The Vines

ULU London

Wednesday, April 10

KKKK

Australian quintet live up to their 'next big thing' tag at cool-as-fuck capital show.

YOU'VE GOT to feel alittle bit sorry for The Vines. After releasing just one single and playing a handful of gigs, they've already been touted by fashion mags and desperados as being The Australian Strokes’ and “the perfect synthesis between The Beatles and Nirvana”... You can’t help but feel that the poor fellas have got a lot to live up to.

Tonight's gig at ULU is jampacked — model types squeeze lithe frames to the front while music industry big wigs blow hot air knowingly. And by the time The Vines shuffle onto the stage it seems evident that they've already been stylised, pouffed and preened into their current skinny, Stokes-style threads, making their first gloriously scruffy appearance at Camden's Monarch in March seem like a millennia ago. But then the music starts and any such cynical notions fly out the window.

The Vines chop and change from countrified space rock to Pixies-style screamadelica of the finest order — and it's mesmerising stuff for sure. Starting speed-freak, Stooges fast before becoming doped-up and mellow, this is bipolar music that fucks with your head but leaves you wanting for more. A beautiful, swelling, intensely romantic melody wells up in the guise of ‘Country Yard’ and frontman Craig Nichols’ caterpillar green eyes roll into the back of his head, his tongue lolls out and he’s singing from somewhere over the rainbow. Then, from out of nowhere, the guitars kick in and current single ‘Highly Evolved’ turns on some of the sexiest full throttle garage-rock to ever shoot through 1.54 minutes. The music hacks weep into their student price Stellas and the steamy mosh-pit resembles a shearing pen in the Australian outback, the punters scrabbling over the gawping fashionistas like a pack of puppies riding on the backs of nervous sheep.

This is the real deal. And even if The Vines don't quite live up to the ‘better than Nirvana’ hype tonight, you get the feeling that, given a bit of breathing space, they sure as hell could do soon.