The epitaph for The Vines could have been written by now. Instead, they're back with a new album. The vines drummer HAMISH ROSSER speaks exclusively to MARK NEILSEN

Two years ago it seemed the short yet bright career of The Vines had spectacularly exploded. The band that came out of south-western Sydney in 2001 to sell 1.5 million copies of the debut album Highly Evolved fell apart on the stage of the Annandale Hotel in May 2004. At the Gig, bass player Patrick Matthews walked off after only one song (and as it turned out, ended up leaving the band entirely), while vocalist and guitarist threw abuse and his guitar in the direction of various members of the audience and struck a photographer at the gig, destroying her camera. Charges were filed over the incident but were later dropped. It emerged that that Nicholls erratic behaviour (evident not only at that show but pretty much ever since The Vines emerged), was due to Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism, which was only recently diagnosed in him.

Most observers thought that was the blazing end of the band. But when it all happened, did the members themselves think that was it? 

"In short term I knew we were going to take a bit of time out and get ourselves together. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be all over. I didn’t really know myself," Rosser admits. "Most people wrote us off at that point, but I always held out hope for there being a future. We all had faith in Craig's ability to write really good songs; that was never bought into the question, but it's just being able to function as a touring band was what we weren’t able to do so well (chuckles)."

Did Craig’s Diagnosis explain a lot of things? Did you think something was up beforehand?

"Yeah I did. It was funny, when I first joined up, because Patrick had a bit of medical background (Matthews was actually studying medicine during the vines tenure), I asked him once if he thought Craig was autistic because in certain environments, like if he was in a noisy bar, all the different conversations going on at once would really freak him out. He was never really comfortable in those social situations anyway. But Patrick sort of dismissed it and goes 'no, he doesn’t have any other symptoms of it'. But it wasn’t until a couple of years later when it was actually our guitar tech that out it together.

"Craig himself has always told us he knows his brain is different to everyone else's, and it's always been pretty obvious. His brain is wired differently to the rest of us."

It was about five or six months after that infamous gig that the remaining members (Rosser, Nicholls and guitarist/keyboardist Ryan Griffiths) got together and focussed on making the bands third album. 

"Our management had told us that after it all fell apart, well, the best thing for you guys to do right now, because we've cancelled all the touring, is go and write a great album," Rosser says. "Redeem yourselves."

After rehearsing as just the three of them for a couple of months, Andy Kent from You Am I came on board to play bass and eventually ended up recording with them for the whole album. The end result is Vision Valley - 13 punchy pop songs, clocking in at little over half an hour- ranging from the buzzsaw punk feel of the frenetic Gross Out to the sunny pop of (long time live favourite) Going Gone. Most songs clock under the three minute mark, except for the album closer, Spaceship - a dreamy psychedelic six-minute jam.

With Nicholls’ condition still untested with regards to playing live, there are no firm plans for when the band will next gig. They do, however have a couple of live TV appearances planned at the end of this month but actual gigs at live venues are still awhile off (and, in fact, unscheduled) The thinking at this stage is they may test the waters by doing a one-off show in Sydney and then maybe a few shows around Australia. 

"If it works well and sounds good and everyone’s happy then we'll think about taking it overseas, but there’s no point in booking a four month overseas tour right now if it will just kill us then," Rosser says.

"We'll take it one step at a time...Craig’s in a much better state of mind now than he ever was before when he was touring, so there’s always a chance. But we just don’t want to commit to anything that’s going to put us all back to where we were, like you said two years ago after the Annandale show. We don’t want a repeat of that."