When a band you used to like takes a creative nosedive, it’s never fun to watch. I was a fan of The Vines after their debut album “Highly Evolved”, and even if Pitchfork rejected the band outright, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of “Get Free” or “In the Jungle” as fun songs when I was just starting to get into modern rock music. Their follow-up “Winning Days” has some bright spots, but was a rehash of outtakes from their debut, and was rightly voted down because of the lack of effort.
Now the story of the band has been sealed. Craig Nicholls, initially anointed in the mold of Kurt Cobain, was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and the band crumbled. But somehow, against all possible logic, they returned, and with the release of fifth album “Future Primitive” this summer, The Vines have made more music after Nicholls’ diagnosis and drop from the spotlight than when they had any kind of buzz. Don’t get me wrong, good for him to keep making music, but damn if it’s not getting harder and harder to defend that one record I kind of liked ten years ago. The Vines now sound like someone shoving Nirvana, Sonic Youth, The Ramones, and Be Your Own Pet into a blender and leaving it on Liquefy.
There was a song called “Autumn Shade” on The Vines’ debut album, and on this one there’s a song called “A.S. 4”. This means that Nicholls has written a song ostensibly titled “Autumn Shade” on four of the band’s five albums. Can someone really have this much to say about the shade in the fall? The songs put together total around ten minutes, why didn’t he go all out and write the definitive epic on the topic nobody was really clamoring for? This constant revision and repetition is only one of the catastrophic failures of “Future Primitive”. The final song “S.T.W.” even wimps out on one of the only truly interesting moves Nicholls ever made, reworking “Winning Days” standout “F.T.W.” from a primal scream of “fuck” to a censored “screw” that feels like he’s just given up.
Nicholls used to write nonsense lyrics that seemed endearing, now they’re just saddening. When the band re-emerged with “Vision Valley”, the stark black cover was a dramatic shift, and some of those songs mirrored that change, like the softer “Take Me Back” and the sophomoric but still entertaining “Fuk Yeh”. Now there’s no shred of entertainment left. It sounds like Nicholls is trapped in songwriting because he can’t do anything else, and while I hope that one day brings him to make something worthwhile again, here he sounds hopelessly bored, spinning his wheels on a record made in 2010 but so achingly tired that nobody wanted to release it until after a year of shopping it around.
It’s never easy to see someone fail, and when it’s someone you liked, it’s just disheartening. I still think Nicholls is a talented writer and musician, but it’s buried in so much self-doubt and pressure that I wonder whether he’ll ever be able to shed the weight of his previous work and do something completely unfettered. The Vines are named after an Elvis cover band Nicholls’ dad was in called The Vynes – even the name is linked to an inescapable past. Maybe he should just drop it, call it a day on this band, and move onto to a new project. Five too-similar albums in, that might be the only direction left.
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