Volte-face

You remember The Vines, right? Somehow, back in the crazy days of 2002 when any band with 'The' at the start were deemed music's saviours, this group of Australian stoners somehow managed to steal the hearts (and minds) of every single music journalist on the entire planet. A plethora of plaudits came spewing out from all corners of the globe, with Rolling Stone featuring them on the cover in America to a set trashing performance on Jools Holland.



At the forefront of all this, of course, were the NME who featured the band in nearly every edition around the time of their debut album, Highly Evolved. When it became clear that lead singer Craig Nicholls was suffering some kind of mental illness the magazine relished the chance to create another tortured genius. Unfortunately, you can probably guess the rest; second album Winning Days was met with muted reviews (NME giving it 5/10) and suddenly the band who had it all were gone.

The band have now released their fourth album, Melodia, on myspace and in a slightly odd move, NME have written a review/apology which can be read here. The album can be heard here.

OK, so it's not very good, but you have to wonder how many times the NME will have to compose one of these apologies. Surely, a few need to be done retrospectively- Terris, Campag Velocet, Ultrasound- and surely one is being prepared for Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong, publication date January 2009.