The Vaccines are not joking. Just joking; they are joking. That seemed to be the takeaway of their debut, What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?, the title of which wisely tried to curry favor with the listener by shifting the focus from the unyieldingly competent lad-rock within to what the Vaccines wanted to be seen as their utter lack of complicity in being swept up by perfunctory hype. Maybe they had a point: Even if they were heralded by NME as the "Return of the Great British Guitar Band," their relationship with the press seemed like less a torrid love affair than a blind date based on type ("you two will so get along").
A year later, it's not surprising that Come of Age is pulling all the same tricks both musically and philosophically. On leadoff track "No Hope", Justin Young sings, "I don't really care about anybody else/ When I haven't got my own life figured out," and it's clear that the title points to a reprise of the debut's self-reflexive copouts. On Come of Age, the Vaccines prove they've done nothing of the sort. What they have done is create a quasi-concept album about a rock band treating its job with the checked-out disinterest of an office drone, doing the bare minimum to get by, learning nothing, and being scared to death by the obligations that come with appearing to give a shit.
As before, the music on Come of Age is wholly uncomplicated yet capable of winning listeners over by deftly straddling a very fine semantic distinction. Can you tell the difference between the figurative "you've heard this before" and the literal "you haven't heard this before" and want music to embody both? There's absolutely nothing the Vaccines do that hasn't been approved, market-tested, and confirmed over the past 30 years of British rock that warily views any encroachment of electronic music, hip-hop-- basically anything not evolving from the Jam-- as a threat. The faster numbers barge in with a "Brianstorm"-like whirl of drum rolls and tremolo picking, then immediately taper off. The slower ones pick and choose from any number of song structures you vaguely remember from whatever Drums or Strokes album you listened to last. Not a single band member seems capable of doing anything without the other three's approval: Vocal melodies move completely in lockstep with well-worn progressions, and occasionally just mimic the bass root notes. There's an occasional spray of surf rock, but otherwise Come of Age is utterly subservient to Young's lyrics.
The established templates make Come of Age catchy at the very least, even if Young treats his gift for sticky choruses like "No Hope" and "Aftershave Ocean" like something that would make him feel guilty if he decided to sell insurance for a living. It's fine that this is music driven by personality rather than innovation, but Young lacks the charm to be likeable or even the swagger to be unlikeable either. As a result, Come of Age becomes an inverse Portnoy's Complaint where the narrator morbidly fixates on the utter meaninglessness of every single one of his thoughts. Let him tell it: "I could bore you with the truth about an uneventful youth/ Or you could get that rap from someone else." "So let's go to bed before you say something real/ Let's go to bed before you say how you feel." "I'm no teenage icon/ I'm no Frankie Avalon/ I'm nobody's hero." "You can't hold a gun to my head/ Because baby I would just refuse." Even spread across the entity of Come of Age, it would be a disconcerting admission of serious writer's block or more likely crippling laziness. Those lines are all within the first four songs.
It goes on like this, as evidenced by "Bad Mood"'s surely self-aware taunt, "You look disappointed in me/ I'm not as thoughtful as you thought I'd be." More revealing is "Weirdo". Stylistically, it's the most outré inclusion on Come of Age, if only because its juddering bassline recalls Pixies and they're American. But the Vaccines pretty much reject any of Frank Black's lyrical lessons as Young pleads, "I'm not a weirdo," to win a girl's heart. You look further down the tracklist and, surely, a song entitled "I Wish I Was a Girl" is willing to cop to something? Sorta-- Young moans, "Life is easy when you're easy on the eye," and you might even overlook the deflating misogyny of that statement and find relief in the fact that he finally says what's been implied the whole time: He envies people who are expected not to have anything to say.
Which quite obviously renders the regular-guy shtick the Vaccines play on Come of Age as total bullshit, especially since you can purchase a deluxe version with bonus tracks and an entire extra disc of live cuts. It's as oily and slick-talking as any political figure trying to ascend to a position of tremendous power while convincing the populace they're "one of us," an easier path to take than simultaneously exhibiting leadership and empathy. But not even the soft bigotry of low expectations can suffice here since Come of Age hardly feels escapist. In fact, it's even more of a dystopian nightmare than Kid A or an El-P record: The Vaccines draw us into a universe that revolves entirely around Young, and if he's got nothing to say, his only possible conclusion is that nobody does.
