The Vines

It's unlikely that the Vines will lose any fans with their cleanly produced second album. Their balance of the dreamy and the abrasive is in full effect here. Unhinged efforts like "Ride" and "F.T.W" mesh perfectly with such soothing numbers as "Autumn Shade II" and the very fine "Sun Child."

The reason these Aussies saved neither Capitol Records nor rock and roll isn't this duff follow-up. It's their duff debut. Inferior to not just Nirvana but Oasis, led by a spoiled jerk who can't sing the lyrics he can't write, and of negligible musical interest beyond the stray hook, they demonstrated the biz's conceptual bankruptcy by parlaying a fluke hit into brief next-big-thingdom. Trash a few dressing rooms to a tune some a&r cornball can hum and you always stand a chance of convincing him you're a genius in the rough. (Grade - C+)