polaroids of androids

In a recent internet discussion with a friend I attempted to make a link between the career of The Vines and that of Weezer. He cheekily pointed out that Weezer "had two good albums" and crushed the somewhat valid comparison that I was attempting to make.

Both groups had fantastic debuts (and yes - Weezer's did carry this over to their sophomore release) before they started to become bogged down in the lack of development in their core sound. Both have also desperately attempted to recapture and recreate what made them successful in their early work and failed miserably. While Melodia is the best thing The Vines have done since their debut, Highly Evolved, on too many occasions it feels as if they are attempting to trace their previously successful formulas instead of naturally progressing forward.

With the exception of the painful six minute ballad, True As The Night, which sits at the epicentre of the album like Biggie Smalls at The Skinny White Nerd Convention, Melodia sees the band return to their strength of whipping out two minute pop-focused spurts of rock and melodic angst. The opening two tracks - Get Out and Manger - especially the latter which features a nice, heavy bass line - are both well executed kidney punches of post-punk-garage-something. They are light on substance, but undeniably enjoyable.

We are then hit with the third (and completely unnecessary) recreation of their original Autumn Shade ballad, before being led into the path of the painfully forced radio single, He's A Rocker. And at this point the explosive start of the record has been completely extinguished.

There are a handful of highlights scattered across this release - the previously mentioned opening pair, the ear-piercing noise of Jamola, the drunk party track Scream and the tornado-like Braindead - but the majority of the songs sound like recycled versions of the most successful moments from their back catalogue. The group have a predefined format for both of their song styles - the up-tempo wild numbers and the ballads - and, unfortunately, this album shows that they haven't decided to remake these moulds just yet.