i woke up this morning, went to about 6 places that sell cds. not one of them had this album. on the first day it came out. no one must give a sh*t bout this band anymore

Yeah how is it???

counting the days til 6th june when i finally will hear it properly.

god damn, haven't been on this site in ages, but I listened to the new album for the first time tonight and I love it. There are some really good solid tracks on here, mainly All That You Do, Cry, Weird Animals, and Goodbye.

What I always loved the most about The Vines' sound is all the layered vocals that create this simple, but sweeping melody that stays in my head, and they continued with that on this album. Love it.

The "new direction" songs on there like "Outro" are definitely a departure from their previous material but I'm really digging it.

I'm a shitty album reviewer so that's pretty much all I got to say. Just so happy to hear some new songs at last!

Are you in Australia?

If not ... http://www.jbhifionline.com.au/music/pop-r...ine-comp/649840

thanks!


I was under the impression that this album was being released worldwide, not just in Australia (physically I mean.) Melodia came out in the U.S. almost a full year after its original release date. I just dont get why they wouldn't put it out everywhere. I realize The Vines are a pretty small act these days, but there are so many bands that are MUCH less known that put out records EVERYWHERE....I just dont get it.

If you ordered the signed copy from JB Hi-Fi, how do you get the bonus track Vacant Video ? Can anyone help me with this please, cheers?

I don't feel like reading 30 pages but I was just wondering if this is going to be released in the USA and if so, when?
Thanks!

This is my first post on this website but I have been lurking around this forum for years and thought I would offer a review of Future Primitive, seeing as I'm yet to see one from anyone else.

Gimme Love

This song has obviously been heard by most fans and I would say it would be the most typical Vines commercial song. A guitarist could learn it in twenty seconds. A singer could learn it in ten. That kind of thing. It sticks in your head and will maintain the usual public perception of the band. It will also mean that if you are a musician who likes The Vines, your musician friends will continue to tell you how untalented, unoriginal and basic The Vines music is (you of course know different!).

Leave me in the Dark.

This song is a highlight in my opinion. It has a wonderful melody and the lyrics are pleasant to listen to. It is short in length with a mixture of that classic acoustic strumming and clean electric plucking of the chords overlapping each other. In this piece Craig has substituted what would usually be a guitar solo mimicking the melody to a rather different "oooo ooo oo ooo ooo" vocalization of the melody instead, I thought that it sounded slightly strange to have that part come in so early, however after the repetitive song structures of Melodia, a subtle twist was refreshing.

Candy Flippin' Girl

Beach Boys, The Kinks...bands of the 60's could have easily belted out this tune (minus the distorted guitars in the chorus) and probably made it someway up the charts. This song is easy on the ears and has a bit of Chris Colonna's influence with the DJ flange halfway through the song and a "girl laughing" sound effect incorporated into it as well. It is interesting to listen to in the sense that is a 60's sounding song, then add The Vines distorted guitars and rock chorus and THEN add Colonna's dance touch and It might almost seem that the comparison I made to the Kinks and Beach Boys is actually a fairly distant one...

A.S.4

This song was the first one that I really loved. Comparisons to some of the early demo's are definitely justified. A few aspect make this song to be, what I believe, the best Autumn Shade in the series. Firstly the reverb on Craig's voice gives it a creepy feel which I love and I feel like it gives the lyrics a sense of authenticity. I am a fan of Brad's work with the bass line that rolls along nicely with Hamish. I also like the production work, Colonna really makes Craig's voice lift to another dimension in the chorus. The outro is simply Hamish's drums being bashed with some tripped out echo effect which completes the product. I was skeptical of another one in the series, but not anymore!


Weird Animals

This is a very punk sounding song. At the start i though it was going to be a bit of a weak song in the same sort of vein as Scream on Melodia. However I was pleasantly surprised by the BIG tempo change half way through. The song slows down to a crawl with a big distorted riff that shows a bit more of that Grunge side of the band, which personally, I love. Its a good song.


Cry

A fairly radio friendly song which chorus consists of one word. Cry. I drew a comparison with 'Hey' on Melodia. I would also like to mention that I have drawn some comparisons with Melodia, not because I haven't listened to all the albums, but I genuinely think that there is a few similarities (not too many, dont worry!) What is interesting about this song is had it been on Melodia it would have sounded a lot worse than how it turned out on this album. A thanks to Colonna from me!

