The Vines’ Craig Nicholls has finally written the material for a great record. Unfortunately, those songs are spread over three LPs.

He’d be able to piece together an impressive “Greatest Hits” record by cherry-picking his best cuts. But his tendency has always been to sandwich carefully crafted pop tunes between lazy, unfocused musical temper tantrums.

That could be in part to his Asperger Syndrome – the form of Autism the singer was diagnosed with in 2004. Or it could be the frontman lacks the emotional or professional maturity to realize faults in his songwriting. Or maybe he does, but he’s just too stubborn to care.

Regardless of why, “Vision Valley” suffers and succeeds for the same reason as the band?s entire catalogue – which essentially makes the Sydney-natives the exact same band as four years ago, when combining layers of swooning melodies next to splicing guitars and the occasional gruff scream hinted The Vines had lots more to grow.

But now it’s 2006, and Nicholls still is satisfied with just showing potential instead of actually fulfilling it. And at some point – say, three records into a career – potential becomes disappointment if it’s never reached.

Thus “Vision Valley” is a let-down, but not in the same way as if the record was awful. In that case, it would be easy to disregard the band as a right-place-right-time success story. But it?s not awful. In fact, it has some wonderful moments.

The alt-country inspired “Take Me Back” and the orchestra-laden title track show Nicholls at his most harmonic. “Nothin’s Comin” and “Don’t Listen to the Radio” use the chiming guitar sound the band apparently leased from early Dandy Warhols. The album’s closer, “Spaceship” takes the group into six-minute, Pink Floyd-esque territory.

But during the 30 minutes, disappointments outnumber these bright spots. When Nicholls is allowed to roam, when his bandmates or a producer doesn’t wrangle in the volatile singer, the 13 tracks – like much of his work – become distracted. The murky screams are otherwise inaudible and the spastic tempo changes pointlessly harsh.

That is the tale of The Vines; it is a tale of two personalities – both sides of Nicholls. At times the band is delicately thoughtful, at others it is unapologetically thoughtless.

This inability to choose to either become an intelligent songwriter or a full-fledged brat leaves Nicholls – and listeners – floundering somewhere in between.

And that is the root of The Vines’ problem.

Northern Star, April 14, 2006