Theory of Evolution

Highly Evolved is in stores now.

Sydney band The Vines are the new hope of Australian rock. They’ve just achieved the near impossible, becoming the first Australian band ever to have their debut album make the United Kingdom top five on week of release, only held out of the top slot by heavyweights Oasis and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Brits love ‘em, heralding their Highly Evolved debut as the finest rock album since Nirvana’s Nevermind. If Highly Evolved will become one of the defining records of a generation remains to be seen, but even so, it’s high praise indeed. “This is a record you must own,” cried musical tastemakers NME, and the call is being answered.

“I guess it is strange,” bassist Patrick Matthews ponders of the UK hype machine. “It seems to me… I didn’t ever really set out to make it in music. I went along with it. Craig’s the leader of the band, and he had this vision to make a really important record, he’s always been like that. We had this choice of putting out a record just in Australia or the big picture. We went the whole hog. The main thing was to make a good record. Stuff like going to England and coming back seems strange, but it’s seems really unlikely that we would have broken out of Sydney if we’d stayed. Sydney is hard work for bands, not too many places to play and not much of an audience.”

Matthews jumped ship from the second year of his medical degree when things began to pick up for the band. A decision I doubt he’s regretting…

“Sometimes I wonder about it,” he muses. “I think I’ve actually forgotten it all. I was pretty well up on everything about six months ago, but now I can’t even remember any anatomy or anything dangerous.”

Named in part after a another Australia outfit, The Vynes, of which frontman Craig Nicholls’ father was a member, The Vines have conjured up a sound recalling the swagger, psychedelia and raw passion of the finest sixties garage traditions.

“We started the band when we were about seventeen with Craig. We were just friends that started a band with our school friend Dave. Like most bass players I started playing not because I wanted to play bass, but because I wanted to be in a band. In the original line up my brother played bass and I played guitar. I didn’t have much talent on the guitar anyway…”

For the recording of Highly Evolved, The Vines headed to Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound studios and called upon the production talents of Rod Schnapf, who had also put his stamp on recordings by Foo Fighters, Beck and Guided By Voices.

“A lot of bands can use the studio to prove how good they are as players. We just kind of took our demo songs and just added some more hooks in there. Extra vocal tracks and stuff. I think it still sounds like our demos, but with nicer sounding drums.”

“Recording is all we did for years and years. It’s what Craig was obsessed with. When we went into the studio he was really into building a wall of sound. We’d done a lot of demos before and spent a bit of time in the studio. It’s an art, recording. You can put on too much stuff. A lot of it is about what to leave out, there are so many things to think about. You have to try and keep it sounding energetic. It’s a fun thing.”

While the UK and the US seem to be getting their share of Vines gigs at the moment, back here in Australia we’ll be waiting until later in the year.

“We started off playing this tiny little bar in Brighton in the UK that holds about 170 people, maybe,” Matthews explains of their English assault. “It was a little L shaped room. I think a few people have come along doing some Aussie Aussie Aussie kind of stuff, but they’ve been outnumbered. I love the Australian people in London, but they are behaving badly.”

And The Vines are out to set a good example?

“Oh no no no. We’re joining in the festivities. Here in LA and over in New York it’s different though. I think you could call them the cognoscenti… there are kids that have been showing up at the shows that have heard about us on the net or through the press. The average rock fan in America is like a teenage male with piercings and into Sum 41 or Hooberstank and they don’t really listen to a lot of different music. All you have to do it get on rock radio and you’ve got some fans. I’m going to get some big shorts…”