Future Primitive

Cool song and to be honest, probably a wise second single. It has a few strange sound effects to begin and end the song and it is fairly short. It has that melody mimicking guitar solo but with a stutter effect which I don't think I have heard Craig use before. There is also a cool bridge with a big echoing yell from Craig (Yeeeaaahhhh hear me shout!) that emits probably the most energy on the whole album. The song stops short when you don't expect it to and the track clicks over, which is sort of a shame.

Riverview Avenue

For my part this is the weakest song on the record. I just don't see what it offers. Its repetitive, which isn't always a bad thing when what you repeat sounds good, but the back-ups seem drowsy and the song never really gets going. Sometimes songs grow on me but I doubt this one ever will. The only highlight for me is the acoustic/drum tapping breakdown. That is sadly short-lived.

Black Dragon

This song sound heavy and deep and to is probably the darkest few minutes on the record. Insert melody guitar solo again, which sounds pretty cool in the setting. However one thing I didn't expect was that Brad ends with this smooth bass line, which I was expecting to be honored by the rest of the band joining in, but it just never happened! Instead just feedback with Brad playing to himself for over a minute. How lonely it must have been!

All That You Do

I heard that at one stage Craig said this was the best song on the album, I can see how it could have been, but I just didn't think the 'All that you do and all that you say' melody (and lyrics) were as strong as perhaps some of the other melodies on the record. Having said that, cool strings section, which I was surprised to see was actually performed by stringed instruments, I honestly thought it was just a keyboard? Or maybe it was a keyboard? If you were to goto the trouble of a strings section, surely it would have had a bit more creativity than just the four notes? Anyway I'm just saying it's an okay song and has a drum machine at the end which is a bit different.

Outro

Should I waste my words on this? It's pointless and seemed to me like something that had absolutely nothing to do with the band. It is basically Colonna turning a few knobs on the mixer whilst an obsolete drum track is rolling along in the background. You will listen to this once. Once only. Oh how I hope they do not use this as an entrance song to when they play live....

Goodbye

This is a phenomenal song! Its simplicity and the vulnerability of Craig's voice is beautiful. This song could be played at funerals for the next fifty years! Its a sad and emotional song and after you listen to it you will do three things; 1) forgive them for the previous tracks inclusion, 2) realize what a truly brilliant voice Craig still has and 3) do what track 6 suggests. I haven't heard anything like it from Craig before.

S.T.W

I think this song is, as far as lyrics go, the best on the album. I also found the slightly off note of screw the "wooooorrlld" to be strange, but in a good way! It's a good end to the album, they could have either gone out blazing on this or left quietly on the previous track, and for me I'm glad they chose the former as it reminds you that these guys are still rocking out hard and will be doing so for a while to come. If I was to draw obvious comparisons between F.T.W and S.T.W I would go for S.T.W in a split decision!

I think this album ranks at number 4 in The Vines discography. Just behind Vision Valley. Probably only because I feel that it doesn't have a standout single (I felt "Don't listen to the Radio" was on VV). A DEFINITE improvement on their last effort and money well spent! I am looking forward to their next album.

A few notes:

- Unfortunately I don't think the band will ever have the same aggression that they had for the first few albums.
- I sometimes miss Craig's guitar rocking by itself, which is no discredit to Ryan, but that sound on Highly Evolved hasn't been captured since
- Brad lifts his game on this album and I think will grow even more into the band next album
- Colonna hasn't been the miracle cure to discovering an amazing song but his skills definitely makes some average songs sound good.
- An small experimental step for the band, I hope it leads to more!

Thomas.

good review man looks like it took some effort, I agree with most of what you say except for what you say about All That You Do. That song really stands out to me, its beautiful and the crescendo(?) is sooo uplifting

Thats fair enough mate.

