The Vines
Winning Days

THE REVIEW

The second effort by Craig Nicholls' Aussie Rock Band is full of musical clichés and lacking in ideas.
A rhythm guitarist has joined the original trio to enrich the Vines' sound, but one is led to believe that this happened more to mask the enormous artistic shortcomings of the group than anything else (see the absurd live performances "All Over the World" in the last two years).

“Ride”, the single that launches the album, is a mix of theft from Cobain and company, "popified" by clapping in time and stuffed with the inexplicable reinsertion of a riff already present in the first album “Highly Evolved” (the initial one from "Ain’t No Room," to be precise)! By changing just a little of the piece's rhythm and placing the accents right, one can easily end up humming “Dive with meeeeeee” from "Incesticide".

Analyzing all the songs would be an enormous drag, but overall, one can say that the album only raises its head during the slower moments: "Autumn Shade II", the track that gives the album its title, and "Sun Child" (which is, moreover, a B-Side from one of their singles from 2002...) are genuinely good Pop-McCartney-Ballads, complete with rhythm changes and catchy melodies, which, however, do not quite convince one that they've spent their money well.
Unfortunately, the album is filled with inexplicable things, like the shapeless "Tv Pro," which alone can make one understand how, unfortunately, one can arrive at a second album already cooked.

The production of each track is deficient in something, and with the excuse of wanting to make a more psychedelic album, the anger, power, and explosiveness that had driven the debut album are missing, which, all things considered, remains a good album. Always by today's musical standards...