Silverchair's debut album, Frogstomp, faithfully follows the alternative rock tradition of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which means that the group of Australian teenagers winds up sounding not like their idols, but like Stone Temple Pilots and Bush. For their age, their instrumental capabilities are quite impressive, as the guitars and vocals growl with the force of rockers in their early 20s. At the same time, their songwriting abilities aren't as strong, and they are never able to break aw...   [ read more ]

CD $7.59

One of the few true shocks in rock music is when a young band with a seemingly short shelf life manages to transform itself into a cohesive, enduring, and artistically diverse outfit. Take Silverchair, whose plodding angst anthems were the subject of much ridicule during the group's initial splash. But they somehow kept going and kept improving, and Diorama is the sound of a band finally growing into their own skin. These songs have a sense of space and tunefulness that was always missing from the ba...   [ read more ]

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Arguably, Silverchair is to Pearl Jam and Nirvana what jazz great Sonny Stitt was to bebop king Charlie "Bird" Parker -- a derivative disciple, but impressive nonetheless. Stitt was no innovator; he was a follower instead of a leader. But he played his Bird-minded alto sax with so much conviction that you had to applaud him. And similarly, Silverchair was far superior to most of the Nirvana and Pearl Jam disciples who flooded the market in the 1990s. Even though none of the Au...   [ read more ]

CD $7.59