ONE OF GARAGE-ROCK'S most promising - and rambunctious new acts, The Vines, logs its sophomore entry, Winning Days (Capitol), on March 23. The Aussie quartet hopes to match the success of its platinum-selling 2002 debut, Highly Evolved, which earned the band much radio play (with "Get Free") and a spot on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Immediately following an exhaustive, 18-month tour in support of Evolved, the group - led by unpredictable frontman/songwriter Craig Nicholls - united once again with producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith), even though original reports sparked rumors of a possible Phil Spector hook-up. While The Vines had documented their first release in Los Angeles, their second venture drew them to an East Coast mecca - Woodstock, NY.

"It was wild, yeah," bassist Patrick Matthews tells ICE. "There were black bears wandering around... and it was the summertime, so it was hot. Awful lot of trees. A little bit drizzly. We were there for three-and-a-half months, until the beginning of September."

The Bearsville Studios sessions rendered a raft of new songs, 11 of which made the final cut: "Ride" (first single), "Animal Machine," "TV Pro," "Autumn Shade 2," "Evil Town," "Winning Days," "She's Got Something to Say to Me," "Rainfall," "Amnesia," "Sunchild" and "Fuck the World" (a.k.a. "FtW," already available on TheVines.com).

While Winning Days is laced with the same loud, incendiary guitars that made Highly Evolved such a brazen debut, it also integrates newfound psychedelic, folk and acoustic-ballad aesthetics (on "TV Pro," "Rainfall" and "Autumn Shade 2," respectively). Nicholls toys with Moog (and organ and piano) at various points, diversfying the release with some retro electronic-music tones.

Matthews elaborates on choice selections: "On 'Evil Town,' the chorus and verse are pretty much the same thing - it's just one beat that goes around four times. Other songs are more complicated, like "Winning Days," which has a loud-and-soft build-up, then an outro that's based on the verse chords but set in a different melody."

He continues: "'Fuck the World' is a big, dreamy, ballad-like song, and 'TV Pro' is dreamy, too... Craig was watching a certain TV star on Jay Leno - who will go unnamed - and got annoyed at his facile manner. This guy was a TV-guest professional, laughing and joking but not saying anything with any real purpose. He thought he was an intellectual, but he was just an idiot."

A few other songs were sloughed off, including "Blues Riff" and "Landslide" (not a Fleetwood Mac cover). A good chunk of the group's unreleased songs - including its notorious, frequently played live cover of OutKast's "Ms. Jackson"- have already been leaked to the Internet.

Matthews says: "There's all these songs out there that we could reclaim as our own and use as B-sides. Our old drummer's brother put every damn song we ever recorded onto the Internet without our permission. We played one song in Sydney just once - never even recorded it - and it got on the Internet. So we don't have much to choose from that hasn't made its way online already."