The Vines - Vision Valley (Heavenly)

The promo literature accompanying this album includes an awful lot of detail about Vines singer Craig Nicholls and his mental state, so I would like to provide a quick summary - Nichols liked his dope and his junk food, lost it and went a bit mental, was subsequently diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, now off the gear and the burgers and a bit more with it. I took none of this into consideration when reviewing the music.

At the moment there seems to be this glut of inoffensive, uninspiring mainstream, middle-of-the-road indie rock bands - I'm talking about your Kaiser Chiefs, your Magic Numbers, your Artic Monkeys, your Editors and on and on and on. I don't particularly dislike any of them, but they range in quality from nearly mediocre to reasonably good, and every man jack of them is well overrated in my opinion. It would be so easy to just lump the Vines in with this lot. So I will.

What can I say? It isn't the worst rock album I've ever heard, not by a long chalk, but a lot of it is way too lightweight and melodic for my taste. The best bits sound like Ramones-unleaded, the worst bits like post-Beach Boys Brian Wilson … er diesel. Most of the tracks sound nicely radio friendly (including, ironically enough Don't Listen to the Radio), and I should imagine they will appeal to a fairly broad spectrum of listeners, being a reasonably varied blend of fairly punky ditties and insipidly mellow easy listening numbers. Although erring a bit too much to the latter as I've said.

Love 'em, hate 'em or simply not give a furry **** either way, it seems there is another mainstream pop rock band everywhere you turn these days. If only we could run our central heating off them we would have a lovely melodic solution to the problem of the world's dwindling natural gas supplies.

words: Harry Harris

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