Artist: Vines, The
Label: Capitol Records
Release: 2008
Rating: 2.5/5
The Vines, the new garage rockers (or, put bluntly, out-of-tune The Beatles dunked in Nirvana), still deserve better than being treated as a cash cow, which is how Capitol Records sees them.
This compilation is living proof that nobody on this planet plays fair anymore. Bands used to grow organically, and the album that brought them success and a commercial breakthrough was only their fourth or fifth. Now the label machine works so that everything is calculated in advance, the stars are picked in advance, a band breaks through artificially with its debut and, cherry on top, drops a “best of” compilation after only its third studio album. Not even The Beatles did anything like that. It’s obvious that the old label is behind this one, putting out its own private “best of” in the very year The Vines are preparing their fourth studio album (the band officially confirmed that they don’t support this release), hoping to squeeze a few more coins out of taxpayers’ pockets.
Right from the opening, this compilation introduces the Australian “indie rockers” with their three best-known bangers: Get Free, Ride and Highly Evolved. The album “Highly Evolved” is both the band’s debut and their most successful record. Things looked really good for them back then, they had the potential to climb up among the stars, until singer Craig Nicholls fell seriously ill. The essence of the best of The Vines gets spun right at the very start.
The compilation has a big minus just in not containing a single previously unreleased track (say, at least a few live versions, single B-sides, or real rarities). It has way too many moments where you can cool down your overheated head. Gems like Winning Days, Autumn Shade, Autumn Shade II, Vision Valley and Homesick, plus the drawn-out Spaceship and Sun Child near the end, which completely put the compilation to sleep. Because of them, the general feeling of the band’s “garage-brat sharpness”, which should stay ringing in your ears after almost 52 minutes, fades away rather sadly, and what’s left is a band that seems to love drifting through the clouds stoned, carefree and out of their gourds. So the label obviously didn’t think it was worth bothering with a detail like putting together a more appealing track order and at least scattering the bigger hits like Get Free, Ride and Highly Evolved among the “minor hits” of this compilation. The boys probably deserved a more inspired cover too, because the existing one looks like nothing more than the intro to a Sunday farming show on TV.
Hand on heart: this compilation decently presents the band’s 2002 – 2006 period, it just needed a bit more detail. Six tracks each from the first two albums and four from the third add up to 16 tracks in total. The unfortunate stigma of this release being purely a commercial move tips the scales heavily toward steering clear of it and buying all three studio albums instead. This compilation would have been far better, and its release justifiably argued, after six or seven studio albums, with all the added rarities or other unreleased material, maybe a bonus DVD.
Line-up
Craig Nicholls – vocals, guitar
Ryan Griffiths – guitar
Brad Heald – bass
Patrick Matthews – bass
Hamish Rosser – drums
David Olliffe – drums
Production
Dave English & Sam Nelson
Track list
1. Get Free
2. Ride
3. Highly Evolved
4. Winning Days
5. Outtathaway
6. Autumn Shade
7. Autumn Shade II
8. Factory
9. Animal Machine
10. Don’t Listen to the Radio
11. Vision Valley
12. Homesick
13. F.T.W.
14. Spaceship
15. Anysound
16. Sun Child
Album length: 51.27
