Winning Days

Not the Second Coming, But A Good Second Album
by: clint poole

The successful debut album was much easier. There were no expectations, no media established levels of success, no MTV executed image and persona, just a band playing their honest, raw music. The successful follow-up album, however, is perhaps the most difficult pinnacle of artistic achievement a band can attain. It has been the end of many young bands who faltered trying to live up to previous success. The record execs. want to capitalize on the 1st album while its still fresh, the industry wants to test the band for legend status, and most difficult of all, the fans expect the same music as before, but better.

With Winning Days, The Vines make their run at avoiding the downward spiral toward obscurity. The band manages to avoid the depths of artistic irrelevance but may have fallen short of securing their legacy. Winning Days finds the band experimenting with the boundaries of their own creativity and range, with variable success. The album delivers enough successful tracks to overcome its lackluster attempts and keep on par with their over-the-top debut Highly Evolved.

Tracks like current radio hit “Ride” carry the familiar ravaging rock sounds and craggy vocals. The album makes an attempt at Beatle-like ethereal sounds, with some success; “TV Pro” is a solid composition of march beats and guitars, and with some failures; such as the meandering “Autmn Shade”. The band even gets adventurous by melding the two sounds successfully on “Evil Town”.

Its not worth exploring why certain tracks miss they mark, any listener will easily pick them out. The album as a whole fluidly tells the story of a band exploring new directions, finding their creativity and artistic range, and even making some good music in the process. 10-May-2004 9:45 PM