I don't think It's a bad song, maybe an "okay" rating for it was a little bit harsh. However, it is early days and you know what new albums are like, next week it might be one of my favourites!

anyone has trouble downloading the album? i ordered a copy and you get the download version for free and it won't work, either i get an empty track sent to my itunes or other times it just won't work. comes up with error. also there's nothing there about a free track. are they not doing that anymore?

btw seeing as people are reviewing i though without giving a review i'd try to order them in order of favourite to least favourite
1 screw the world (blows my mind, it's got a pace and vibe that i love)
2 future primitive (love it, very interesting arrangement, kicks arse)
3 candy flippin' girl (didn't like it live at all when i saw a video on youtube, but it's great)
4 gimme love (it's hard to place gimme love cos i've heard it so much it feels separate from the rest now but it's probably the most poppy loud guitar based vines style song)
5 goodbye (really really nice song)
6 weird animals (wasn't too keen until the outro kicked in and i love that)
7 black dragon (it's alright, hard to describe but it's doesn't have the aggression or power of other loud songs)
8 autumn shade 4 (i like it, but it's possibly my least fave autumn shade)
9 leave me in the dark (i usually love the melodic, acoustic vines songs but apart from goodbye, not feeling it much from all the mellow ones on album)
10 riverview avenue (kind of reminds me of sunshinin a little, cool but not wow)
11 cry (sounds like a cross between riverview avenue & candy flippin, its ok)
12 all that you do (i really really dislike this one sadly. i don't like the start, then when the big chorus kicks in it sounds like it should used for a cheesy phone commercial then the end i don't like)
13 outro (interesting noise, a little like revolution 9 when you hear craig doing a repeated squeal)

i listened to the album the 1st time on random and i got literally my favourite 6 of the 1st 7 so i was thinking it was amazing, shame i got my feast favourite all comes out in order at the end of random play. but apart from that i think it's great. maybe just missing about 2 better songs to balance it out.

Anyone else notice "Leave me in the dark" has the same melody as "The wining days are gone"?

Good album, VINES!

Yeah I noticed that too straight away. At first I felt a bit annoyed that it sounded so similar but now I dont feel the same way about it. Love the lyrics and feel of the song and those starish dreamy effects witch you can hear especially in the end.

Ok, time to review this album now that ive heard it.


It's decent. It's not great. It's on par with the last two albums, nowhere near Highly Evolved.

They said there were 40 songs that didn't make the cut. So "Outro" is better than those other 40? I don't think I wanna hear those, haha.

Anyways, what we have here, once again, for the third time in a row, is a collection of decent melodies that could have been so much more. I was so happy to see some songs over 3 minutes, but those songs ended up being 2 minute songs with a minute and a half of "feedback filler." Hell, that's all that Outro is! The band says the short songs are just their style, but I have a hard time believing that. Their first two albums were full of long, well thought out songs that kept bringing you surprises till the very end. The songs on this album have so little to them, verse chorus verse chorus (5 second solo that mimmicks the melody) verse chorus... and they come to a end at 2 mintues...and they rightly should. thats one thing i have to give them credit for, they aren't stretching simple ideas too far. It's hard for me to really critique these songs because there's nothing horrible about the content we have. There's just so little that we were given here. I've listened to the album about 5 times and I already know it by heart, which goes to show two things

1.) The content is short and simple
2.) The content is catchy enough to remember

Being short and sweet is not a bad thing. Songs like "Orange Amber," "Highly Evolved," and "Don't Listen to The Radio" are perfect just the way they are. Imagine how dissatisfying a song like "Mary Jane" would be if it was stripped of it epicness, shortened to 2 minutes. In short, I like the content on this album, but just when I'm getting into it, the song is over, leaving me thinking "....that's it?"

I want all of you to listen to "1969". The song is almost seven minutes long, and new guitar riffs, guitar hooks, and melodies appear right up until the very end of the song (not to mention the dynamics.) There was clearly a TON of thought put into it, and it shows. That's the kinda song that can really blow you away, making you think "wow...how did they think of that...what a song!" I feel like you could tear "1969" apart and make at least 3 songs out of it by New Vines Album standards.

For Vines fans, I'd definitely say check this album out. It's decent but not great. I'd be skeptical about showing this album to a non-vines fan, however. If i had to rate it, I'd probably give it a 6/10.

I want The Vines to do well, and I know Craig can do better than what he's put out on recent records. Their debut album was great, mainly because you could tell that it was all the best ideas Craig ever had for songwriting that piled up over his lifetime. Ever since then he's had about 2 years to try and come up with an equally great bunch...not an easy task at all. I hope the band realizes how important it is to fine tune your songs, it makes all the difference in the world. For example, let's take "Country Yard." It has two great things going for it: The melody is GREAT, and there is a GREAT guitar part dancing underneath it. If "Country Yard" was written for this record, I feel like it would have been accompanied by simple guitar strumming, rather than the note-for-note plucking intro that carries the song so well, and probably wouldn't have been quite as long. Let's even take "Ride" for example. The melody is pretty good, but what really kicks your teeth in is that opening riff. It's a short song, but it has a lot going for it.

