🟥 This article is translated from Japanese.

Photo by: Takayuki Mishima

Text by: Masaki Mugikura [BTR]

"There’s no meaning in playing rock music."

The Vines have made a complete comeback with their fourth album, "Melodia," after two years.

PROFILE

From left to right: Hamish Rosser (Drums), Brad Heald (Bass), Craig Nicholls (Vocals & Guitar), Ryan Griffiths (Guitar). Formed in 1995 in Sydney, Australia. Their first album, "Highly Evolved" (released in 2002), received high acclaim worldwide. Although they had to scale back their activities due to Craig’s deteriorating mental health, they declared a full comeback with their fourth album, "Melodia," which is set to be released in Japan on September 24. This summer, they also made their second visit to Japan in four years for Fuji Rock.

INTERVIEW

The Vines' rock music, a mixture of pure-minded sensibility and wild impulsiveness, has returned! "Melodia", the band's fourth album in two years, marks the complete return of The Vines. It has the intensity like a return to the initial impulse of rock music and beautiful psychedelia. We first asked Craig, the singer who has sometimes fallen to the dark side as a reaction to his big break, what he envisioned when making this album.

Craig: I don't think anyone would want to know what's going on in my head. It's pretty dark and chaotic... (laughs). But I always try to get the best out of it, and that's what I did this time... Of course, each song has a different style, but we wanted to create something that we could call "good art," from the arrangements to the harmonies and everything in between.

From the first song, "Get Out," you pour out a barrage of intense yet beautiful rock tunes. It seems to be close to your early taste, which was once called "The Beatles meets Nirvana". To put it simply, it is a fresh sound that could be described as a return to Vines' roots. Did you have this in mind?

Craig: Yeah, we wanted to make something similar to the first album. The second and third albums were made during a very crazy period of my life... After the first album's sudden big break, I was drinking beer in the morning and meeting celebrities every day. I'm just kidding (laughs). But when I think about what I was doing back then, I don't know how I'm here now. So, to be honest, it was hard for me to make something like an extension of the third one. I wanted to make an album that would allow us to start over again.

In the song "He's A Rocker," which is the lead song of this album, there is a phrase that goes like this: "Once there was a young man / No one could understand / All he ever playin' is / That rock 'n' roll music / All he ever wanted was a reason to do it". The song seems to be about your struggle to find your own music after your worldwide breakthrough, but have you found the "reason" of rock music for yourself?

Craig: Well... I guess my answer is that there is no meaning in playing rock music. Artists and bands aren't doing something because someone told them to, but rather because they are told not to (laughs). But I realized that it's okay to be that way.

The reason for the surprising freshness of this work is that you are not overwhelmed by expectations or pressure, but rather freely expresses its inner impulses as it sees fit. Perhaps this is the reason for the surprising freshness of this work.

Craig: That might be true. I didn't make this album because someone told me to, rather I made it while watching TV or something, and that's how this album came out... So, you could say it's an album that was made in a very crazy way. But I think it had a positive effect on the band. I think that's how we actually made our first album, and if you think about it, I myself haven't changed at all since I was a teenager. I'm just able to tell longer stories and use more difficult words than I used to (laughs).