What’s wrong with Silverchair
I went to Rock-it yesterday (West Aussie based Rock feastival) – the local edition, Australian bands only. On the bill was bands such as:
Butterfingers
Faker
Cog
Shihad
Grinspoon
Silverchair
And the day totally rocked.
Cog churned out a reliable perfomance – quite good and so on for Cog but I just find them boring. Sorry, but I do. I want to like them more because of their close affiliations with Karnivool but they just do nothing for me.
Shihad blew everyone away as usual. Those lads from Kiwi-land sure know how to put on a show. Hard rock, great stage presence and a real know how to get the crowd going. The psycho security tried their best to keep the crowd out of it (including punching girls and kids, dragging people out by their necks and so on) but John was just Too Good (sorry :$).
The Grinners don’t rock out as well as the boys from Shihad but frankly, they’ve got better songs and more crowd support so they made a real show of it. The sun had gone down by this stage (36 degrees it was) so it was fantastic.
Finally, the Chair finished the show. NowI’m a HUGE chair fan. From way back before they released Frogstomp, since they started with Tomorrow. I loved Freakshow and Neon Ballroom is just about my favourite album. I even liked Diorama (the Across the Night tour was one of the most special shows ever). But what the fuck is with this sunshine and lollipops bullshit they churn out now? It’s just awful. They say good music is related to mathematics, so here’s a formula for you:
Quality of Silverchair Music = 1 / (Proximity of Paul Mac).
(For the non-mathematically included amongst you that means the closer Paul Mac is, the more they suck).
Every time this clown was on stage he’d be so far up in the mix his awful keyboard drone would drown everything else out. And the influence he’s having on Daniel Johns is terrible to watch. The crowd was simply streaming out the whole time they played and most of those who stayed were screaming for them to play something decent.
I must predict that the Chair aren’t long for this world, as I can’t imagine Ben & Chris will want to be overshadowed by Daniel’s ring-in and the direction they’re heading. In any case, they’ll be a purely commercial venture from now on, destined to go the way of Killing Heidi and NoDoubt (dead to the alternative world, freshly discovered by Nat & Nathan and other perveyors of commercial crud).
Despite all this I still hold out hope. I grew up on the Chair. They’ve tracked so many people’s life from their angst-riddled teen years of post-Nirvana grunge, through their early 20’s, outstripping the late 90’s brit-pop phenomenom and shining through. I suppose all good things must come to an end but until I hear the new album, I’ll just pretend nothings wrong, even though I can see it coming.
Ah well, at least Placebo haven’t gone all soft and commercial… oh.. wait. DAMN IT!