By Chris Varias
The Cincinnati Enquirer

If we are to believe that the Vines are indeed the future of rock `n' roll, as many music critics have pronounced, then the days ahead will be filled with balladry. Slow songs were the rule Sunday, when the Australian group played to a sellout crowd at Bogart's.

The Vines have been lumped in with bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes as throwbacks who've come to save rock `n' roll, and when measuring the Vines only by their catchy hit "Get Free" it's understood why. But their overall effort on this night wasn't nearly rock `n' roll enough.

Other than a couple moments, like the performance of "Get Free" and the gear-smashing finale, most of the night was slow song after slow song.

A cocky singer is a key ingredient to this return-to-rock aesthetic, but so is good rock music. All eyes were on Craig Nicholls, who has the jaded frontman act nailed. He mumbled incomprehensible song introductions. He took off his shirt at the exact halfway point of the 70-minute show. He jumped backward from the drum riser. He stumbled forward to his guitar amplifiers.

His act, as well as his inclination to noise up the ending of a ballad with guitar dissonance and guttural screams, couldn't save slow songs - newer stuff like "Amnesia" and "Evil Town" as well as material from their 2002 debut LP Highly Evolved like "Homesick" and "Mary Jane" - from dragging down the show.

The crowd enjoyed the down-tempo material, including a version of Outkast's "Ms. Jackson," but seemed to hold out its biggest responses for the fast songs. There weren't many.

The show started with one, "Outtathaway," with the band taking to the stage as a three-piece, rounded out by drummer Hamish Rosser and bassist Patrick Matthews. Acoustic guitarist Ryan Griffiths appeared later and generally played on only the slow stuff.

Other rockers included "Highly Evolved" and the show-closer, "(Expletive) the World," which relied on the greatest return-to-rock move of them all: destroying the instruments.

Mr. Nicholls threw his guitar in the air, caught it, and poked the neck like a spear at his guitar stack. He then used it like a club, as he repeatedly swung its body into the drum kit, while Mr. Rosser banged away at the drums and cymbals left standing after the attack.

E-mail cvarias@enquirer.com