It's been a tough few years for Aussie rockers The Vines.

After their classic debut Highly Evolved in 2002, the arrival of follow-up Winning Days in 2004 was overshadowed by singer Craig Nicholls's unpredictable and often violent behaviour.

More than just another rock star smashing up guitars and abusing photographers, Craig was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome later that year.

After taking the right medication, Craig, drummer Hamish Rosser and guitarist Ryan Griffiths are back to their best with a rousing third album.

Vision Valley is psychedelic rock with some stunning and soaring piano and string-led ballads. A return to form for the band once hailed as the Aussie Strokes. 

Here, the band give SFTW a track-by-track preview... 

ANYSOUND

Hamish: "This was the first song on the album that we recorded - back in May 2005. We probably did about five takes of it. We tried to record couldn't beat the original recording."

NOTHIN'S COMIN' 

Hamish. "There's a friend of ours called Henry and I told him we had recorded some demos with producer Wayne Connelly at Velvet Sound Studios. He said: 'Isn't that like saying you've built a full-scale working replica in one?' because it was that good." 

CANDY DAZE

Craig: "This one sounds the most Sixties on the whole album. It's really fun to play and when we were writing the album, me, Hamish and Ryan spent from six at night until six in the morning just messing around with it. It was fun to play." 

VISION VALLEY

Craig: "It's a ballad with strings. It's the first time we've used strings and we're happy with the way it turned out. It's very much acoustic, very laid-back and a very peaceful song."

DON'T LISTEN TO THE RADIO 

Hamish: "I remember the first time I heard Craig sing that song I said: "Wouldn't that be ironic if that did make it to the radio?" 

GROSS OUT

Ryan: "It's one of my favourites just because it's cool and it's heavy and loud. It's a good balance with other songs like Vision Valley. It's what I like to hear, I suppose."

TAKE ME BACK

Craig: "Is this song personal? I guess so. They're all personal I suppose, but, yeah, it definitely describes how I was feeling after we made the first two albums."

GOING GONE 

Hamish: "And here it is in its all damn glory strings, pianos... the works. 

FUK YEH 

Craig: "This is a rock song. Sorry about the language, but it just sort of came out that way. It's not really about anything that you you can nail down, more just a feeling of wanting to scream bit." 

FUTURETARDED

Craig: "That's a kind of tribal-sounding song with futuristic lyrics or just poetic. It's got this beat to it with a bit of spoken word in it there as well. It's interesting, it's a different song.

DOPE TRAIN

Craig: "It's about a train. The 10.15 to Central. Um, I guess you can read the lyrics. It's about being me, in my house when we stopped touring.

ATMOS

Craig: "We were really worried that we recorded this song too soft, but now it's on the album we realised it's just right. This song is a bit denser in the production. Our producer Wayne took the most time mixing this one because there is a lot going on."

SPACESHIP

Craig: "It's a six-minute epic. It goes through a lot of different stages. It starts out very mellow acoustic and ends up space rock."

JS