The Vines at Heineken Green Energy Festival

Lacking the olde-worlde, enigmatic aura of The White Stripes, or the downtown Noo Yawk attitood of The Strokes, in the acid test of a live performance The Vines are cruelly exposed for what they really are: a glorified Aussie bar-band who just happened to be in the right place when the NME came searching for Antipodal representatives to lump in with the rest of the international je(s)t-set in the so-called “New Rock Revolution.”

Sure, they’ve got a brace of superlative, sun-kissed psychedelic numbers in the shape of ‘Mary Jane’ and the truly magnificent ‘Country Yard’ – but too often the up-tempo tracks degenerate into bog-standard indie-metal thrash, whilst the “I’m-a-nutter, me!” faux-Cobain-isms that permeate Craig Nichols’ performance (eg. smashing the shit out of his guitar mid-song to little cumulative effect other than fucking up the tune) simply grate after a while.

So you exit, and you phone a friend, not to tell him how great the gig was, but simply to elicit his opinion on Ken Doherty’s chances in the snooker the next day. A huge disappointment.