The Vines - Melodia
Ivy League
By Andrew P Street
Melodia is a classic Vines album. That's not to say that it's a great Vines album, you understand, because The Vines have never been about consistency. One gets the impression that Craig Nicholls could pump out a record a week, and his scattershot muse could really do with a great editor pushing him to turn some of the half-ideas into proper songs.
Even so, the opening ‘Get Out' is a perfect piece of Vines popcraft: two minutes and 11 seconds of big chords and bratty vocals that can sit perfectly alongside ‘Highly Evolved' (a description that also fits first single ‘He's A Rocker') while ‘Hey' finds a middle ground between the Dandy Warhols and Nirvana. And then there's the filler: ‘Orange Amber' is a strummy, midpaced number whose sweet harmonies almost conceal the fact there's not really a song there, ‘Jamola' is barely a minute of sub-metal riffery and the insipid ballad ‘Kara Jayne' loses extra points for ‘rhyming' "my baby girl" and "in my world".
So: some dizzying highs mixed with some how-did-this-even-pass-muster throwaway tracks. Business as usual, then.