Review Summary: The Vines' debut is a memorable one filled with great songs that will make your day
While many would consider The Vines as a complete joke nowadays, I will always have a place in my heart for their music. Some would say it's because of blind nostalgia, But I can easily prove them wrong. My defense?
Highly Evolved.
Highly Evolved is, without a doubt, The Vines' best record. It is their most passionate and consistent. All of the tracks feel fleshed out to there full potential and frontman Craig Nicholls actually sounds like he's really enjoying the experience. Plus,
Evolved shows off Craig's talent at song writing, something that I'm going to talk about later on in this review. The record features two predominate genres: Garage rock and psychedelia, and, quite frankly, mixes them both well.
Take "In The Jungle", for example. It starts off with a grimy 3-note riff, then the bass and drums kick in just before Nicholls starts to sing. We are then greeted with a very murky and eerie pre-chorus, which then explodes into the actual chorus. The song keeps you on your toes the entire time you listen to it, not going for the verse-chorus-verse format that most of us are used to. Another stand out that I have to mention would be "Country Yard". For the most part, it's just a simple ballad. However, what keeps it interesting is the solid instrumentation. The track starts out with delayed guitar strums. By the time the chorus kicks in, we have an acoustic melody, solid drumming, and very tight bass being played by Patrick Matthews.
That's another thing I like about this album: Patrick's bass lines. He does a great job adding backbone to these songs. A good example would be "Factory", where Matthew's bass is both a catchy and fills in all the holes between the guitar and the drums. However, out of the entire album, the real gold would have to be "1969".
It is the finale track on the album, and I could not ask for anything better. It starts off with a very powerful 60's hard rock influenced riff that grabs your attention as soon as it starts. It starts out with the normal verse-chorus-verse format, but by the 3 minute mark, it starts to gain up speed, eventually burning out. The guitars come back in, this time with a very chunky riff, for a couple more minutes. Finally, The song slows down and ends with a couple of guitar notes being played over and over. The track is absolutely amazing and does not get boring, even for a second. It is one of the most satisfying and fun ways to end an album. I would be lying, however, if I said there were no bland tracks on this album.
Tracks like "Sunshinin'" and "Autumn Shade" adds nothing worth while to the table and are very easy to skip. They are just bland more than anything else. But, all in all,
Highly Evolved is a very good album. Unfortunately, everything went downhill for The Vines after this release. Their 2004 follow-up
Winning Days received very lukewarm reception, both critical and commercial. After a controversial live performance where Nicholls cursed out the audience, Patrick left the band permanently, and The Vines were banned from most radio stations that played their music. In 2006,
Vision Valley was released, their most forgettable and samey release to date, and most of their music afterwards all just sounded the same, minus a few really good songs here and there.
However, even if most of their post-2004 material is not all that, I will always look back to the time when The Vines' where just a few 20-year-olds playing songs that they've been working on since they were teens, because those songs were clearly something that made your day complete.
