The Vines had an oddly rocky introduction to the music world, given how desperate everyone was to talk about them. This is easily, if not happily, explained: the band owed an obvious (though ludicrously overstated) debt to one of the 90s better rock bands, and had was fronted by someone who was struggling to balance the stresses of touring with their neurodiversity. Back then, it simply wasn't possible for music journalisms to recognise that description, and to comport themselves accordingly.
They probably also didn't know what neurodiversity was.
Undervalued in all this was the fact that The Vines' first three singles, released between April and November 2002, are all indisputable bangers. "Get Free" might be the best; a snot-nosed ascending spiral of rejection-sensitive teenage apoplexy. A call-and-response bludgeon of a song, an opening number for a gig in hell.
All of which made the endless comparisons to That Other Band not just tiresome, but unconvincing. There's none of the too-cool-for-school exhaustingly cultivated air of disinterest here. Craig Nicholls might as well be screaming "Never mind? Are you shitting me, mate? Have you actually seen this fuckery we got right here?". Teenage confusion isn't disaffected, it's a white hot fury, quenchable only by the actual fucking sun. She doesn't love me; why should anyone? Nothing to do but charge towards the freedom of death, in the most extra way humanity has to offer.
It's massive, and it's dumb, and it's impossible to deny. It completely embraces the stupidity of one's teenage years without glamorising them. Can you believe we shits had to go through that shit?
Once a year or so, I get together with a bunch of old uni mates to play games, drink beers, and take stock of how far we've come. Oftentimes, we'll break out various iterations of Rock Band, for the concatenated nostalgia of both the songs themselves and the game that lets us pretend to play them. Sooner or later, we'll spool up "Get Free", and it's glorious, four men in their increasing years just devouring a song two decades old about being barely two decades old. And once we're done helping Nicholls scream and thrash and bark at the sun, we turn the game off to do something else.
Because how the fuck are you going to top this?
B-Side
I went through dozens of videos of covers of this song, and absolutely none of them stray far from the original. This is the most divergence I could find, by virtue of including a female vocalist. That to me is a mark of a brilliant song - there's just no other way to imagine it existing.
