Highly Evolved

The title track of The Vines' debut lands like a thesis statement — brash, slightly unhinged, and convinced of its own importance in a way that's more charming than arrogant. The opening riff has the blunt force of a declaration, all downstroke aggression and trebly bite, and the song accelerates through its runtime with a kind of barely-controlled chaos. What makes it interesting is the tension between Nicholls's melodic instinct and his tendency to shred that melody apart with sudden dynamic lurches. The verse has an almost Lennon-esque vocal quality — clean, slightly nasal, melodically confident — before the chorus detonates into something rawer and more feral. Lyrically the song surveys the cultural landscape with the contempt of someone who arrived late to a party and found it disappointing. There's a generational anxiety encoded in it, a feeling of wanting to evolve past inherited forms while not being entirely sure what comes next. This was the record that put the Sydney band on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2002 and made them briefly the most hyped band on the planet. Culturally it belongs to that specific post-9/11 moment when rock music felt both urgently necessary and slightly doomed. It rewards listening in the late evening, volume uncomfortable, when you want your music to feel like it has something at stake.