Vines’ return to the live arena in their native Australia on the Big Day Out festival has provoked a furore Down Under, with confusion and contradiction being voiced from both the Aussie press and fans.
While some fans emailed NME.COM with ecstatic reviews of the show, The Melbourne Sun Herald described their set at the Gold Coast leg of the festival last week (January 19) as “painful”.
The article ran: “Most talked-about band on the planet? Vines, still, and plenty more were talking after their set at the Big Day Out on Sunday… And none of it positive.
“Just a few months ago they played a couple of dynamite shows in Brisbane, but playing in broad daylight at a festival doesn’t seem to agree with them.”
Website www.news.com.au described their set as “at best, a wasted opportunity” and quoted a fan at the festival, who said: “The place was packed before they started and within two songs people started streaming out.
“Afterwards I saw one girl ripping off a Vines
patch from her shirt. Later I saw punters with their Vines
T-shirts turned inside-out.”
The website reported that Nicholls was “out of control”, barely hitting a note, dropping his guitar several times, smashing a microphone and was generally “disengaged from his bandmates”.
Were you at any of the shows? If so, we want to hear from you. What did you think of Vines? Were they out of control? Are the reports too negative or fair? And what do you think of new song ‘Fuck The World’? E-mail us at news@nme.com with your views.