Across The Silverchair Show

So in keeping with the concert review series, here's my take on Silverchair live @ The Tivoli (27/04/07).

By now we all know the Silverchair story, which for my money, is a great one. I would hazard a guess they used to (and probably still do) cop a fair bit of stick about being so young when they first hit the scene, but it was something I never had a problem with (and when they did hit the scene, I was of the age which has a problem with everything). In fact, I think their freshman album contains one of their best songs.

Obviously I can't speak from experience, but it would HAVE to be difficult to literally grow up in the public eye, much less doing so through your body of work. I think their album catalogue is one of the few that portrays genuine growth, and I've enjoyed each one more than the last (though to be fair, I haven't heard a lot of their latest offering). Commercial success aside, that's right up near the top of the goal list for any artist.

But hey, enough of my yakkin'. On to the show.

It was a sold out Tivoli and a captive audience. I arrived in time for the support act this time, and whilst they didn't do anything to offend me, they didn't do anything to capture my attention neither.

The 'Chair take to the stage and the place goes suitably nuts. It's easy to forget that these guys have been a band for the last 14 or so years, and they're a force to be reckoned with on stage. Much better commanders of their instruments these days, they really do have something special and totally kick the shit out the place with their sheer brute force. There were 2 keyboard players on board as well, which helped beef up the sound, but every now and then the extra guys would leave the stage and Silverchair really took off.

They played a lot of the new album and almost all of 'Diorama' (a personal fave) plus a couple of cuts from Freak Show ("The Door" nearly lifted the roof off the place*) and Neon Ballroom ("Emotion Sickness" still totally nails me). I think this was one of the first or second shows of the tour and the setlist had a few kinks in it, but I have no doubt they would have ironed those out pretty quickly.

Daniel seemed to be in good spirits (thanks in no small part to the gigantic bottle of Jack he swigged from all night**) and he was genuinely appreciative and humbled (well, I thought it was genuine) by the loving throng stretched out in front of him. As a punter, that's all I ask from my rockstars.

All in all, it was a cracking show and there's no way anyone could have walked out of there and not take away a new found respect for the 3 Novocastrians who won a contest on SBS and made it big.







*no pun intended here

**nor here