Silverchair
Young Modern

The remarkable thing about Young Modern is how unremarkable it is. It’s utterly underwhelming. As if to atone for the derivative grunge pleasures of frogstomp, their 1995 debut album, Silverchair has been on the trail of a grandiosely and overwhelmingly refined ‘artistry’ ever since. With the progression of Freakshow, Neon Ballroom, and then Diorama, the band pushed ever further into a deeply contrived technicolour rock & roll; for them, artistry seemed to be about the giddy grandeur of a bumble-bee string arrangement coursing over a selection of power chords.

Young Modern is different. Perhaps the Daniel Johns and Paul Mac Dissociatives side-project – an unlistenable melange of shiny Sydney house and Johns’ consciously ‘twisted’ pop vocalising – has bled the former dry of his pretentious chromatic melodies. Young Modern serves up a less cultivated brew, simpler in its flavours but still a long way from humility. It sees them in some ill-fitting new clothes for 2007: they’ve dropped the baroque, post-Broadway Van Dyke Parks arrangements (although he does appear here) and dolled themselves up in the post-punk fashions of 2004. And it’s unconvincing. They find themselves approaching keyboards and synths with the trepidation of a four-year old meeting a stranger, hands curled at their mouth, bodies turned sideways, eyes darting. Young Modern is uncertain and wobbly, yet cocksure and presumptuous. In attempting to strip back some of those previous excesses, Young Modern can’t drop the posturing that was necessary to front the bombast that once blew in from behind them.

Johns’ breathy voice still clambers all over the musical stave before expertly reaching, with Bono-like acumen, for the stadium-filling notes. But here he needs to strive because the band and music rarely rise beyond the functional; for the Silverchair of Young Modern, the focus is still on Johns – the shy guy with the big dreams and rock pedigree – and the studio trimmings. There was always an admirable spirit in Silverchair’s (or Johns’) attempt to craft something different and distinctive, even if the results were irritating. Strangely, then, for all Silverchair’s earlier pretensions, the gap between their ambitions and their output has never seemed greater than on the listless Young Modern.

by Ben Gook