The speedy songs hang on the biggest hooks, but The Vaccines do a good job of turning up the drama during their more restrained moments, resulting in a rare species: the well-rounded pop-jugular album.

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The Vaccines’ debut does a wonderful thing – it reminds you that guitar music still works.

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The latest NME messiahs sound like they mean it

Eagerly filling the recent vacuum of great U.K. guitar bands, this London foursome draws on the Jesus & Mary Chain tradition of sweet early '60s pop'n'roll married to sour punk noise

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Is simply terrific

Yet their debut is simply terrific, serving up 30-odd minutes of pulse-quickening indie-rock, with echoes of the Strokes and Glasvegas, and catchy ditties aplenty.

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So as the mindless masses of the hype machine cough up endless ‘illegitimate Ramones/Beach Boys lovechild’ similes, please ignore them and enjoy this – after all, what did you really expect from The Vaccines?

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Whenever the hotly-anticipated long-players eventually come from much-hyped bands, the scrutiny is almost unfairly meticulous.

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Among the Vaccines' detractors, meanwhile, hardly a review deadline goes by without some pun on the quartet's debut album title, What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?

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A bold first step from tipped rockers, but it’s the stumbles that impress the most.

And it’s the rawer, less-than-perfect moments that make What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? a hell of a lot more interesting than the copycat indie rock record it at first appears to be.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.

You spend at least a third of the album thinking that, which leaves two-thirds where, if what's on offer is absolutely nothing new, the songwriting sticks.

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If we’re to answer the album’s title, it’s with a simple retort: This and that. Because of this, What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? ends up being an enjoyable debut.

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The Vaccines suffer the slings and arrows of those who consider the well-heeled rockers fake indie, a criticism that has dogged bands long before the Strokes, who do seem to have been a pivotal group in this London band’s life.

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It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why The Vaccines are under such a weight of severe, loose-tongued criticism.

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Certainly there’s something almost sublimely bathetic about the way in which the refried punk iconography only serves to make this polite-looking quartet of slightly sports casual-ish chaps look LESS rock’n’roll by contrast.

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If you strip What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? of all the hype and expectation, it can be a reasonably enjoyable record.

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Lyrics are rhyming fodder, vocals are assiduously vacant, and only the gauchely bitter "Post Break-Up Sex" leaves any real aftertaste.

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Review without score. The score is calculated by the review's remarks.