Gig review: The Vaccines at O2 Academy Leeds

“We don’t normally take requests,” Vaccines fromtman Justin Hayward-Young tells a packed crowd squeezed like sardines into Leeds’s O2 Academy. “We’re not a wedding band.” Nevertheless, the group acquiesces with good grace for a rendition of newer rarity Sunkissed. Easy cheer, it seems, is not in short supply.

Once upon a time, the west London indie rockers looked primed for the heavens. Their debut record, What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?, saw music critics fall over themselves to tag them as the latest saviours of that perpetually endangered species of genre, rock ’n’ roll.

Big support slots alongside Arctic Monkeys and Red Hot Chili Peppers were followed by a number one album with sophomore effort Come of Age; a homecoming show at London’s The O2 seemingly had them on the fast track towards the upper echelons of British guitar music.

That such arena-filling success has never materialised is something of a shame then. If not quite the revolutionary vanguard promised by those breathless early verdicts, the four-piece – Hayward-Young, bassist Arni Arnason and latter-day additions Timothy Lanham and Yoann Intonti – have still ploughed their own respectable furrow across six albums.

Here behind latest outing Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations – their first since the exit of guitarist Freddie Young – they maintain their shrewd maturation from post-punk revival disciples to power-pop aficionados with glistening aplomb.

More than a decade in the saddle has not particularly sanded their energetic edges either; with the curl of his widow’s peak plastered to his forehead, Hayward-Young seldom seems to pause for breath, all angular poses and come-hither gestures met with hearty approval.

He often feels mere feet away from tumbling into the crowd with palpable delight; he feints a precarious lurch during the raucous garage squall of Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra), and comes closer still amid a propulsively thrilling If You Wanna.

The new tunes, of which a healthy half-dozen are aired, match up too, be it Heartbreak Kid, with its heart-on-sleeve Springsteenian rush, or Lunar Eclipse, its summer flavours underscored by wiry riffs.

Stacked alongside old favourites, like the club-beat-friendly Headphones Baby and I Always Knew, with its spaghetti western gallop, they combine with a blistering pace that leaves sweaty delirium in its wake, capped by a triumphant All In White.

“The longer this goes on, the luckier we feel,” Hayward-Young admits. His gratitude and candour are doubly, joyously reciprocated.