The Vines’ front man Craig Nicholls made it clear that
there would be no encore even before the band finished its last
song at the Roxy Theatre Saturday night. As his band mates pounded
away at their instruments in what would be the show’s finale,
using his guitar like a sledgehammer, Nicholls smashed drummer
Hamish Rosser’s drum kit and then threw his guitar into the
air. It landed with a thud but stayed in one piece as the band
walked off the stage, flashing peace signs.
One wonders whether the capacity crowd actually wanted an encore
after The Vines’ uneven and mediocre set of loud rock
‘n’ roll. There were catchy gems, like the exciting
opener “Highly Evolved,” but the band got bogged down
with its slower songs.
Like the audience it played for, the band was dressed simply in
jeans and T-shirts, pulling off the disheveled look well enough.
Nicholls (the band’s only songwriter) has an interesting
voice which he uses to yelp, scream and wail. Nicholls knows how to
sneer like brat, and his scream conveys a lot of emotion. Mostly
Nicholls seemed to scream out of rage, which would have grown
tiresome very quickly. However, at times he seemed to be screaming
out of boredom, which made his antics compelling.
Yet his guitar work was even more impressive. Throughout the set
Nicholls flailed about the stage with guitar in tow, and even as he
writhed on the floor he never missed his queue or a note. At one
point Nicholls propped his guitar up against an amplifier and
gyrated in rhythm with the guitar feedback coming from the amp.
Up-tempo songs like “Get Free” and
“Outtathaway!” featured beautiful guitar stomp,
although the latter was momentarily marred by Nicholls’
technical trouble with his guitar, which kept him from singing part
of the first verse.
If it is not already apparent, Nicholls is the star of The
Vines. In fact, there does not seem to be much room for acoustic
guitarist Ryan Griffith, who only played on about half the songs,
and watched the rest from the side of the stage.
The problem with the slower songs was their plodding nature,
which dulled any of the crowd’s excitement that had been
created by the band. “Mary Jane” ran long, and not even
Nicholls’ wailing vocals could keep it interesting. The only
slow song that satisfied was “Homesick,” a sad song one
imagines Nicholls wrote while the band was on the road outside of
its native Australia.
Halfway through its set the band surprised the crowd by
performing a melancholy rendition of Outkast’s “Ms.
Jackson,” and received some of the loudest applause of the
night. However, the band’s need to cover a song from a
different genre for simple shock value seemed calculated.
For a grunge influenced rock ‘n’ roll album, the
band’s debut “Highly Evolved,” features rather
slick production. As it is on the album, the band’s
musicianship was polished Saturday night. However, Nicholls’
voice was much more raw live, and his vocals were often different
from those heard on the album as he wrapped his voice around
melodies.
Nicholls just needs to wrap his voice around some better songs
for the band to log a more rewarding show.