The Vines are in a bizarre place. The weird antics of singer Craig Nicholls still attract more attention than their music. And they've just turned in an album that's far too close to the last one for comfort. Can things get any worse?

Well, Courtney Love wants to be their friend...

Today The Vines are making a video. They mime along to their new song Ride in a big room, sorrounded by 26 others bands. The idea is that the other bands will mime along too, so it looks as though everyone is playing the same song.

French director Michel Gondry, who has previously toyed with repetition and mirroring in The White Stripes' clip for The Hardest Button To Button, has specified real, unsigned bands with different images. One of them is called Pants Optional. Another, the electroclash band Das Mega Cool, have been forced to leave their keyboard player at home beause The Vines don't have one.

This being a) Los Angeles and b) a music industry event, halfway through the shoot Courtney Love turns up. She has a minder with her and is wearing Charlie Chaplin trousers, black braces and a sheer black top. You can see her nipples. "I just shot my video," she says. "So I wanted to check out the competition. Because my song's better than theirs."

She has come from a hearing at the Beverly Hills Courthouse, following her arrest last year for possession of prescription drugs.

"A fucking paparazzi threw himself in front of my car when I was on my way to see the judge," she says.

Did she hit him? "No," says the minder, firmly.

"Yes," says Love. "That's how he lives his life. He's trying to make money. He did it to Krist, he did it to Dave..."

Is Love a fan of The Vines? People say they sound a little like Nirvana. "In their fucking dreams, sweetie."

Some time-honoured Love behaviour follows. She heckles the unsigned bands, is told off for polluting a non-smoking building and rolls on the floor with the female guitarist from The Shocker. "I was making videos 20 years ago, in 1995," she says, inaccurately. "These kids weren't even born."

Eventually she introduces herself to The Vines. She says how much she likes their song. Then she writes her name and cell phone number in a black Biro on the back of a taxi receipt and tells the band to call her. Why don't they all go out for drinks?

"She was so obnoxious," Hamish Rosser, The Vines' burly drummer, will say later. "She was off her face. Either on drugs or doing a good impression of someone on drugs."

After the shoot Ryan Griffiths, The Vines' saggy-fringed guitarist, goes back to his room at the Hollywood Roosevelt. He dials Courtney's number twice. There's no answer.

"What on earth were you up to?" Rosser will ask the next day.

"I thought maybe we could talk," says Griffiths, sheepishly. "You know, she could give some advice..."

"Advice?" snorts Rosser. "Like, Ryan, you could be famous for doing nothing at all. Like me!"

The Vines are famous for... their singer, Craig Nicholls, whose eccentric behaviour has, for instance, seen him smash up his band's equipment during a rehearsal for the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, the American TV chatshow (they were escorted from the set and didn't perform)... For their debut album, 2002's Highly Evolved, entering America's Billboard Chart at Number 11 (how much this was assisted by their record company's decision that it should retail at a greatly dicounted price - around 5 Pounds - we'll never know)... For being "The Australian Strokes", another fresh-faced band with a "The" in a year of fresh-faced bands with "The"s... For Craig Nicholls's passion for smoking bongs... For owing debts to Nirvana and The Kinks and for saying they do.

This month, The Vines have a new album out. It's called Winning Days and it sound quite a lot like the last one - short, spunky rock songs in the style of their hits Outtathaway! and Highly Evolved - though some songs are slower, longer and use the whirring sweep of a Mellotron. The reason for this simlarity, perhaps, is that the songs on this album were written at the same time as the songs on the last one. One of them, Sunchild, has been released twice before as a B-side. Two others, Fuck The World and Amnesia, will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen The Vines play a gig. And another, Autumn Shade II, is called Autumn Shade II to distinguish it from Autumn Shade on the first album.

"All of them were demos that we made before we had a record deal," says Rosser. "Capitol [their record label] made a CD of the 16 songs that didn't go on Highly Evolved and now they've made it onto the internet. You can download every single song on the album now."

Which would imply that The Vines haven't written a new song since 2001.

"That's not weird at all," says bassist Patrick Matthews, an aspiring doctor who gave up medical school to concentrate on the band. "There's a lot of great songs that deserve to get out there. So we put them out there. They're still fresh enough."

"There are two brand new songs that we're working on," says Rosser. "But they're not ready." Are Vines fans not likely to feel a little short-changed by this?

"Well," says Matthews, "if you're a fan of the band, you could buy The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks instead."

The best bands, from The Smiths to the Beastie Boys to OutKast, tend to create their own universe, one where you immerse yourself in their lyrics or their clothes or their philosophy. They invite you to consider a particular view of the world, which you can choose to subscribe to, or to which you can say, No thanks, I'll have Justin Timberlake instead. In this sense, The Vines aren't really about anything. In the absence of something quite so tangible as a group manifesto, attention has fallen on Craig Nicholls.

Since they sprang from a suburb of Sydney - Matthews and Nicholls having met while working at a McDonald's - much has been made of Nicholls's credentials as a suitably contradictory rock star. The pin-up who pulls tortured faces. The shy boy who likes to destroy his Fender. His diet of bacon double cheeseburgers and marijuana. And when he pulls tricks like locking himself in a bathroom for two hours during an interview... well, journalists love that kind of thing. That Craig Nicholls? He so crazy.

All of this means that somtimes, people tiptoe around him. Before the video shoot, someone from The Vines' record company calls the rest of the band and asks if they think Craig's going to be "alright". During a trip to Santa Monica Beach to take the photos for this magazine, their publicist looks decidedly shaky. "Craig hates beaches," he says. "Last time we took photos on a beach he threw a breezeblock at my head."

But Nicholls doesn't freak out or throw breeze blocks at anyone's head. In fact, he's bashful, chatty and polite. That's not to say any of the above behaviour should be taken as an affectation. Because he certainly is quite odd.

One lunchtime, we meet up. He's sitting outside by his hotel restaurant, near the swimming pool. It's hot enough for a few of the other guests to be lounging around in their swimming costumes. Nicholls is wearing an outsized green cardigan. Occasionaly, a helicopter buzzes past overhead. When it does, he ducks. He sends his manager out for Wendy's fast food ("the usual"). Then he mumbles his way through an hour's worth of round-the-houses conversation using the squeaky voice of US stand-up comedian Emo Philips. Here he is, answering the question: have you ever been in love?

"Aw... I guess, I think... maybe I have... I mean, I like it a bit, I don't like a bit sometimes... I'm not sure if I like it, but...both I guess. No. Yeah. I really... love is like peace. Groovy, yeah?"

And it's all like that In response to a question about why he enjoyed art so much at school, he rambles on about the harmonies on the first Supergrass album.. then he spots a squirrel. "I'de like to be a bird," he says. "Because I think that anyone that can fly around the sky and witness everything... I heard that they're like dinosaurs, or close to dinosaurs. Or maybe that's crocodiles?"

That'll be the pot, you'll be thinking. But no. "I just kind of stopped smoking recently," he says. "I really surprised myself. You kind of move on, I guess. Now I don't smoke or drink. Maybe I'm going to start going to the gym..."

And the rest of the band says that this time around, Nicholls seems a lot happier. "He has stopped smoking," says Rosser. "He's in a really heatlhy frame of mind."

"I couldn't have been worse equipped to deal with his behaviour at the start," says Matthews. "There was so much mental stuff going on. I just want to make a really exciting rock record next." There's a pause. "Though I'm sure Craig doesn't have anything like that kind of idea."

Does Nicholls realise people think his behaviour can seem a little strange? "Yeah," he says, slowly. "But when I talk about mental illness I don't know if I'm serious or not. I don't even know what I'm saying. It's very hard for me to work it out."

One evening, The Vines want to go bowling. First, they drive to The Cat & Fiddle, a bar on Sunset Boulevard that's done out like an English pub. There are horse brasses on the wall and sausage rolls on the menu. Morrissey and Tim Burgess, English rock people in America, like to drink here. But not together. And not today. "Hey," says Nicholls from the back of th van. "Put that CD on, that track called Video Shop." Nicholls has been buying up some CDs The Kinks made in the '80s, ones with songs he's less familiar with. There is perhaps a reason for this: the songs that The Kinks made in the '80s are not their best. Video Shop - a song about a video shop - is no Stop Your Sobbing. "Not again," groans their manager.

In the pub, everyone gets a bit drunk. Nicholls sticks to Coke and plays darts. Elvis Costello And The Attractions' I want You comes on the jukebox. "This song's alright," he says. "I prefer the other Elvis, though, for his eating. He pioneered sandwiches."

Later, at Pinz, the bowling alley, The Vines prove themselves to be quite excellent bowlers. A blonde girls approaches Nicholls. She recognises him from somewhere... where is it? "I'm in a band," says Nicholls. "We're called The Vines. We're not from here. We're making a video." The girl, who works on a TV show hosted by Saturday Night Live veteran Tracy Mogan, asks if Nicholls would like to "come outside and smoke a joint with Tracy".

"Oh no," he says. "Oh... I'm sorry. I'm tryint to cut back..."

As everyone is preparing to go, Nicholls wnaders off. The band find him throwing balls down some of the closed lanes.

"Hey!" says a man in a Pinz hat. "What are you doing?"

"Eh?" says Nicholls.

"You can't just throw balls down empty lanes," says the man.

There is an awkward moment.

"Oh," says Nicholls, a little hurt. "OK."

Outside in the car park, The Vines decide they want some more to drink. They drive to a 7-Eleven and buy some crates of beer. Back in the car, Matthews hands them out. "Let me have one," says Nicholls. "I'm going to hold it for a bit. Get used to the idea."

They drive to a hotel to see some friends from Australia who are also in a band. The evening becomes morning and the beer is polished off. All, that is, except for one bottle. That remains in Craig Nicholls's left hand. Unopened.