RECENT ITEMS»

The Vines
At Irving Plaza
Filter Grade: 87%
by Tom Birner | 01.01.2007

Going to see the Vines in concert, you expect something juvenile. You hear they’re too stoned to play their instruments (and I thought it made you better at everything…). Most agree that Highly Evolved was fucking detonating, but away from the cradle of production, and the band was consistently too drunk and unruly to play live.

Don’t believe a word.

Speaking of drunk(s), it was Saint Paddy’s day. I wore my green Versace (Bugle Boy) jacket and “sex me, I’m not Irish” pin, but it was hard to find any takers—these days New York is about as Irish as a mosque. No matter. Fifteen Australians had arrived to execute hard-rock music with varying levels of deviation. The recap:

Neon started things off around 8:30, and somehow bored everyone to tears with catchy Jesus and Pixie Chain fuzz rock. They gave way to the Living End, a furious half-punk, half-swing trio from Melbourne. Chris Cheney roused the crowd with boisterous roars and too-good-for-punk solos. The mosh pits forming to the right of the stage proved that some hipsters do have aggression (the same anger fueling their volumes of unpublished poetry).

Then came Jet, who had twice the buildup of the Vines, and whose interchangeable riffs gave fans something to talk about back at the mall. The more sonic Who-ish power jams went unnoticed, but the cell phones were raised for “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and ‘uh…(guilty cough) all those… other great songs…’ Jet has the scariest looking rhythm section I’ve ever seen, and managed to rock the crowd despite neglecting such favorites as “Back in Black” and “Highway to Hell.”

And out came the Vines to (my) roaring applause. The grungy foursome opened with “Outtathaway!” only to mellow out soon after. Halfway through “Amnesia,” a gorgeous piece of Lennon inspired psych pop off Winning Days, my friend and I exchanged bewildered looks as if to say, “What is this, Radiohead?”

With their tattered presentation of silvery hooks, maybe the Vines are closer to a less well-behaved Coldplay. Craig Nicholls hit near-perfect Yorkean falsetto on “Autumn Shade II,” only to spray us with crashing waves of guitar on “Ain’t No Room.” “TV Pro” made me want to slay dragons (or at least stumble up to one with drunken swagger), and “Winning Days” had some damn pretty harmonies. The set was predictably short and the crowd was--for the most part--reticent until a few finally shed their too-cool inhibition, put down their sketch pads and jumped around to an encore of “Get Free” and “Fuck The World.”