London indie rock four-piece The Vaccines released their second LP Come Of Age yesterday on September 3, 2012. With record promotion in full swing, the band’s frontman Justin Young caught up with triple j’s Lewi Mckirdy to discuss the new album and in the process revealed that some of the new songs were crafted in Australia.
After Mckirdy asked where Young does most of his songwriting, the vocalist went on to explain that the band penned and arranged some tracks that ended up on Come of Age while in Australia for the Big Day Out 2012
“You often find yourself in a pretty stale environment on tour just often surrounded by four white walls but you often as well find yourself in, sort of thirty stories up in a hotel in a sort of city you never expected you’d be lucky enough to, so i dunno’ Tokyo or Sydney or New York and actually wrote some of the record in Australia actually; in various sort of hotel rooms on Big Day Out just sort of excited and invigorated but the fact that we were sort of on the other side of the world,” Young revealed.
“I remember really specifically I wrote the song Weirdo in Sydney and then when we went to Melbourne we had like four or five days of rehearsing, we put together three or four of the songs on the record (Come Of Age) in Melbourne.”
Mckirdy went on to ask Young about his repeated vocal health problems and how the young singer is managing the issue; mentioning that the last time Young was impacted by the infliction was during The Vaccines’ 2011 Australian visit for Splendour in the Grass.
“I’ve been trying… a few lifestyle changes and then also lots of warmups, which I hate doing but sort of have to do it. Yeah, it was sort of a really wakeup call really, like last year I had three operations on my voice and the last time I did was… in Australia for Splendour and it sort of… made me realise that maybe i should sort take things a little more seriously,” explained Young.
Soon to once again return to Australia for the upcoming instalments of Falls Festival and Southbound, Mckirdy asked Young if the band had plans in mind for their return Down Under.
“Just to have fun. I’ll be honest with you Australia was never somewhere that I ever sort of thought about visiting and then when I came for the first time I absolutely fell in love with it and no word of a lie… it’s pretty much our favourite place to come now and we’re already really excited.”
