song of the day: may 25/2011

Silverchair - Emotion Sickness
Album: Neon Ballroom [1999]

as i pay homage to the recently-disbanded silverchair, i thought that it'd be fitting to choose the song that first marked their re-invention in the late 90's, and ultimately, may go down as their most important release. silverchair's third full-length release was a confusing affair that revealed a band more talented than their critics realized and more confused than their "frogstomp" fans could tolerate. the australian trio never made any secret of their respect for nirvana, and on "neon ballroom", they did some of the best impersonations of their seattle counterparts on record. it would be easy to convince any kurt cobain fan that "spawn again" and "dearest helpless" are believable "in utero" outtakes, and quite good ones at that. when the weepy ballads, like the beautiful "miss you love," pulled neon ballroom into a more radio-friendly direction, all the promise of a gritty grunge tribute faded, and silverchair appeared to be serving two masters. essentially, they probably were - it's an impressive balancing act of keeping their label happy with their familiar sounds while busting daniel johns' ambition wide open. the resultingly incongruent musical textures stifled the flow of the album upon it's release and assured a certain amount of fan disenchantment (despite the minor airplay success of "ana's song"). however, as time went on and the band went on to release more ambitious material, revisiting "neon ballroom" became a very rewarding trip, and continues to be as more time passes. "emotion sickness" will go down as a microcosm of silverchair's bravery to turn the tables on their previous efforts, and though they lost a lot of casual fans in doing so, they gained a mammoth cult following that allowed them to always fully re-invent themselves. with a back catalogue that contains virtually zero throwaway tracks and every musical influence from punk and 90's grunge rock to elton john, the beach boys, and the beatles, it's safe to say that they will be missed :(

amazon