For more than two decades, The Beatles seems to be the most addictive and obsessive band ever. I’m almost scared each time I play a band labeled “indie” not to stumble into some Beatles copy. With these guys from Australia I wasn’t so lucky. Some may say it’s quite natural, eight years ago an angrier Vines released a song called “Fuck The World” and well, it didn’t get too much radio attention, I wonder why? They revisited the song’s theme for the band’s new album and this time it’s called “Screw The World” and they swallow much of their anger meantime. 33 years old Craig Nicholls says “”We’re trying to be more mature” – and mature, accidentally means John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I try to figure out, with the looks of Guns’N’Roses and that Beatles copy sound, what the tuxedo-potato-heads from Sony smelled in it and gave them a last shot chance?
“Factory”, their first limited single seven-inch EP became NME’s Single of the Week back in November 2001 and describing their garage rock sound as “of the oldest school.” The next single, “Highly Evolved”, earned them more critical acclaim as NME made it the single of the week in March 2002 and charted in the UK at #32 on the singles chart and on Australia’s ARIAnet top 100 singles chart.
They appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in October 2002, being the first Australian band to do so since Men at Work in 1983, with the words “Rock is Back: Meet the Vines”.
Their debut album, “Highly Evolved”, debuted at #3 in the UK’s albums chart, #5 in Australia’s ARIAnet albums chart, and #11 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 albums chart and obviously they didn’t miss playing on The Late Show with David Letterman. They were nominated for “Best Group,” “Best Rock Album,” “Best Cover Art” and “Breakthrough Artist – Album” and “Highly Evolved” sold 1.5 million copies throughout the world with distribution and by end of 2003, the album went double platinum in Australia.
Next album, “Winning Days”, released in 2004 had not lived up to the success of Highly Evolved, and had received a generally lukewarm reception from both critics and audiences while lead singer Nicholls was becoming increasingly erratic which leaded to several incidents. Rockstar syndromes.
Released in 2006, “Vision Valley” consisted of short and straight songs and the album running little over 30 minutes and achieved limited commercial success. The Vines were subsequently dropped by their record labels Capitol Records, EMI and Heavenly Records in 2007 and finally singed to Ivy League Records resulting in their fourth album, “Melodia” released in 2008.
This is kind of a classic rock story, listening “Future Primitive” still don’t get it what use for the resurrection?
In the very few moments – “Black Dragon” for instance – when they forget and skip The Beatles – and Oasis after-tastes – The Vines may hold some mild promise, but still, this retro reverberation leads nowhere. Probably my father 40 years ago would party his ass of on “Future Primitive”.
After “Bravo punk” era now we’re living the times of “FHM indie”. Probably with massive media support with founds from Sony we will see The Vines on the covers of the magazines, but well, we “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
