The Vaccines have spoken to NME about recording their new album near Donald Trump‘s border wall between the US and Mexico.

The band decamped to Sonic Ranch studio in El Paso, Texas to lay down sessions for ‘Back In Love City’ close to part of the controversial border wall that formed a key part of the former US President’s 2016 election campaign.

“Trump’s wall ran through the property so it was really quite an extreme place to go, having started making the album in west London,” frontman Justin Young said. “The nearest town to the studio is where all of the internment camps are, where the kids are separated from their parents and stuff. You were very aware of that when you were there.”

Despite the song ‘Wanderlust’ containing a lyric that says “open up your borders”, the frontman notes that the album’s lyrics predated “even knowing we were going to record in Texas” and were pure coincidence.

Recording the album’s penultimate track ‘Heart Land’, which is a love letter to American pop culture, when NME asked whether it was quite jarring being so close to a symbol of the country’s ugly, evil side, Young replied: “Yeah. You’re singing this intentionally quite naïve love letter to America in the form of what you thought it was as a 13, 14, 15-year-old boy, but very aware of what it also is.

“America is a place of extremes – it’s all these great things, but also responsible for quite a lot of darkness and [it] confronts that on a daily basis.”

The Vaccines are due to release their fifth studio album this Friday (September 10).

So far the band have shared the LP’s title track, first single ‘Headphones Baby‘, recent preview ‘Alone Star‘ and ‘El Paso‘.

The Vaccines recently announced a series of new UK tour dates, many of which are in conjunction with the Music Venues Trust, kicking off at Aylesbury Waterside on September 18 before wrapping up in Bournemouth at the Old Fire Station on October 5.

See the tour dates below.

SEPTEMBER 2021
18 – Aylesbury Waterside
20 – Exeter Phoenix
21 – Frome Cheese & Grain
23 – Stoke On Trent Sugarmill
24 – Northampton Roadmender
26 – Bexhill De la War Pavillion
28 – Bedford Esquires
29 – Cambridge Junction

OCTOBER 2021
01 – Norwich Waterfront
03 – Brighton Concorde
04 – Gloucester Guildhall
05 – Bournemouth Old Fire Station

Young previously said the record was inspired by his experiences of a house swap in Los Angeles as well as Ridley Scott’s futuristic interpretation of the same city in Blade Runner. “In some obvious ways we’re more connected than ever,” he explained.

The band’s most recent album, ‘Combat Sports’, came out in 2018.