The Vines @ Capitol, Perth(10/09/2011)

Wed 14th Sep, 2011 in Gig Reviews

The Bleeding Knees Club set started way too early, so few punters had the chance to sample the killer SoCal surfer rock set. Ending with high energy Bad Guys, the band packed up hastily as a small number of people continued to loiter around the bar. Papa vs. Pretty played soon afterwards with some serious swagger. Guitar shredding – check. Hip thrusts – check. Glamour-gasm faces – check, and mate.

Watching Thomas Rawle sing Heavy Harm was simply captivating. Rawle delivered with absolute conviction and to hear such unexpected, weathered vocals from a face that still reflects the innocence of youth was quite powerful. Ending with an older song Wrecking Ball, Papa vs. Pretty definitely won some hearts.

The Vines have packaged and reprocessed 60’s rock and sold it to the world. Back in Perth for the second time in two months, the band celebrated the final leg of their Future Primitive Tour with us. Greeted with a loud cheer, lead singer Craig Nicholls took pride in wearing the new Vines shirt under his blazer.

They dove right into Future Primitive, Anysound and older tracks Highly Evolved and Hot Leather. This was no gig for Telethon, and things got a little messy. What started as polite pogo jumps, grew into a clump of bodies that shoved each other left to right; Outtathaway! proved to be an appropriate song for the festivities and the drummer from Papa vs. Pretty scored a great view from surfing the crowd during Ride. Judging from the age of the punters, the pre-_Melodia_ songs must have been terribly nostalgic for the crowd. The Vines had the anthems young teens were searching for: something with grunge mystique and Woodstock-y in a law-abiding fashion. After another frenzied mosh to Scream, the band left the stage.

There was a strong cheer for an encore and Nicholls returned to play a sweet solo version of Leave Me in the Dark. The rest of the band followed and kicked the energy levels back up to 10 with He’s a Rocker and Fuck the World, there was more crowd surfing and excited punters flooded the stage. One fan was held upside down for a fair amount of time, blood rushed to his head as he waved his work boots in the air. Once security kicked everyone off stage, Nicholls carefully threw around his guitar, tossed it in the air, bumped it on the drums and tapped it on the floor. It didn’t look like he actually wanted to break the thing, but punters thought it looked pretty rock n roll regardless. The band bid a final adieu and fans scrambled for souvenir drumsticks and some d-bag decided to go one up for everyone swipe the microphone from the stand. They may not have turned out to be the saviours of rock n roll, but The Vines sure know how to turn people on without any injuries.