At times measured and at others manic, The Vines’ Craig Nicholls is older and a little wiser. He talks Hannah Story through making their sixth record, Wicked Nature.

The Vines’ Craig Nicholls is dressed in a red Adidas jacket, his fringe falling in front of his eyes. The 37-year-old speaks in frenzied half-sentences, before pausing for a moment to consider his response, then launching right back into the thick of it, rattling off lists of his musical inspirations (The Silents, The Beatles, BRMC), of his future plans (“play [Wicked Nature] live and record some more”), of his thematic concerns (nature versus technology).

Still when the topic doesn’t grasp him, when he notices what seem to be almost like triggers, he becomes measured, self-aware. He is a masterclass in self-restraint; he doesn’t go into detail on certain subjects in fear that he’ll get “too emotional”, although the main emotion on display seems really to be joy – he’s glad to be back sharing his music with others again, despite the fact that by modern standards he’s a bit of a recluse. His subject matter is anti-technology: “I won't drive a car, mobile phone, computers, I want none of it, and it has kind of left me on the outside.”

How do people contact him without a phone or computer? “They don’t. I’m very much a lone wolf. I go out and I see bands sometimes, I know people from bands, but very much I’m on my own. It’s kind of weird, but it’s always been like that. I’m very introverted. I’m just thankful that I have the band so I can do something.”

After the departure of Ryan Griffiths, Hamish Rosser and Brad Heald in 2011-12, it seemed like the end of The Vines. Instead, Nicholls recruited two new musicians, and long-time Vines fans, reforming as a three-piece: Lachlan West on drums, and Tim John on bass. But why didn’t Nicholls take the opportunity to rebrand?

“Well, just because I put so much into it, it’d be a shame just to throw it away,” says Nicholls. “There’s a lot of history there, there’s a lot of songs, a lot of albums. I just love playing in a band, it’s the only band I’ve ever been in. I’m really glad it’s still going… This is our sixth album, it’s great just to be doing something to keep, without sounding too corny, the craft alive. As you know a lot of music TV doesn’t show the real stuff – they may be called artists, but they’re not really; their songs are written for them and they’re kind of, it’s this big production. It’s just good to still be going, keep rock’n’roll on life support, you know. I don’t think it’s gone away, I don’t think it’ll ever go away, there’s been times where it’s been more popular but it’s something I still care about.”

The end product of the reformation is their first independently released record Wicked Nature, a double album that runs the gamut of genre, from what Nicholls describes as “heavy metal” to garage to country-rock to a more punk-ish aesthetic. “A lot of the three-chord songs, they go for two-and-a-half minutes, the lyrics, I’m actually saying stuff I believe in.

“It was a double album – the first one we did with Paul McKercher in 12 days, that’s 12 songs in 12 days, the next one we did with Lachlan Mitchell, we did ten tracks in five days, so that was pretty cool, going in on Monday and on Friday night having the finished album.”

The legend goes that the album was finished by the end of 2012, yet now it’s September 2014, and the record has only just hit the market. “I think it’s the management’s fault. Without pointing fingers or naming names, but yeah, it’s kind of ridiculous how quickly it was done. I can’t even talk any further about it, I’ll get too emotional.

“[The songs] were written pretty quickly. Just with the music business today, we released this album ourselves, I’ve got a whole bunch of other songs... It could’ve come sooner but it’s just the way that the business side of it is, [which is] kind of a drag.”

In the meantime, Nicholls has been working on his art, but he says he doesn’t think he could put on an exhibition. “I did the album cover for this double album. I did a lot of that. Doing collages, a lot of mixed media stuff, I’m lucky I don’t have to work another job so I can be a bum sometimes. I go through periods where I’m very productive and sometimes I do nothing.

“I was thinking about it, doing a book maybe, someone asked me about doing an exhibition. I’m fine with songs, it’s great, you can sell them and you still get to keep them. With artwork I don’t think I could sell them because you never get to see them, but I think I’d be too precious about having an exhibition, I think people might spill their drinks on my artwork, like rubbing up, screaming or something.”

And so The Vines live on. “Hopefully in a month we’re gonna have a gig in Sydney. We’re gonna do some tours; I think we’re maybe gonna go to England later in the year. There’s nothing that’s in concrete, but I think there’ll be one [show] in Sydney in about a month hopefully. It should be really exciting.

“There is a rich history there. And I’m not necessarily ashamed or proud of it. It’s all been real. Ever since I started in the band, the whole nature of things, you grow up in school and you get pressure, no one’s going to help you make it in a band, no one wants to, so you have to kind of fight for it. When you believe in it, you fight for it, you get success or whatever... For me, like my attitude to selling songs to commercials or movies or all that stuff is it’s good, having your song on the radio, I guess as long as you don’t want to compromise. It sounds pretty corny but the situations that I’ve been in, they’ve all been real, and that’s just the way that it goes. I knew starting out, it’s not like we were the Backstreet Boys, there’s a different kind of mentality. Some people do whatever they’re told to get fame or attention – not trying to diss the Backstreet Boys, I think they’re great – but we’ve done it our way, that’s all I can say.”