The Automatik

Capitol, 2003

Now I’m not going to lie to you. I didn’t even like The Vines the first time I heard them. The friend who gave me Highly Evolved also provided me with a lot of gushing about how incredible it was. I listened to it and was not impressed.

A few months later I was bored and played it again. Suddenly, it sounded wonderful and I could not believe that I had dismissed it so readily before. Granted, singer Craig Nicholls’ public displays of love for Redd Kross via DIY t-shirts didn’t exactly hurt, but there was something more to the band than purloined pieces of their obvious influences: the aforementioned Redd Kross, Nirvana, and Jane’s Addiction. Despite their thievery, The Vines didn’t sound like Stone Temple Pilots, Silverchair, and whomever it is that’s ripping off Jane’s Addiction these days. The band has also been pegged as part of the “garage rock revival,” but like Atlantis, I’m not even sure if such a thing exists. And they don’t sound a thing like The Hives or the White Stripes.

Winning Days still sounds like The Vines, but it also sounds a bit more like trudging through a rainstorm instead of lightning striking. Granted, the band’s apparent hatred of touring, coupled with a grueling schedule, and topped with all the hype the British press can dish out, couldn’t have helped much.

The shockingly excellent harmonies that seduced me on Highly Evolved are present on this second effort but they’re used with less ingenuity. (“Autumn Shade II” is powerfully haunting, but couldn’t they have thought of a less derivative title?) The amount of dead-on bridges has been drastically reduced. “Animal Machine” and “TV Pro” have some of the ingenious song structure found on Highly Evolved, but they’ve never quite fulfilled the promises they seemed to make upon my first couple of listens.

What I’m even more disappointed in are a couple of songs that seem to not fit in anywhere. Neither “She’s Got Something to Say to Me” or “Rainfall” are necessarily bad tunes, but in the context of “Sunchild” or the radiant “Amnesia,” they seem totally boring. Another problem is that “Ride” and “F.T.W.” nearly collapse under the task of trying to fit in at the other end of the spectrum. I don’t see The Vines as just some gang of angry, would-be Kurt Cobains, no matter how well Craig Nicholls can scream.

The appeal of The Vines is that they can assault us with rock grandeur and then soothe us with stunning melancholy. In fact, it’s the dichotomy between those two factors that makes the struggle for supremacy so deliciously enjoyable. Without that tension, we’re left with The Vines: Unplugged or worse, some sort of post-grunge Hoobastank. I never liked the odd whimsy of “Factory” as much as the other songs on Highly Evolved but it was interesting enough for me to want to hear where they’d take that style on a second album. Maybe they’re saving it for a third album? I don’t care that the lyrics are vague or make no sense at all. Just bring back The Vines I fell in love with.