Nestling into a couch at Sony Music’s Sydney HQ on May 16, The Vines’ Craig Nicholls, casual in a black jacket and jeans, is a mix of self-effacing charm and nervous energy as he chats about the band’s upcoming album, Future Primitive. “I just woke up”, the softly spoken frontman tells WHO with a laugh, flicking a strand of his moptop off his face. “I thought I was really late.”

Better late than never. Their new single “Gimme Love”, heralds a new chapter for a band hailed as “saviours of rock” by Rolling Stone when they burst on to the scene with their 2002 debut, Highly Evolved. Two Years later, in the wake of Nicholls’s increasingly erratic onstage behaviour – partly due to his then undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome – they notoriously fell from grace. Being back in the studio “is my favourite thing”, says the former McDonalds employee, 33. “I want to keep doing it.”

Though their past three albums failed to match the success of their ARIA-winning debut (it sold 2 million copies worldwide), Nicholls isn’t weighed down by expectations: “I hope it sells well, but you’re more just thinking about the songs and how you want it to sound,” he says. There was a good vibe, he adds among his bandmates and “best friends” – rhythm guitarist Ryan Griffiths, bass guitarist Brad Heald and drummer Hamish Rosser – recording Future Primitive (out on June 3) in Paris last year. “We are happy just making music.”

It was different in May 2004, when the roller-coaster of constant touring and fame saw the “Get Free” singer assault a photographer at a gig at Sydney’s Annandale Hotel. “I just ended up going a little crazy.” Locking himself in his home alone, “I was completely disconnected from everything,” recalls Nicholls, who was diagnosed in that year with the mild form of autism. “I had no telephone – I ripped that out of the wall. I had no connection to anything, like television. Just detached.”

Nearly a decade on, I’ve kind of cleaned up my act,” says Nicholls, without disclosing details. “I feel OK about everything.” His band are right behind him: “Craig’s just in a good state of mind – he understands what he can and can’t do,” Rodder tells WHO. “We know we’re capable of touring right now, we’ve just got to win everyone else’s confidence back.” Nicholls, who is single, spends downtime listening to the Kinks and the Beatles, and writing music – which is “like a habit”, he says. He compares being onstage to coming home. “There is nothing else I want to do.”