Silverchair is an Australian alternative rock band comprised of lead singer Daniel Johns, Bass guitarist Chris Joannou, and drummer Ben Gillies. They have been highly successful, winning a record 20 ARIAs (Australian Record Industry Awards). The band first gained notoriety when one of their first songs "Tomorrow", won a local music competition run by television network
SBS in 1994. In 2003 the band went on
hiatus, members using the break to record on side projects The Dissociatives, The Mess Hall, and Tambalane. The Wave Aid concerts of 2005 saw the band reunite, and album
Young Modern was released in 2007. Silverchair joined up with fellow Australian Rockers
Powderfinger to play the
Across the Great Divide tour across Australia and New Zealand, which was to increase awareness of the efforts of Reconcilation Australia to reduce the 17-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
They broke up in 2011, although it was officially called an "indefinite hibernation".
Albums:
- Frogstomp (1995)
- Freak Show (1997)
- Neon Ballroom (1999)
- Diorama (2002)
- Young Modern (2007)
Silverchair provide examples of:
- Animated Music Video: Daniel Johns' arthritis precluded him from performing around the time of Diorama's release, and so the video clip to "Luv Your Life" had to be animated so as not to remove the face of the band and confuse fans.
- Britpop: Young Modern has been described as a "post-Britpop" record.
- Development Hell: They were recording tracks for a new album in 2009 in a "secret location", however their split in 2011 means that they will probably never see the light of day.
- Improbable Age: They were 15 when they recorded Frogstomp.
- Any teen with a garage band would no doubt be thinking "how come we don't have a record?" when they read this.
- New Sound Album: Someone listening to Frogstomp and then Diorama would be forgiven for thinking it's two completely different bands. Frogstomp was released when the band was in their mid-teenage years at the height of The Nineties Grunge revolution. Their 4th album Diorama somewhat defies classification but it's a soft contemporary adult easy listening piano based sound far far removed from their origins.
- Protest Song: "Anthem For the Year 2000" dissed populist politician Pauline Hanson for her authoritarian stance on youth policy.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "If You Keep Losing Sleep". Actually, Diorama and Young Modern were full of these due to Daniel Johns' Creator Breakdown.
- Shout Out: The band name is a Narnia reference, to - you guessed it - The Silver Chair specifically. Early on, they claimed it had something to do with hastily writing down the titles of Nirvana's "Sliver" and You Am I's "Berlin Chair" as "Silver Chair" - it's unknown as to why they lied about this, but perhaps they just thought the real origin of their name didn't seem to mesh with their Post Grunge sound at the time.
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