Silverchair are arguably one of the most successful Australian bands of all time. With five albums spanning 12 years, all of which crashed into the charts at No 1, 8m international sales and 21 Aria wins, they certainly have the statistics to compete. Musically, each album represented a vast sonic leap from the last – testament to frontman Daniel Johns’ exploratory nature, the band’s musical dexterity, and the whims and fads of youth; when Silverchair retired, they were all only 27. With the release of Johns’ upcoming solo album, FutureNever, this week we’re celebrating the depth and variation of Silverchair’s catalogue with this definitive list. No further arguments:
25. Untitled
Let’s kick this countdown off with a rarity, as all self-servingly smug listicles should. When Silverchair were asked to provide a song for the 1998 Godzilla movie, it seemed a fait accompli that one of their dino-stomping riff-o-ramas would accompany slow-motion footage of the titular reptile laying waste to a cityscape. Instead, Silverchair delivered a bleak, untitled, acoustic ballad about eating disorders and suicidal ideation. The film went with Puff Daddy instead.
24. If You Keep Losing Sleep
In which Silverchair find themselves in a nightmarish Willy Wonka world of baton-twirling, candy-crunching, bubble-machines, blowing zany melodies at crazed carnival barkers, as Oompa Loompas stomp in concert with the kick drum. It’s the furthest they travelled from the erstwhile grunge of their first album, and probably the song that broke the band up, as Chris and Ben looked at each other, then at the box of slide-whistles in the studio, and wondered how they got to this point.
23. Cemetery
This was the band’s moment of increased maturity, as Johns leaned heavily into his Billy Corgan cauldron and stirred up a thoughtful, well-rounded rock ballad – although the dark fantasy of living in a cemetery has no doubt graced countless teenage diaries for millennia.
22. Reflections of a Sound
Just a beautiful latter-era song that, like so many of Johns’ tunes from this period, sounds like the weather finally breaking, musically and lyrically speaking. He also brings back many of the sonic tricks he used on the 2004 Dissociatives record, which is notable for being the only music Johns ever made where he sounds like he was actually having fun.
21. Freak
DUN-dundundun-DUN-DUN-DUN-dundundun. The best two-chord riff in existence, appropriately coupled with the most nonsensical lyrics this side of the Andes, with a confusing proto-sci-fi clip that saw a mad scientist capturing the band’s sweat to power some form of rock machine? Whatever. Freak remains a monster song, an outsider anthem to file alongside Creep, Loser and Asshole in your mid-90s nobody-understands-me playlist.
20. Without You
“You brighten my life like a polystyrene hat” is an inane simile but luckily, the rest of this song is imbued with enough might to charge past this line: pounding tom-driven drums, a guitar riff that sounds like a lawn mower repeatedly starting up, a waltzing interlude and a crashing chorus that no stray simile can undo.
19. World Upon Your Shoulders
One of the very best moments from Diorama, albeit an often overlooked one, World Upon Your Shoulders opens with a sun-drenched country riff, stutters during halting verses, then opens up into the most gorgeous, life-affirming chorus on the entire album. This song is only hampered by a lyric that reads like a placeholder: “Violent, big and violent / you’re like a thing that’s big and violent.” Indeed.
18. Findaway
The closest thing to a pop song on their first album, Frogstomp, despite pop songs being absolutely against everything any earnest 15-year-old grunge band in industrial Newcastle stands for. They hid it towards the end of the album, but we still found it.
17. Luv Your Life
An unabashed love letter to Johns’ then-wife Natalie Imbruglia, with all the do-do sections, plonking piano, and sweet cooing vocals that such a thing requires. It almost would have been too twee, save for the breathtaking “flinch against the fire” bridge that lifts Luv Your Life from a treacly luv declaration and into something else entirely.
16. Punk Song 2
A great pop-rock basher that was buried away as the B-side to the Freak single. Perhaps for this reason, the guitars roar a little more, Johns’ vocal is pleasingly unprocessed and the band sound like they are smashing this thing out in the same room, first take, no overdubs. Wait until the second chorus kicks in, and it becomes apparent that Johns was bleeding great melodies during this late-teenage period.
15. The Greatest View
Driven by a twanging 12-string Rickenbacker riff, The Greatest View was a palette cleanser that rid the dark aftertaste of Neon Ballroom, and drove Johns’ increasingly public health struggles far from front of mind. With this song, Johns let you know that he has the clearest vision of where he actually is, what is going on around him, and where he is heading. You almost believe him, too.
14. Faultline
The best outro in the entire Silverchair discography, and with mature, haunting lyrics about the Newcastle earthquake, of all things, this is the most classically well-written song from Frogstomp. The flipside of Pure Massacre, although in both songs people are dying “for no reason at all”.
