Pitchfork

If the first time is tragedy, and the second time is farce, then what would you call it the third time around? Around these parts, the Vines have been a farce from the start-- adding up the numbers Pitchfork writers attached to their first two albums would barely get them past 6. Well, here are some points to get these sassy kids over the ever-loving ten point oh mark. If these three albums get released on one CD, it will be so awesome.

As it stands, what the Vines offer on their third album is permutations and refinements on what they've been doing since whenever. On the stupid loud songs, Craig Nicholls sounds like a bored Kurt Cobain. On the stupid slow songs, Craig Nicholls sounds like a bored Liam Gallagher (which is pretty impressive, given Gallagher's innate inertia). To the group's benefit, the exhibitions of ennui available on Vision Valley cut out before the 3:00 mark. (That excludes "Spaceship", the group's six-minute Pink Floyd Stadium Tour moment.) A lot of tracks barely make it past two minutes, which works great for the hyper-ironic first single, "Don't Listen to the Radio", and "Nothin's Comin'", one of the better Nirvanabee tracks. Brevity does not help when you call a song "Futuretarded"-- cowbell or no cowbell.

Of course, track length is immaterial when your trippy dippy psych-psoaked buzz ballads are wearing out their welcome before they find that confounded bridge. "Take Me Back" is country-fried Vines, complete with twangy guitar lead-in. "Going Gone" is wonderwalled Vines, complete with string section. And if one's source of inspiration is the overworn "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (as it is on the title track), then one needs to go back to the drawing board and chuck the tracing paper.

And that's the short of it. This album's greatest failing is that there's nothing here. There's nothing remotely offensive about Vision Valley that can inspire any sort of righteous fury about the musical hegemony. Unless you're offended by the f-bomb-- there are bits of f-shrapnel sprinkled throughout, to provisionally lend proceedings a certain edge that no amount of power chording can truly hone. And there's nothing musically offputting about this record, unless relentless mediocrity in the three-chord arts is a capital crime.

Subjectivity being what it is-- the Vines are the Vines are the Vines. They're good at what they do, even if what they do isn't all that good. They have their fan base. They have inroads to get a song into some commercial and on Jack FM stations. They have a budget to make videos that will get them face time on MTV2's Subterranean. And, in two years, they'll have another album out that (if previous efforts are any indication) will sound a lot like this one. Maybe they'll tap into some unforeseen creative vein and surprise everyone with their Brave New Direction, or actually write more than one or two decent songs per album. Until that happens, though, you know what you're getting if you're buying this album. And you're probably not going to like it.