🟥 This article is translated from German.

Music as an outlet. An equally cliched and hackneyed phrase. For THE VINES it rings true and encompasses more than just the mere channeling of anger, fear or lack of understanding from one's environment. That alone doesn't make the Australians stand out from the crowd, but their debut album "Highly Evolved" does all the more.

A day in June. The sun is shining. The English are picnicking in Hyde Park during their lunch break. Anyone not working is enjoying the day outdoors. The afternoon at the hotel contrasts with the English serenity. Instead of Victorian coziness, the visitor is greeted by the coldness of an American-style hotel chain. The air conditioning makes me take my cardigan out of my backpack, the ambience of the hotel bar is impersonal. The gold of the taps and a few pictures are the only things that break out of the functional frame, the seating areas exude the charm of a waiting room at the doctor's. Waiting. Craig Nicholls, the frontman of The Vines, is expected. He's slipped away, the German journalists whisper. Shortly after, a small figure with tousled hair stands before us: "Hi, I'm Craig."

Craig Nicholls is 24 years old, singer, songwriter and guitarist of the Australian band The Vines. Together with his long-time friend Patrick Matthews (bass, 26 years old) he forms the hard core of the group, which has now grown into a quartet. Since Dave Oliffe (drums) left at the beginning of the year, Ryan Griffiths (guitar) and Hamish Rosser (drums) have joined.

With "Highly Evolved" the Australians have delivered a fine debut album that quotes role models like The Kinks, The Beatles or Nirvana in a faceted and idea-rich way - without copying. You can also find hidden borrowings from current Britpop. The range of the twelve tracks spans from the quiet ballad to the rocky smash hit, with passion and fervor present in all of them. A charismatic frontman, whose state of mind can be characterized as unusual, adds to the interest in the band. However, the staging of a myth, as practiced in the English tabloid jungle, is absurd.

The Craig sitting in front of me seems younger than 24, a bit awkward, and looks around nervously. He does not feel entirely comfortable with the media hype. Understandable. A little confused, he begins to tell his story, contradicts himself, breaks off sentences and lets them trail off into nothing. Nevertheless, he willingly provides information. Whole streams of speech pour over the person he is talking to, revealing, as strange as it may sound, a mixture of insecurity and rock-solid belief in oneself. Introversion is paired with a need to communicate.

As uneasy as he feels on this unfamiliar terrain, he has no doubts about the qualities of his band: "We know what music is, what songs are, what bands are. The fact that the title of the first song, 'Highly Evolved' also became the album title doesn't really say anything specific about what I'm thinking. It rather describes how the band is. We have had many great influences and teachers - we've always listened to The Beatles, The Kinks. What inspired me most about these bands wasn't so much the instruments, but that they simply had this drive."

The Vines began - like almost all bands - as a project of coincidence. Seven years ago, Craig and Patrick met at McDonald's in Sydney. Both worked there and soon realized during their conversations that they had similar tastes in music. From then on, they met at Patrick's house and played guitar together. "At some point, Patrick said: 'My friend Dave is an alcoholic and plays drums. Should we ask him if he wants to join us?' From then on, everything went wrong!" explains Craig, laughing. They didn't really want to start a band, but played around a bit for fun. At first, the three of them made do with cover versions of their heroes, including the Australian band You Am I. At some point, Craig suggested writing their own songs. "I just wanted to find out if I could do it. It was real lo-fi indie rock. With really bad lyrics," he admits with a grin.

The trio named themselves after the band of Craig's father, the largely unknown Vynes, who were active in the 1960s. Craig's parents also played a key role in his musical upbringing. His mother gave him his first guitar, and his father taught him blues chords. His father's record collection, "he had almost everything by The Beatles," has left audible traces.

At a concert in a small pub, an acquaintance who worked at a local radio station saw the band. He interviewed the three of them. "That's how our managers heard about us," the frontman recalls. The trio gave them a demo of "Factory," which was created in the rehearsal room and at home in his bedroom. "But after that, we wanted to record an album in a real studio," Craig describes, whose obsession with recording becomes clear over the course of the conversation. "We wanted to make hi-fi instead of lo-fi music now. We'd been doing that for so long!"

Before starting to record the album, the three had already finished 20, 30 songs. "I went crazy in Australia because I had so many ideas that just had to come out," Craig describes his frustration. They found a willing and ideal partner in producer Rob Schnapf. He was enthusiastic about the demo that the management had sent him and wanted to work with the trio in America. "He has a small son and couldn't travel," Craig explains the move across the pond.

The studio chosen was the Sunset Sound Factory in Los Angeles, where Led Zeppelin and the Stones had also recorded. What had been planned as a one or two-month stay extended over a total of four months. There were difficulties. The Australian company "Engine Room", which financed the project, ran out of money. When the venture threatened to fail, the major "Capitol" stepped in. Despite the frustration that arose from the repeated unintended breaks, they never had any self-doubt - if you believe Craig. He is firmly convinced: "We all believed in what we were doing."

