''Winning Days'' is the second studio album by Australian

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

band The Vines, and was released on 23 March 2004 It is the follow-up to their debut, ''

Highly Evolved ''Highly Evolved'' is the debut studio album by Australian alternative rock band The Vines. It was released on 14 July 2002 on Capitol Records. Produced by Rob Schnapf, known for his collaboration with Tom Rothrock on Elliott Smith's album ...

''. The enhanced CD has the

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing devi ...

for "Ride". ''Winning Days'' was recorded in the summer of 2003 at

Bearsville Studios Bearsville Sound Studio was a recording studio founded by Albert Grossman in Bearsville, New York, west of Woodstock in 1969. History Albert Grossman, who was the manager of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, first arrived in Bearsville in ...

Woodstock, New York Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States, in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, NY. It lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 in 200 ...

and was assisted by Bill Synans. It was mixed in September 2003 at Cello Studios in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

and was assisted by Steven Rhodes. This album has been released with the

Copy Control Copy Control was the generic name of a copy prevention system, used from 2001 until 2006 on several digital audio disc releases by EMI Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment in several regions (Europe, Canada, United States, and Australia). I ...

protection system in some regions.

History

The Vines recorded ''Winning Days'' in May 2003 at

with producer

Rob Schnapf Rob Schnapf is an American record producer and musician. He was the co-producer (along with Tom Rothrock) of Elliott Smith's albums ''Either/Or'', '' XO'' (on which he also played guitar on the song "Baby Britain"), '' Figure 8'' and '' From ...

, who had also produced their debut album ''Highly Evolved''. "Fuck the World" (later abbreviated to "F.T.W.") was the first song released from ''Winning Days'' and was released on 15 December 2003, three months prior to the album's release. The song is sarcastic in nature despite what its title seems to imply; as stated in a 2005 ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'' article, "''Winning Days'' is anything but". During interviews given by lead singer

Craig Nicholls Craig Robert Nicholls (born 31 August 1977) is an Australian musician, best known as the lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Australian alternative rock band The Vines, of which he is the sole continuous member. Early life Nicholls ...

in 2004, he stated "I definitely think the world is a good place, but maybe it would be better if people didn't hate so much and kill animals. At the same time, it's like, whatever. It's just a planet, that's all." The next single "Ride" was released on 23 February 2004. "Ride" reached number 94 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004. The title track was released as the third and final single on 24 May 2004.

Critical reception

''Winning Days'' was met with "mixed or average" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 50 based on 23 reviews.

Track listing

Personnel

*Craig Nicholls – vocals, guitars, percussion, Moog *Patrick Matthews – bass guitar, piano and keyboards *Ryan Griffiths – guitars *Hamish Rosser – drums, percussion *Rob Schnapf – producer, mixing *Doug Boehm – engineering, mixing *Susanna Howe – album booklet photography *Love Police – album sleeve

Charts

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 2004 albums Capitol Records albums The Vines (band) albums Albums produced by Rob Schnapf