Album Of The Week

Silverchair recorded their first major-lable album Frogstomp in 1995 when the bandmates were 15-year-olds, listening to lots of Nirvana. That album is grungy and crunchy and lacks pretty much anything beyond that---BUT it was an impressive accomplishment, considering. For the next two albums, young fans remained exuberant but no one else was much impressed, because--reflective of their age--Silverchair really hadn't found themselves yet.

Then 2002 gave birth to Diorama, an album where Silverchair aren't just changing themselves--they are rebuilding the universe. Their vision, while still including their core of guitar/bass/drums, now reaches into a world (literally) filled with oboes, trumpets, violas and harp-playing cherubim. Instead of frantic bludgeoning, they calm and subdue their instruments, as though petting a magical cat that grants wishes. Rather than their previous verse-chorus-verse connecting of dots, they now construct a well-watered hedge maze and fill it with sundry flora and fauna. They become gardeners, creators, growers and trusters in greater powers than themselves. That album cover up there? Perfectly conveys the magic that's bursting within.

Daniel Johns, the lead singer and sole songwriter of the trio, who sounded jagged and insanely defensive of his territory on previous albums, here embraces the whole world and smiles like the Dali Lama, unleashing waves of vocal honey as though filtering sunlight, igniting whatever it touches ("One Way Mule") or soothing it and making it dance ("Tuna In the Brine"). His vocals on this album are a parallel to the album itself--powerful, and yet so, so serene--a world away from where he's ever been seen before.

It sounds like a huge broadway production, the whole thing. While Diorama doesn't present itself as a concept album, it's clear that a story is being told in each song, each it's own additional scene to a compiling story. From the first 30 seconds of the opening track "Across the Night" to the final caravan of piano chords on closer "After All These Years," everything is fairly bursting with color and sweet sweet LIFE! Each song has such geography to it, striking unexpected chords, hitting more notes from opposite ends of the scale than most folks would.

It's funny: I don't think any of this is explaining what the music is like with any sort of accuracy. Have you wasted your time reading it? I don't think so. Because now you finally get a couple mp3's to listen to.

"Across the Night"

"Tuna In the Brine"

A toast!

"Diorama, here's to you! You are full of ambition and divine sparkle. Only creatures of aged wisdom or youthful delight could create a thing that reaches this kind of dynamic height. Which ones are they? I hope no one finds out." *long draught*