The Vaccines “Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations” Clear Cassette

‘Pick-up full of pink carnations’ is a line that came to me when i first moved to LA and was writing the song ‘the dreamer’. it felt really familiar but I didn't know where it came from. It took me a few months to realise that it is a misremembered lyric from don mclean’s american pie, which was funny to me because that song had always sounded like disillusionment, the death of innocence and the death of the american dream. a bit like a dream itself, the line was mixed and misremembered.

Living, writing and recording the record in LA - a place we all grew up intoxicated by the notion of - definitely forced me to confront the fact that however much we may dream, and however far we may run, we can’t escape reality. and expectation vs reality is something we all face in our lives every day. we’re told that we can have it all. but some things we can't have. and some things we have, we lose. but whilst what we experience may be different from dreams, it doesn’t have to be worse.

Our last album was an album about love. This is an album about loss. but i don't think that has to be a bad thing. pink carnations symbolise gratitude and tell a person they’ll never be forgotten. So whether its the loss of a lover, or a friend or even just a dream - the record is a reminder that they’ll live on in whatever capacity the mind allows them to. and its a reminder to keep on dreaming.