Perth Music

‘Vision Valley’, the blistering, stripped-down third album from The Vines, will be released on April 1. Produced by Wayne Connolly (You Am I), ‘Vision Valley’ takes honours as the album most likely to never see the light of day. But this blast of pure rock and roll is very real, and accompanied by a truly remarkable history.

Let’s go back to 2002. The Vines debut album ‘Highly Evolved’ had been released and struck a massive chord all over the world. The Vines were on fire, gracing magazine cover after cover, earning plaudit after plaudit, playing blistering shows and selling massive amounts of records. They were everywhere. However, within a year, the toll of relentless touring and exposure was creating a new set of headlines. The Vines singer & songwriter Craig Nicholls was having immense difficulties, his behaviour becoming more and more erratic.

By the time 2004’s ‘Winning Days’ was released Nicholls had begun to spiral out of control, coming to a head when he was charged with assault after an onstage incident at Sydney’s Annandale Hotel, and resulting in the departure of bassist Patrick Matthews.

Nicholls was soon after diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurobiological disorder and form of autism. People with the condition are generally considered exceptionally intelligent, and often obsessively focus their attention on music or art, but have difficulty reading social situations and coping with change. This, everyone assumed, marked the end of the Vines.

But drummer Hamish Rosser and guitarist Ryan Griffiths stuck by Nicholls through this most difficult period as he’d worked up some new songs. And it was time for The Vines to rise from the ashes.

With producer Wayne Connolly in tow, the trio recorded sessions at a variety of locations in Sydney and came away with an album that has seen The Vines come full circle. Starting over, they simply have nothing to lose. There are no splashy production values, famous studios or endless overdubs here. But there are 13 tremendous new songs that veer from gorgeous summer pop to blistering garage stomp to scattergun punk to epic psychedelia.

The first single ‘Don’t Listen to the Radio’ is an anthemic slab of garage pop, cheery handclaps belying a mountain of guitar crunch and sweetly shredded vocals. Along with ‘Gross Out’, ‘Don’t Listen to the Radio’ is available to purchase as a digital download from March 18 prior to the single’s instore date of April 8. Opening one-two punch ‘Anysound’ and ‘Nothins Comin’ originally intended as demos but stubbornly kept to kick things off, are riff-tastic hard rockers with effortlessly fluid harmonies and beyond-sticky hooks.

Title track ‘Vision Valley’ is one of Nicholls’ trademark skyward bits of grand psychedelia, a trait shared with epic six-minute Floydian closer ‘Spaceship’. All of which makes it hard to believe that this is the same songwriter behind the high-velocity punk assaults of ‘Gross Out’ and ‘Fuk Yeh’.

With Nicholls unable to tour or do much in the way of album promotion, this is music that thankfully speaks for itself. To tap into its power all you have to do is listen.

The Vines
‘Vision Valley’

1. Anysound
2. Nothins Comin
3. Candy Daze
4. Vision Valley
5. Don’t Listen To The Radio
6. Gross Out
7. Take Me Back
8. Going Gone
9. Fuk Yeh
10. Futuretarded
11. Dope Train
12. Atmos
13. Spaceship

For more info visit www.thevines.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 2:24 am and is filed under Album Releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.