Aussie garage-rockers re-plant themselves with Vision Valley after battling on-tour pressures

It's been years since anyone caught a live Vines show and for the foreseeable future, it looks like it's going to stay that way. Like their hugely hyped garage punk peers (the Strokes, the Hives, the Doves, et. al.), the Vines burst onto the post-grunge scene in late 2001 to enormous fanfare, splashed on the cover of nearly every major music magazine and showcased on some of the biggest tours in the world.

"No one could've predicted that sort of thing," recalls drummer Hamish Rosser. "It was like a dream. I joined the band in January of 2002 and in the space of nine months we played Coachella, Glastonbury, Reading Festival, [Late Night With] Conan O'Brien, [Late Show With] David Letterman, the VMA's and did the cover of Rolling Stone. That's about as quick a rise as you can hope for in any kind of band."

But unlike other bands, the Vines' last tour was in 2004, a year which proved to be the stuff tabloids are made of: frontman Craig Nicholls' belligerent stage antics led to an assault charge and bassist Patrick Matthews quit, leaving the rest of the band to pick up the pieces. As Rosser reveals, "just keeping it together" has been the most challenging part of being in the band.

"It's been a bit of a roller coaster, especially towards the end of our last album [Winning Days] when Craig wasn't in a very good state. That was probably the hardest. No one was really enjoying it at that point. It was pretty excruciating."

So excruciating in fact that Rosser says he almost considered leaving the band as well.

"It's hard to say," he says. "I just thought we needed little a break to pull ourselves together and that's sort of what happened. We lost Patrick along the way, which was a bit of a shame but he had threatened to quit so many times and when he finally did I was like, 'Okay, just give him a couple of weeks and he'll come around.' But then I was like, 'Oh, I guess he was serious this time.'"

The Vines eventually regrouped as a trio — Nicholls, Rosser and guitarist Ryan Griffith — and spent a year in their native Australia working on Vision Valley, a 13-track disc of raw energy ("Anysound"), Beatles-esque pop numbers ("Candy Daze") and lyrical catharsis ("Don't Listen to the Radio") that was released in April.

"The album has sort of polarized people," says Rosser. "There's been some great reviews and some really cold ones, which I think is good. You don't want just straight three-star reviews. They're either saying this album is pure rubbish or it's amazing, so it's really polarizing and that's good."

Mixed reviews or not, the Vines have no plans to leave Sydney to tour behind Vision Valley, primarily due to Nicholls's medical diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.

"It was the source of [his erratic behavior] but it's also the root cause for all his great songwriting," admits Rosser. "You can't separate one from the other. That's why he could never handle touring and why he could turn in a fantastic show one night and an ordinary show the next night."

As Rosser continues, "One of the things with Asperger's, which is something you're born with and something you'll always have, is that people who have it need some sort of routine. I guess that's why Craig always wanted to go to McDonald's and eat the same meal wherever we were. The doctor told him that he probably had the worst possible job for his condition - staying in different hotels, going to different places... Nothing's the same on any day, so it really sort of unhinged him. That's why we've had to scale back touring."

Even so, Rosser is hopeful that getting back on the road sooner than later is a real possibility. 

"I think we'll work it out and do some shows," he says. "But we're not planning on doing any three-year Metallica style tour."