Finding yourself in the company of The Vacation’s steely, irascible debut ‘Band From World War Zero’ is a little like finding yourself in the company of ‘The Return Of The King’ right after sitting through ‘The Fellow Of The Ring’, ‘The Two Towers’ and both Magic Harry movies. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with it, quite the contrary, on its own and in its own right it’s fairly bloody marvellous. It’s really just a matter of timing. Likewise, the terse garage rock and simple, roots level purity of the attitude would be fine in itself, but off the back of The Vines, The Datsuns, the D4, and Jet (who not unduly favour this brash and unruly gaggle of youths to the extent of writing a column in the NME on their behalf) it seems a trifle demanding. The time couldn’t be any less right, than if your 20-year-old Timex had just fallen under the wheels of vintage T-Model Ford that was itself late for a meeting with the scrapyard. You may grin kindly at the no-frills, fresh-faced swagger of ‘Make Up Your Mind’ and ‘Hollywood Forever’ but even the crisp, crunchy guitars and the lip-smacking handclaps fail to really lift the album above the trashy din of beer-swilling rock parody. ‘No Hard Feelings’ appropriates the petulant whine of Craig Nicholls but beyond the hard-drinking posturing of ‘Liquid Lunch’ – it all seems a little bit inoffensive and a little like last year’s news
They talk the talk, but do they walk the walk? Who cares? If your ear drums fancy a more complete battering after the fits and strikes of the Vines, what could be more perfect that this energetic, and enlivening eleven-song collection?