13. Across the Night
In Silverchair’s sonic timeline, Across the Night is the scene in Wizard of Oz where everything goes from black and white to eye-smashing technicolor. Strings swoop, Johns wavers into falsetto and mostly stays there, and genius composer Van Dyke Parks weaves parts of every single Disney soundtrack into the tapestry. It is an ambitious and excellent song. And Johns somehow manages to avoid sounding pretentious while singing, “T’was the moon that stole my slumber” or insane by declaring “I hugged a man’s arthritic shoulder.” Very hard to do!
12. Straight Lines
When Young Modern arrived, Silverchair were a band in name only. This stunning lead single, which crashed into No 1 and became their most successful song to date, was co-written with The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, who has writing credits on four of the album’s 11 songs. It’s a buoyant, forward-marching pop song, the sound of Johns leaving his teenage band behind and following the yellow brick road to where it may lead. Maybe towards a neck tat?
11. Tuna in the Brine
For all the ceremony of Diorama’s suite of glorious singles, the album’s ambitious heart beats truest within Tuna in the Brine, a six-minute symphony that soars like an opera, glides across multiple avant garde movements, and makes the most of Parks’ string and brass arrangement abilities. Like all great songs, it saves the best until the end.
10. Spawn Again
The biggest outlier in the Silverchair catalogue, and as close as they would skirt to the wallet chained, trenchcoat wearing crowd of the late-90s. Spawn Again is metal machine music with “meat is murder” lyrics and an unhinged, anguished vocal. Still in mint condition on well-worn copies of Neon Ballroom due to being one of the most-skipped songs of the CD era (wedged uncomfortably between Ana’s Song and Miss You Love), it roars like the mighty protest song it is.
9. Slave
Freak Show is divided between songs built on big riffs, and transitional songs that point towards the pomp and drama of Neon Ballroom. This is the former, and it is a perfect opening song: a thudding, bloodying, lumbering rock beast that cycles through a series of massive riffs before the vocals hit and implore you not to over-think any of it.
8. Israel’s Son
“I want you to know that I want you dead” is only one of the troubling lyrics to be found here – taken not from Johns’ twisted psyche, but instead, like many of his early songs, from watching SBS documentaries about our broken planet. The subsonic bassline that opens this song, and their first album, is worth the price of admission alone.
7. Emotion Sickness
From the machine gun orchestra that announces its arrival, through multiple tempo shifts and instrumental flourishes, Emotion Sickness was the first Silverchair song that even your high-school music teacher couldn’t deny. A statement of intent, like all the band’s album openers were, this was the biggest sonic and stylistic leap the band ever made. From here on out, Silverchair were painting from a wider colour palette, for better or worse.
6. After All These Years
The type of beautiful and fragile song that could only be arrived at by someone who was self-taught at piano, with all the ambition and joy of discovery without the rapped knuckles that edit out unorthodox voicings and chord choices. Attached to this are some of Johns’ most open-hearted lyrics, a pristine performance, and vocal lines so pure they recall Brian Wilson at his most creative.
5. The Door
Another of the big riff songs from Freak Show, The Door distills the eastern influences pervasive in western rock, sounds that drifted across from India via the Beatles, blew through Led Zeppelin to Soundgarden, and ended up bobbing in the shallows at Merewether Beach. The best headbanging song in their canon.
4. Paint Pastel Princess
Tucked away at the end of Neon Ballroom is the most overlooked song in Silverchair’s entire catalogue. This little gem sprinkles nonsensical alliteration over swooping strings, weaves in a dancing guitar line dipped in effects, and builds towards Johns’ finest chorus. Paint Pastel Princess is the sonic equivalent of those turn-of-the-century Silverchair gigs at which Johns was caked in eyeliner and dressed like a mirror ball Bowie, while the other two lads were still rocking cargo shorts.
3. Ana’s Song
If Cemetery was the song that signalled that Silverchair were growing up, this was the one that announced their arrival as a serious band. “Ana” is the personification of an eating disorder that had plagued Johns and signposted an ever-increasing struggle for control of his own life. Not at all self-indulgent, with most of the messaging cloaked in poetry and melody, it remains a high water mark for his songwriting.
2. Miss You Love
This beautiful ballad combines Johns’ most poetic lyrics with a wonderful melody. The “big” sections are used sparingly, the arrangement isn’t clogged with instruments, and Johns’ uncertain vocal is a masterclass in how to emote without overdoing it. Beautiful.
1. Tomorrow
Back when the Newcastle Water Board was flooding the mainstream with propaganda, it took a plucky 15-year-old to tell the truth about the hard-to-drink liquid travelling through the city’s pipes. With this immaculately crafted epic, Silverchair arrived fully formed, scoring a #1 single that went on to be the most played song on US rock radio in 1995. The EP version is slightly preferable to the one re-recorded for Frogstomp, mostly because it sounds a little rougher around the edges – clearly made by three teenagers who just wanna throw every idea they have into the pot and see how it tastes.
