– THE APOLLO, MANCHESTER –

The foyer of the Manchester Apollo is bristling with young teenagers, middle-aged indie throwbacks and entire families, all there to watch The Vaccines.

I make my way onto the upper balcony. just as the 1st of 3 support bands are shuffling onto the stage. Their name? I don’t remember. Their set? I wish I couldn’t. The next word I am going to put in quotation marks sums up all 3 support bands, ‘dull’.

It’s 9:30 in the Stalls, the venue has gradually filled up throughout the evening and everyone is waiting for the Vaccines to storm the stage. Well, they don’t so much storm the stage, they kind of wander on with their arms in the air, like some ill-advised TV advert for a new deodorant for roadies. Their entrance music is ‘Cum On Feel The Noise’ by Slade, and as soon as they kick off with ‘Wreckin Bar’ I can see why. The gig finally starts and my jeans are almost dry. The momentum is kept going by such songs as ‘Wetsuit’ and ‘Post Break Up Sex’.

However, the gig loses its footing at the mid way point. A lot of the bands big live hits had been carelessly thrashed out so soon into proceedings that you could feel the anticipation in the room, drop right off. The new album’s songs, although very good, didn’t sit comfortably with a lot of people who had already heard their favourite songs. Luckily, the last 15 minutes of the gig thrusts firmly back onto the tracks with a beautiful rendition of ‘All in White’. You know the one, it sounds a bit like that other one they do, yeah, that one. This is the main problem with Vaccines. It isn’t a bad gig by any standards. The band are on form and the audience seem up for it, it’s just that the gig seems to plod along without any memorable moments.

The band then leaves the stage, but wait, they haven’t done that last remaining song from their first album… which one? Oh you know, the one that sounds like that other one they do. Oh yeah. Maybe they’ll do an encore. Yes, they will, in about an hour after they’ve massaged their egos a little in the wings. The audience are not lying eagerly in wait for the band to return. They’re standing there a little annoyed and frustrated by the amount of time it takes them to return. What the hell where they doing back there? I hope they were writing a bloody good song to finish the night on because we are all pretty sure they’d used up their best ones. A portion of the audience started booing until finally the re-emerged. Lead singer, Justin Young tells us how great we all are and thanked us loads for making their dreams come true. It felt a bit like that part of the X-Factor when we get the emotional back story so that we forgive the contestant’s shortcomings and start applauding like a pavlovian dog lapping at a bowl of pedigree chum after hearing the opening bars of ‘Rolling in the Deep’. I’m half-expecting the singer to tell us that his nan found it hard to make her tea so he pops round there every day to boil her tripe and massage her varicose veins.

In all fairness, I leave the show satisfied. I think that the Vaccines are a good, solid live band but the nature of their music means that you’re never going to leave one of their concerts feeling like you’ve just been touched by Jesus. I feel more like I’d been touched by some pigeon-covered bloke in a mac behind the number 42 bus stop. Yes, it was good fun and the Vaccine’s are gentle lovers but it’s not something I’ll tell my grandchildren about.