The Vines
 

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What's the consensus around here on these one-time music press darlings?

I was a fanatic in the beginning, 'grew out' of them, discovered the 60's, then returned to their psychedelic/90's indie/grunge/pop sound last year. Seriously underrated I feel, but then the 60's guitar pop sound is a preference of mine. And they tick all the right boxes for influences (Suede, Nirvana, the Kinks, etc).

Their new album is streaming on myspaz; and so far sounds like there are a couple of throwaway bubblegum turds (the single) but I generally admire Nicholls' songwriting.

This is the singer butchering one of their space-rock standards in the 'media meltdown' period:
YouTube - 1969 - The Vines (Live at Big Day Out 2003)

EDIT: forgot to mention the harmonies!:love:
Have a dreadful feeling I'm alone on this one...

They were pretty brilliant a couple years ago. I still don't really like them but they put a couple of okay albums out there (like Vision Valley). When they want to, they sound a LOT like the Beatles (especially the vocals). Check out their "Im Only Sleeping" cover. It's pretty good. Really hooked me when I was in, um, eighth grade.

I'm with you on that, it was one of the best Beatles covers I've heard. They're the kind of music you play to your kids in the car really but **** it, Craig Nicholls has a good ear.

Having listened to 'Melodia' now I'd say it's nothing special, some great tracks on there if you dig all the stuff I was on about though.
Now if only they'd return to the old four-track sound... I do love their simplicity and the stoner overtones.

Cannot stand them TBH. The sort of music I call Chinga Chinga indie that goes nowhere fast and has been heard a million times before. Flavour of the month white boy guitar pop. Sorry!

:eek: a dagger in my heart, jackhammer! But you've gotta love the Ride-sounding freakouts, the 60's songcraft...?

As my old dad would say: I'm not angry with you son, I'm just disappointed!

The mere name of this band fills my throat with bile.

Exactly though. I like Ride and they borrow again. A lot of British Guitar music goes in cycles and sometimes it is nothing short of tiresome. To be fair the fickle British music press are partly to blame. They hype things to death.

I don't enjoy their music, I've tried to, but I am overwhelmed with apathy by it. I don't think i am their target demo.

yeah but everything sounds like something else these days. And yes the press killed this band commercially, yet BRMC, the Strokes and the White Stripes survived the 'New Rock Revolution' - each one ripping off the Jesus and Mary Chain, Television and Led Zep respectively.

I stopped reading the NME around that time because as a budding music fan you just weren't getting the whole picture, especially in this day and age where any 'movement' in youth culture is entirely contrived by the press and is a re-hash of some past innovation (nu-rave for example).

BRMC, the Strokes and the White Stripes

I don't like these though either!

but they still shift units and get columns (not so much BRMC, who have branched out considerably to be fair)... my point being that the 60's is most definitely not in right now, and guitar music is ****ed. For shame. There must be somebody who likes this band?

My biggest problem with The Vines is they name all the right influences . tick all the 'cool' boxes (or did when they first came around) but there's no substance to it.

It's like they took all those influences , took all the rough edges from them & packaged them into something sellable.

hmm. These complaints are all entirely legitimate, I'd be the first to admit they've put out some bile (Outtathaway and the accompanying video comes to mind)...
but I think there's just a genuine desire to just make good pop there, you can hear it from the early 4-track recordings to the (admittedly off-putting) studio sheen of everything else.

What clinches it for me is the fact that the American record exec who adopted the band dropped them after their (actually brilliant) sophomore flop; now they're signed to the Aussie indie label Ivy League and still putting out those kind of albums...

Some bands want to eke a living out of sounding like Guided By Voices, others just want to be the Beatles.

I think I've given everybody the impression that I'm obsessed with this band... I just admire the songwriting ethic, man!

And my pants with semen. That's from a pre-existing condition, though.

Ahhh The Vines bring me back man! I used to be obsessed with Highly Evolved, was one of my favourite albums. Over the years i lost interest though, wasn't helped by the fact Winning Days was god awful and Vision Valley was very 'meh'. I could probably listen to it now as a nostalgia thing, especially Get Free which was one hell of a single.

i like some of their songs.
they aint nothing too special.