“I’ll write entire songs and I won’t know what any of the chords are that I’ve used!”

The two guitarists in The Vaccines make an odd couple. Frontman Justin Young still thinks of himself as “a beginner”, while Freddie Cowan is “a proper gear head” whose homemade pedal is the band’s secret weapon. It’s a strange set-up, but it works...

Words Jonny Scaramanga

The Vaccines frontman Justin Young puts it simply. “In some ways this is our most rock record.” He’s talking about Back In Love City, a high-tech set of songs that fuse futuristic keyboards and loops with retro rockabilly twang and punk rock powerchords.

It was produced by Daniel Ledinsky, better known for collaborations with Tove Lo and Rihanna. But this is a guitar-driven album, shaped by Justin and the band’s lead player Freddie Cowan. “Eight or nine songs were built around lead guitar riffs,” Justin says. “Freddie was just sending me great riffs that inspired me to write over them.” The result is what Justin calls “a weird paradox of being more rock but also more pop”. And as Freddie explains, he had an unexpected source of inspiration for these riffs...

“My soon-to-be wife and I lived in Mexico City for a couple of months in 2019,” he says. “In Centro Histórico, the old centre, each street sells a different thing. We just happened to rent an apartment on the street that sold musical instruments. Immediately it’s a really intense place to be living. We did a gig in Juarez. It’s kind of a Tarantino, Mexicomeets-Texas, rattlesnakey vibe. Retrospectively you can say it’s a bit like Brian Setzer and it’s a bit Morricone. The geography, the energy, the whole thing was just really inspiring. I’m still wearing a mariachi shirt, still so absorbed by that whole culture. I’m having this obsession with the great Mexican singers like Juan Gabriel.”