Around 2005, THE VINES weren't exactly down and out, but the count was quickly approaching ten. Following the band's return from the edges of insanity though, they have been on a gradual build of quality that has hit the high water mark with new album Future Primitive. BENNY DOYLE sits down with drummer HAMISH ROSSER and guitarist RYAN GRIFFITHS to talk about the exciting long player.

Sitting across a rather formal looking boardroom table in the Brisbane offices of Sony Music, the band's new label home, Hamish Rosser and Ryan Griffiths, drummer and guitarist for The Vines respectively, look at ease and understatedly confident. They look to have that glint in their eye that went hand in hand with the release of their debut album Highly Evolved, all the way back in 2002. Now, almost a decade on, it's returned on the eve of their fifth album Future Primitive. 

Actively looking to forge a new path and take some risks with Future Primitive, the band enlisted Canberra's quirkiest producer in the way of Bumblebeez main man Chris Colonna. More than happy with Colonna's creative zeal and his zest for giving everything a go, the band are already mentioning his name for the follow up to the album. 

"He reminds me of Beck where there is no real boundaries to his style," Rosser relates, "He'll hear these songs and go, 'This one can be heavy metal, that one can be jazz and this one can have any instrument on it at all'. He's not trapped in by any genre. That's why we chose him for sure."

"And he's willing to use anything." Griffiths continues. "He could be using the sounds from Donkey Kong or whatever, and if he's got an idea, he'll exhaust it, y'know? With some producers, if you have an idea, they'll give you one shot and then go, 'Don't worry'. With Chris, he's willing to play around with it which is cool." 

Adding to the all-star cast behind the most creative and adventurous album The Vines have produced is Jono Ma, who the band recorded with at Studios 301 in Sydney, and Cassius producer Phillipe Zdar who helped with the mixing duties; another man the band felt "was the right guy to go with to get the sound we were looking for." And internally, although certain parts of the process remained the same, the band do admit that Future Primitive came together slightly differently from their other works.

"Craig [Nicholls - frontman and songwriter] will bring in the backbone, like he'll have the melody, really basic bar chords. Then we'll get in, sort of nut it out and it slowly forms but it's always been that sort of way." Griffiths explains. "He's always open to any ideas though." 

"This time the process was a bit different though," Rosser continues. "I mean we were doing songs pretty fast, they're all live takes and we just listened to the rough edits and went, 'We'll take that, we won't take that. We're much better players than we were ten years ago and really, you'd be surprised at how much you can put into a two-and-a-half minute song. A lot of songs are unnecessarily long. But then once that was down, that's when we started adding the flavours and pulling parts out and putting new sound textures in."

"I thought it was good not to become too anal about it because you become that person sometimes so it's good to let someone deal with it," Griffiths laments on the process. "It was going back and forwards for some time purely because we weren't there but I think it's turned out good. It's a fair bit tricky when you send off the music, the mixes come back overnight, you look at them the next morning and go, "That's not right, then email back. It can take a bit longer to get things done than if you're in the room and go, 'Do this - okay it's done. But when you're communicating that way it takes a bit longer." 

Taking a bit longer wasn't an issue the band were worried about. In fact, it was arguably trying to squeeze in too much, which combined with Nicholls' erratic behaviour and mental health battles, led the band to the brink of implosion in the mid-noughties.

"It's not a nice thing to be around," Rosser understates. "There were some low points and that's when it stops, that's when we fell off the radar. It couldn't have continued like it was, we couldn't have gone any further. Like, we were all falling apart, it wasn't just Craig, although he was out of control, but it had to stop when it did. To carry on it was going to do more harm than good so that's when we closed ranks and went, 'Alright, we need to sort ourselves out to carry on', which we did. When you have to cancel shows and tours, you lose a bit of goodwill with promoters and everything so we've got to rebuild that now. We're on a mission to prove that we're worthy." 

"Constant touring never helps," Griffiths accepts. "You're up all night and you're doing whatever, then with Craig on top of that... It's easy to put the blame on Craig, like I guess it did hinge on Craig, but we were all being a bit ridiculous at that stage. It was a recipe for disaster really. Looking back, we probably shouldn't have been doing as much because Craig just hated it at the time." 

Rosser expands ever so slightly just what reacted with Nicholls. "In Craig's condition, not having a routine is really uncomfortable for him, and with all the travel, finding it hard to sleep, it's never a good thing. But now, Craig's in a really good place and we know not to book endless tours. It's good camaraderie these days - we're a band of brothers. We've been through the highs and lows." 

As fans will attest, the band's recent sizzling performances at Splendour In The Grass and the Big Day Out festival have gone a long way towards proving to people that The Vines are healed, just by showing up on time and putting on a good show. It's this new professionalism and unity that the band are looking to take with them back overseas when they make another tilt at the foreign market. 

"We're ready to get back over there," Rosser drives home. "I don't think we've really gone back [overseas] since [2004's] Winning Days, since it all collapsed, touring extensively that is. Since then we've only done two overseas trips. We just found out we've got overseas release in a whole list of new countries. Places such as Argentina, Sweden, Canada, France, Japan... I'd like to think we'll go straight over and get stuck into touring as it's a good setup if you can go over, play a festival in the UK or US or anywhere, and they'll finance your flights and all that, then on the back of that you can do your shows. But essentially, we've got an audience over in the UK and the US from our earlier days of touring and we really just want to reconnect with those people."

WHO: The Vines

WHAT: Future Primitive (Sony)

WHERE & WHEN: Splendour In The Grass, Woodfordia Friday Jul 29 - Sunday Jul 31, Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay Thursday Aug 25, The Hi-Fi Friday Aug 26