The Vaccines and Whenyoung at Alexandra Palace

The Vaccines celebrated a new LP with a nationwide tour, completed tonight at Alexandra Palace with support from Dream Wife and Whenyoung. The latter put everyone in good spirits early with some thundering tunes. The standout was The Others, dedicated to the disregarded voices following the Grenfell Tower fire. It featured a catchy chorus and heavy verses: a song that one dances to with tears in their eyes. A pleasant cover of The Cranberries’ Dreams raised the band’s profile to those who didn’t know them. The trio – whose songwriting skills and frontwoman make them stand out from the current, younger indie scene – may well see a full room in the iconic venue one day.

The main eventers launched straight into Nightclub from the latest album. The stage was so brightly lit, with a dazzling disco ball hovering above the band, it’s as if they wanted to see every individual of the 10,000-capacity crowd. This was confirmed by frontman Justin Hayward-Young with sporadic references throughout of how the West London five-piece has travelled the world but Ally Pally has always been home to their best shows. Here was another grade A gig for the books, as the reverse of Murphy’s law took effect. Call it Hayward-Young’s law, where everything good that could happen at a gig happened – perfect sound mixing with clear vocals and instruments, thousands chanting along to songs old and new, mosh pits, crowd surfing, and lots of money lost to spilled alcohol.

“If you don’t know the lyrics yet, just bounce along,” the lead singer said about Your Love Is My Favourite Band, a cut from Combat Sports, their fourth album that was released just a fortnight ago. “If you don’t know the lyrics, you’re in the wrong place,” he said about Post Break-Up Sex, one of The Vaccines’ signature records. None of those directions were necessary for this audience, who had applied those principles since the red curtain was dropped down to introduce the performers.

There was certainly no loss of enthusiasm throughout the night but sometimes fans got overly excited and threw various items – especially shoes – towards the band. Their tangible hunger was satiated when the rockers played I Can’t Quit, an instantly memorable single released earlier this year, and multiple cannons from around the palace shot a seemingly infinite amount of confetti for the song’s entire duration. Grand moments like this one are going to be imprinted in the public’ minds forever as they attended a show that’ll never be forgotten.

Musanna Ahmed
Photos: Virginie Viche

For further information and future events visit The Vaccines and Whenyoung’s website here.

Watch the video for I Can’t Quit here: