Enigmatic frontman Craig Nicholls explains how trees help him create...

I smell Craig Nicholls before I meet him.

The diminutive frontman of Sydney, Australia's The Vines is sitting in his hotel room, enveloped by a haze of marijuana smoke as he blankly contemplates the bleak Toronto weather outside his window. Sitting there in his dazed state, he seems rather harmless, a far cry from his maniac, foaming-at-the-mouth stage persona.

Two years ago, The Vines explode onto the music scene with their debut, Highly Evolved. That record was part of a rock 'n' roll renaissance personified by bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes and The Hives.

"It helped us," says Nicholls of the timing. "We could have easily put the same album out five years ago or in five years time from now. We really believed in what we were doing and we knew there was something special to it when we went into the studio. It's good when people are paying attention to real bands that are doing their own music."

Those who know The Vines one from their singles will be surprised to learn how varied their songwriting actually is. Songs like "Homesick" and "Autumn Shade" evoke 60's British rock rather than the '90 grunge of the more straightforward "Get Free" and "Outtathaway!" If you ask him, Nicholls says the subdued, abstract sounds of "Amnesia" and "TV Pro" from their new album Winning Days, best represents the true nature of The Vines.

"They seem very extreme, very spacey, futuristic 'cause that's always what I had in my head," he says. "The sound that we were constantly going for was spacey. We wanted to sound like space travellers. It's still rock 'n' roll, but it can grow and go in any direction and thats the kind of area I think it's gonna go." He pauses, before adding, "Space."

Nicholls says his favourite track off th new record is "Autumn Shade II." According to him, "it's so restrained and clean and simple and it has a really cool vibe to it, very serious sounding."

Despite the similar titles, however, the connection between the two songs is more nebulous that one might expect.

"There's a similar vibe in the lyrics, what I'm singing about," he explains. "Kinda lazy, like daydreaming, like looking out the window, playing acoustic guitar. That's where it came from. As lame as it is, I'm trying to make some kind of attempt to communicate, just to make a musical, poetic statement."

For the creation of Winning Days, The Vines opted for a rural studio setting instead of the hectic bustle of Hollywood, where Highly Evolved was recorded.

"In Hollywood, everything's mad, "says Nicholls. "We had tress around when we were doing the album this time and we felt more confident because we'd already made an album and we kinda know how the whole thing works."

With the aid of produce Rob Schnapf, The Vines meticulously explored a wide variety of sounds and atmospheres.

"We were just really thorough with it right from the beginning when we did the drums," he says. "We did pre-production and we also did pre-pre-production. It was really a serious thing but it was really cool at the same time."

Given the band's obsessive attention to detail, it's hardly surprising that Nicholls considers The Vines to be a studio band at their core.

"If it's not 100 per cent that way now, then that's what it's gonna come to, " he says. "Because really thinking about albums, concept albums, the music could be really all extreme and really fast and really agressive or it could be all laid-back, like a total country-rock album." He pauses to mull over what he has just said, before qualifying, "These are all just wild ideas I'm having in my head."

Suddenly, I sense that the THC concentration in Nicholls' bloodstream may be taking its toll on our interview, so I decide to switch gears and probe him about the name of the new record.

"It was the first line in the song ['Winning Days']: 'The winning days are gone,'" he explains. "What I was thinking in my head was I was all grown-up and I was sad and I was like, 'I wish I was a stupid little baby so I could sleep all day."

"It's sentimental but being dramatic in the sense of creating art. Because you could do a portrait of someone and do it exactly as they look, or you could dement it a little or accentuate things. That's why I'm doing with the song."

The winning days may be over for Nicholls, but the glory days are still yet to come for The Vines.