Sometimes with Craig you have to replace the collective "we" with an "I". A little wishful thinking is at play. It wasn't the case at all that the same self-confidence prevailed among all band members. Patrick had briefly considered starting medical studies in the meantime, and Dave Oliffe left the band during the recordings. "Obviously he didn't feel the same way I did," the frontman admits. I want to know whether that didn't affect the band's chemistry. "Yes," he confesses. "But at the same time, the band's chemistry isn't worth it. I mean, it couldn't have continued the way I wanted it to. We wanted the deal with the major label and he didn't. And besides, he wasn't 100 percent into it, so his playing in the studio suffered. At a certain point, Rob said that you simply have to keep evolving and be able to make money from it, if you want to keep the band up to this standard. It was pretty hard, but it just had to be. Maybe we'll do stuff with Dave again, maybe he'll record with us again."

Craig leaves the circumstances of when and how Dave ultimately left the band open and instead puts the focus on his friendship with Patrick: "There's a chemistry between me and Patrick. I could make music without him, but I want to do it with him, and I'm doing it with him because he wants to do it with me too."

Now the duo is complemented by Ryan and Hamish. Hamish, who used to play in a 60s cover band, was found through an advertisement. Ryan is an old school friend of Craig's, with whom he played guitar together before he met Patrick. Craig called him. "When I was in America, I thought that we should jam together since we had to go on tour. We had finished the recordings and were trying to improve the live sound," explains the small man who is often said to dislike performing live.

The opposite is the case, he claims, they enjoy giving concerts. His attitude is nevertheless an ambivalent one, the slightly controversial analysis being: "A concert is like a painting, it's just something to look at. It doesn't necessarily mean anything." Disdain seems to come through as he explains: "We just believe that with recordings you have more possibilities and freedoms. It can never be as good at concerts. It's always different. You do have some memories of it, but you can never repeat it the way you can replay a song on a record." The idea that it is precisely the fleetingness of the moment, and thus its uniqueness, that creates an experiential character is foreign to him.

Craig seems driven. Over and over he emphasizes that he wants or needs to go back into the studio, wavering here too between first person singular and plural: "I want to be as productive as possible. I want to record again. We want the next album to be more impressive. I have all the ideas and songs in my head and I'm now absolutely convinced that we can make our first album sound like trash." His ambitions appear exaggerated. You almost feel a little sorry for him, because his statements constantly reflect his fear of no longer being able to realize his ideas. Sometimes you want to shake the little man, say: "You're only 24" and wish him a good dose of calm.

But perhaps this fear is also a necessary moment in Craig's life and the driving force behind the band's cosmos. Unlike Patrick, Craig never had any other life plan; for him, nothing but music was an option. "After we recorded our first demos in a studio, I somehow made up my mind," he remembers. "I listened to them and thought it was cool. I just thought, that's what I want to do. I didn't care what other people thought." Music offered him an ideal freedom that is rarely found in real life. "I just thought you could do anything with it. That's what really caught my attention: having no limits, being able to go in any direction. I just wanted to write the next songs, I just wanted to keep doing The Vines. It had nothing to do with money or being famous. It was more like we were in our own little world," he describes. He ignored his parents. He did not comply with their wish to get a decent job and relegate the band to the weekends. Craig was sure that it would not work for him. "There was simply nothing else, no alternative," he explains his decision.

But he is now finding out again and again that there are limits to freedom in the music business. He sees the compromises as a necessary evil. The time adjustments from traveling are hard on him, flights are an abomination to him. "I find it really hard. I take sleeping pills and can't work because I'm just not balanced. I haven't got used to all the circumstances yet. I used to be able to do what I wanted, but now I feel really restricted. We try to do as little as possible, but we know that it's necessary. I'm only doing it for the album, so that other people know that we want to make it sound like shit with our second one," he laughs. "No, of course that's not true. I don't think it sounds like rubbish, it sounds really good."

Craig doesn't sound bitter or complain when he talks about his difficulties. Quite the opposite, he is grateful that he was allowed to go into the studio and has mixed feelings about the hustle and bustle. "It's really exciting, but I always try not to think about all the inconveniences because I have to take care of the other stuff that I really enjoy. There's so much time between shows, the actual playing the songs. That's the time that's really cool. But the flights and all that stuff are very hard for me. It's a kind of sacrifice," he admits. You believe him.

On the plane he feels trapped, the situation is not under his control. Instead, he has to follow orders, which he has a problem with. He was once threatened with arrest because he refused to stay in his seat during landing. "Hopefully in the future I'll get stronger drugs that will just knock me out," he hopes. "For me it's just something scary. I find such things unnatural and feel uncomfortable with them" His inner world is opposed to the outer world, the two have little in common. "I think it's all mental," he confirms. "Different places may be a good experience, but I think The Vines are more my world. There are also other things I want to do, like getting serious about painting."

Art - whether music or painting - is his field of activity, where he can let off steam, which he controls and for which he is happy to take responsibility. It seems a little as if he is afraid of the unpredictability of life and finds refuge in an artificiality he has created. This fits with the album cover he designed. Craig's description of the picture sums up his utopia: "I took my own time for the picture. I had an idea of ​​how the whole thing should look. It symbolizes this kind of escape. It's a really ideal, perfect place in the sunset, with no people, cars or animals. That's how the album is too. With tracks like 'Country Yard' or 'Autumn Shade', the inspiration often comes from nature, the trees, the peacefulness. Everything else is far too chaotic for me: I can't drive, I don't go out much. I like lonely places because they are so peaceful. I think I can do a lot of things. That's the good thing about art, there are no limits."