
1 Mar – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
2 Mar – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall
4 Mar – Toronto, ON @ QET History
5 Mar – Montreal, QB @ Mtelus
6 Mar – Albany, NY @ Empire
8 Mar – Boston, MA @ MGM Fenway
9 Mar – Philadelphia, PA @ Fillmore
11 Mar – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
13 Mar – Washington DC @ Anthem
15 Mar – Chicago, IL @ Riviera
16 Mar – Minneapolis, MN @ Filmore
18 Mar – Denver, CO @ The Fillmore
19 Mar – Salt Lake City, UT @ Union
21 Mar – Los Angeles, CA @ Palladium
22 Mar – San Francisco, CA @ Fox Theatre

Photo Credit: Wrenne Evans