I hope I've made my point. Obviously Craig can still write a song. I just wish when the band went to record the songs, they put a little more effort on how they could add some meat to the bones. Decent effort, but I'm hoping for more next time around, for my own enjoyment AND for the sake of the band.

Very good points you have there platinum. Especially about the 'Country Yard' comparison. It does appear that musically, there is less experimentation and thought in the structures of the songs and also the way they are delivered.

What I have also noticed is that a guitar hook like 'ride' or 'animal machine' sound so good because they have gaps in their sequence and the strumming/plucking pattern is unique. For the past couple albums it has been a bit too 'four chord wonder' and the basic 'up,down,up,down' strumming of bar chords.

Malcolm and Angus Young do this superbly. They have simple chords but make then sound so unique each time by the rhythmic pattern of them (see: Highway to Hell, Rock n Roll Train, T.N.T) rather than the chord itself.

QFT

(Been a forum user before (Highly Evolved - Winning Days Era), despite this being a "first post from this account")

This, pretty much. Except, I'm a lot less forgiving on the band. I agree with a lot of the views that Platinum had. I feel as if The Vines are more capable of what they've been producing so far.

When Vision Valley came out, I was excited that the band was making a come back, however I couldn't help but feel disappointed that the songs were so short. Whatever, they're just getting back into the groove of things, and that's fine; it's a step towards progress. But, then they came out with Melodia.

Again, short songs, but they weren't even of the quality that Vision Valley had. VV had songs on it that I felt that while they were short, they could have been epic songs if they were longer and more complex. But, Melodia was just... simple and kind of cheap. Over time, I eventually developed a sort of... loathing of the album because I felt that it was lazy, uninspired, etc.

And now, after listening to Future Primitive, I find myself abhorring it worse.

Although, I'm not going to just endlessly rip on the album (trust me I could) without trying to explain my reasoning. I suppose I'm just disappointed, because some of the songs on Future Primitive just seem so... corny that it's nearly painful to listen to at times. I'm beginning to believe that The Vines are attempting to jump back onto the 'catchy' band-wagon with hopes that it will re-ignite their career again. But they're missing the important element that they had in Highly Evolved...

Effort.

Now, obviously, Craig had his whole life to write that album... But, I thought Winning Days was an excellent album too and Vision Valley was... okay - at best. So, it's really no excuse.

But, like I said before; they just seem to be getting lazier and lazier. They may try to say "shorter songs are more their style" but, I find that comment a bit hard to take seriously when I know that they're so much more capable of creating really epic songs, such as 1969, In the Jungle, Animal Machine, etc. I don't know, I guess whenever I listen to those songs, I find myself feeling just... really disappointed with the band.

Sort of like what Platinum had said... The band had forty songs to pick from and these were the ones that made it? :s Eeek. I REALLY loved A.S.4... That one was really good. But some of them just made me facepalm at how silly they sounded and it sort of makes me fear what the other songs could have possibly been...

Now, if this is the route that The Vines wish to take with their music, then by all means, that is their prerogative. Though I'm pretty sure I've lost my patience with them... I realize that my post may make me sound like a big lady-dick, but. *shrugs* It's just my opinion and everyone is of course entitled to their's. However, my opinion is that I think some people also give this album way more credit than it deserves... Same with Melodia. They were both just... bad. : / That doesn't mean my opinion is right of course, but, it's just the way I feel so... *raspberries*

The only strength Future Primitive has over Melodia is that it at least has some songs on it that make me think it could have been a good album is some of the songs (like Future Primitive itself) were longer and more thoughtful.

But, I kind of feel like The Vines have reached a point with me to where they're just saying, "Ah, fuck you, you'll buy it."

totally. they need to put more thought into the songs. what happeend to all that psychedelic shifts in songs like amnesia, 1969, and in the jungle!!!

most songs on melodia and future primitive have the same pattern which is a good pattern but too repetitive album after album.

i feel like they put out an album every two years because they can and because 2 years is the norm. but i wish they'd take more time if they have to and come out with something amazing that Craig is SO capable of writing. this dude still rocks 100% he just needs to be more ambitious.

love this band for life.