The Vines – Melodia
Jesus, that was hard work.
I haven’t exactly been in a frenzy of anticiaption waiting for the release of a new album from The Vines, but four albums and a greatest hits package into their career, we might have expected something better than this.
There really is little pleasure to be had here. Few of the songs are much longer than 120 seconds, other than one bloated dirge that clocks up more than six tortuous minutes. However, rather than being concise little packages, tightly-wrapped but perfectly formed; generally the songs are simply under-developed and unfinished. A song called A. S. III simply consists of one verse, followed by a guitar solo played to the same tune, followed in turn by meaningless ‘la-la-la’s to the fade. That’s not songwriting, that’s just lazy.
The band are even concieted enough to include a minute long instrumental jam, as they do a poor impersonation of Muse, as if it had value either aesthetically or in academic terms.
The songs on Melodia fall broadly into three camps: rapid, discordant and utterly unpleasant punkish numbers, mawkish balladeering and pompous psychedelia. The Vines appear to be masters of none of these.
On the whole the performances are vapid and dull, and the musicians just sound bored with the whole sorry enterprise. The vocalist’s bland whine doesn’t take long to begin to grate, either.
The Vines are clearly attempting to rejuvenate their career with an ambitious and expansive album in the manner in which bands such as Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have done in recent years, but they’ve missed the mark by a country mile here, and it doesn’t sound like The Vines have a similar career overhaul in them.
The Vines – A.S. III
The Vines – He’s A Rocker
The Vines – A Girl I Knew
A.S. III stands for autumn shade 3.
and if you knew anything about the bands previous work you’d know that it was a sequel to their previous songs on winnings days and highly evolved.
“thats not songwriting, thats just lazy”
as if you’d know.
you “rock critic”
Thank you Rrandy. I actually read something about that little trilogy while researching the review yesterday.
So you’re right, I should correct myself:
The song Autumn Shade 3 is an example of terribly lazy songwriting.
There, that’s better.
The Vines have a trilogy of something? Of something other than herpetic eruptions, I mean? Well, that changes everything. So you get three times the shite for the price of one. Grand.
Dylan, you listened to a Vines record with even a shred of optimism? Now that was foolish.
Don’t knock Dylan entirely – I listened to the first Vines record with a bit of optimism and…well, that was that.
On a side note, their frontman had a profile on Match.com about five years ago. Apparently he’s a big fast food eater and wants a woman who’ll let him put his band first.
Um…