Albums are graded on a five-point scale of "Awful-Eh-Good-Great-Classic". I'm highly biased, so don't take it too seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

The Vines

[#] Highly Evolved (2002)

The best sleep aid in garage rock.

Reviewed October 20, 2020

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read a wordier and possibly less accurate version of my feelings on this album.)

During the 2002 VMAs, two groups were pitted against each other in a mock Battle of the Bands: Fagersta, Sweden's The Hives and Sydney, Australia's The Vines. The Hives took the smaller stage, ripping through a tight and damn catchy rendition of Veni Vidi Vicious' "Main Offender", and The Vines played the main stage and took a big poo instead. Frontman Craig Nicholls embraced the spectacle of rock and roll for years at the band's inception, and the VMAs performance, with its squeaky wails and Nirvana-esque stage trashing, isn't even the worst example of it. Nicholls can make fun of me for laughing all he wants, but it's a funny performance. Too bad the music on Highly Evolved is as tepid as it comes. Double J can claim their catalog is more than just "Highly Evolved good, everything after bad", but Highly Evolved wasn't even all that good to begin with, so where does that leave the rest of it?

About half the album consists of midtempo, slightly twangy snoozers with a handful of proper rockers to break up the monotony. "Get Free" is the highlight of those, a bloodthirsty barnburner, propelled by Beck's legendary drummer Joey Waronker and somehow kept together in spectacular fashion despite the careening chords and constant, pounding drum fills. Otherwise, it's surprisingly tentative and tidy for such a disastrous band on stage promised to us all as The Next Nirvana. "Country Yard" is the single example of one of the ballads working out, especially given, after all I've read of Nicholls' autism diagnosis, how introspective and weary it plays: "I'm tired of feeling sick and useless/Then speaking every other way". From one sperg to another: I getcha. I've been there.