FORGET everything you've read about The Vines in recent times. They're a merry band of happy chappies. No, really.

The Daily Telegraph had the privilege of being invited into (name suppressed) Studio earlier this month to witness the internal joviality for ourselves.

The very sane singer Craig Nicholls was in a particularly upbeat mood, telling us he was glad to be home and back at work.

"I've had a lot of chance to catch up on my long sleeping patterns," Nicholls says. "So that's good, because it's really hard when you're moving around. So it was really good to get back and go, 'Whoa, that was a mad trip'. "It's really good to be back and see everyone and take it a little easier. And getting to work on some songs, which is the best thing.''

The Vines have spent the past week locked up in (name suppressed) Studio, working with producer Wayne Connelly on four new tracks.

One is called "Drown The Baptists". But it's not as messed up as its title suggests, Nicholls says. "It's an extreme thing to say. It's kind of meant to have a bit of a sense of humour to it. It depends what people want to get out of it. To me it's not too serious. Like, I don't want to drown anybody, I don't think people should drown Baptists. It's just about how if you get baptised you get put into water. So it's sort of like, 'See how they like it'. "I don't want to start any trouble. It's just a bit of a poem.''

Another track is entitled "Fuck the World", which you would assume is pretty self-explanatory. "Well, it has that [side to it], then there's this other side where it's a kind of an environmental song,'' Nicholls says. "It's just a whole lot of ideas and feelings into one thing. It's good when you can get different sides out of something, mixed emotions. Like the world is falling down. Then there's the other side, like we have to save the world, not kill it.''

Nicholls isn't sure where these songs are going to end up, whether they'll be simply demos, a single, or actually make it on to album number two.

Of more immediate concern is their upcoming Big Day Out and club dates, something Nicholls says he can't wait for. "It's really good we're actually playing on it [the BDO]. I've been to at least three of them, which were great. I think it's the coolest festival. It seems really appropriate that we get to play now.''

What follows after these shows is pretty much up in the air for the time being, although The Vines do want to squeeze in another week of studio work very soon.

"It's not really planned,'' Nicholls says of the year ahead. "It may be marked out in lead pencil but it hasn't been penned in. It depends on how it goes this week, how it feels when we're playing again on stage. It's a combination of things. I'm in the middle of figuring that out. We're doing this at the moment. I think soon we'll make a decision. The recording is going well so we're trying not to get ahead of ourselves.

"I'm really excited about what we're doing and what we're going to do with this album. We've got all the songs so it's just a matter of putting them on to tape in a way that makes us all happy.''