VINTED VINEER

Words: Em Tobin

Photography: Sebastian Ritchie & Seb Harman

Above: Vinted Vineer by Sebastian Ritchie

Lament is defined as a passionate expression of grief, sorrow, or regret. 

In their sophomore album, Brisbane boys Vinted Vineer have transcended the definition of the term, encapsulated in a grand homage to the timeless, dreamy curation of the sonic and lyrical process. The 12-track body of music features what is the ever-evolving process of creative energy, redefining the physical dimensions of their artistry. Vinted Vineer have matured and refined their sound, drawing production and lyrical intelligence into distinct, signature stylistic musicianship. 

Lament is a testament to the universal experience of coming-of-age, exploring love, nostalgia, hope, and experiences with artistry. The album is a promising canvas of spiritual experimentalism, bridging metaphysical elements of synth production and raw lyricism. Ultimately, lament is about honesty, capturing components of grounded vulnerability and exploring essential aspects of a sound that is both curious and crafted. 

What Vinted Vineer has captured in their 12-track album is a truly distinct creative vision, streamlined and complete. For Brisbane-goers, you can find their branded kangaroo, immortalised on the lament cover art, adorned on the streets outside music venues and on suburban roads. 

Vinted Vineer are Dominic Ritchie (vocals, rhythm guitar), Charlie Normoyle (lead guitar), Caleb Sharie (bass guitar), and Koen Yoshida-Martin (drums). I caught up with the band on the back porch of a Woolloongabba sharehouse earlier this month to chat lament. This interview features a solid walk-through track-by-track of lament, in which the boys discuss the process of writing and producing each song on the album, including distinct stylistic elements and experiences experimenting with sound. 

Above: Vinted Vineer by Sebastian Ritchie

EM: “Always” is a fantastic album-opening track, fusing authentic, raw lyricism and divergent, dreamy fuzz. Can you walk me through the process of producing this song?

DOM: Charlie and I started it. 

CHARLIE: It started as a different song, it was sort of a rocky track. 

DOM: It was a song that we developed multiple times, until we were listening to a lot of Mk.Gee at the time. I thought, what if we put some hip-hop 808s on it, and then we did a romantic guitar duet. It kind of built from there. 

EM: “Mirage” is a particularly interesting song lyrically. What story are you trying to tell within this track?

DOM: I wrote the lyrics for it, but we got the instrumental for it first. It was very hazy, dazing, and felt sundried, almost desertish to me. I tried to sing within that vein. I’m not sure if there’s not too much of a story in there, but I’m sure that the viewer could string some plot or story from it if they desired.

KOEN: It’s open to interpretation.  

CHARLIE: We made the song and then reversed it. 

DOM: It’s all from reversed guitars. Fun tidbit. 

EM: As a long-term Vinted Vineer fan, I was very excited for the release of your fifth single, “BlockSplitter”. How does this track diverge or converge from your original sound?

DOM: I think it does converge in the sense that it has the rocky kind of feel. When we started a couple of years ago, we were just trying to bash in our guitars and crank them up to eleven. That’s what this song is, I think, it’s got a primal energy to it. 

CALEB: It does have a strong focus on the vocals; however, some of the older stuff is more track-heavy and lives in a dreamy state. 

DOM: It’s new with the old. 

CHARLIE: A lot of the older stuff was very soft; there were a select few tracks where it was heavy, but the rest was soft. 

DOM: As a band, or even a live band back then, there was a primal instinct to be loud, which we’ve tampered back and then redone it for this one. 

Above: Vinted Vineer by Sebastian Ritchie

EM: For me, “Under the Table” evokes a dreamy, semi-melancholic feeling. It borders on evoking emotions of nostalgia - how did nostalgia play into the process of producing Under the Table?

DOM: Nostalgia is about lived experiences and past anecdotes, so I think for a lot of our songs, nostalgia is a big theme. 

CALEB: It still ties into our music, I think, it's blending the acoustic sound with more synth stuff. 

DOM: Under the Table definitely ponders a bit. I wrote it down just sitting down with a guitar. It was rare for me; I came up with it very quickly in one sitting, with the lyrics and everything. It’s a cool one. 

EM: In my opinion, “Fever “is the most sonically interesting track off the album. How did you produce this song?

DOM: Again, this was Charlie and me. 

CHARLIE: It started really rocky. 

DOM: Real guitar rock kind of focus. 

CHARLIE: This is one of the three songs in the album that came out of one original song. Dom and I made a song when we were making the album that had like eight different parts, and within them, there were three songs that we’ve put out. 

DOM: We were like, " What are we doing?” We’re not a prog-rock band, so let’s take the nice hooks and melodies to turn them into cool tunes. We were big into branching out and pulling it back; that’s how we got Fever. 

EM: Off to track number six, “Glow” is such a feel-good listen. What emotion did you elicit when you were writing and producing the song? 

DOM: This was also from the same set of sessions we were talking about. Glow and Fever were made in the same session. That was a fun one. 

CHARLIE: This song was a lot sweeter. 

DOM: We had a slower version of it, but we were getting into break-beats, so we just threw an amen up. 

Above: Vinted Vineer press shots

EM: What experiences did you draw from when you were writing “Hume”?

DOM: That was one from being on tour, on the Hume Highway. It connects to the M1 down in South New South Wales. It’s about staring out the window on long drives down south and back up home, just playing category and having fun with the band, making memories, and doing cool stuff that no one really gets to do. 

EM: “Pretty” is just a classic song. I think it’s almost a classic love song. What does love look like for Vinted Vineer?

KOEN: That’s a hard question. 

CHARLIE: As a band, we really care for each other. That’s so important to us. 

DOM: We really care for each other; we tell each other at the end of every rehearsal that we love each other. There’s some real bromance in this band. 

CHARLIE: It’s just the hang-outs. 

CALEB: The best part about being in a band is that we get to see each other as friends.

EM: “You” displays both sonically and lyrically a very sound creative vision. Is this the direction Vinted Vineer aims to head into the future?

DOM: We always try to be vision-focused and are looking to innovate. We like to do our own thing and make our own little world and just create regardless of what’s going on outside of that. 

KOEN: It’s about piecing things together and working it out. 

DOM: It’s more than music to us, this band. We try to make our sound an immersive experience for our audiences. 

Above: Vinted Vineer by Seb Harman

EM: “Cryptomnesia,” what prompted the band to incorporate a sort of longer, repetitive bridge towards the end of that? 

DOM: There are only so many ways you can end a song, and leading up to this record, I wanted to do a fade-out song. We’d never done it before, like how they used to do it in the 70s and 80s, but this one seemed like the one. I had all the tracks there, and I was like, one of these needs to have a fade-out. It wasn’t until later on that I extended the end of it, chopped it all up. 

CALEB: You wanted it to be the last song, too. 

DOM: Yeah, I wanted it originally to be the last song, but I thought it wouldn’t work with the fade out at the end. 

EM: “Hope” is probably the most lyrically vulnerable I’ve seen Vinted Vineer be. Where do you push this vulnerability from? 

DOM: The urge to be vulnerable comes from wanting to make honest music and honest art. I think the more vulnerable you can get and the more of yourself, the sensitive parts, you leave, the more you put on the canvas for people to see and relate to. I think that’s why hope is the way that it is. 

EM: “ZZZ” captures a very distinct aspect of Vinted Vineer’s sound. Do you believe that you have a signature sound? 

DOM: Definitely, we do have our own sound. But it’s ever-evolving, and so we already kind of sound a bit different now than we did when we were finishing the record. We’re always moving forward and taking steps forward to get into some new sonics. I would say we have a sound. 

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