When Neon Ballroom was released in 1999, the three members of Silverchair were merely nineteen years old. The complexity, lyrical eloquence, and grand scope of this album are nothing short of amazing when taking into account the fact that they were so young. But two years after their sophomore release Freak Show, a grunge-influenced mess of an album with but a few moments of brilliance, the maturity evident in Neon Ballroom is shocking. And the credit goes to the mad scientist behind Silverchair, the writer and composer of every song, the brilliant frontman Daniel Johns–a veritable Australian Mozart.
Neon Ballroom is one of Johns’ most personal albums. We can feel his pain in Emotion Sickness, his illness in Ana’s Song, his wrath in Spawn Again. We can feel his heartache in Miss You Love and Paint Pastel Princess, and his insecurity and vulnerability in Steam Will Rise. We begin to understand that Daniel Johns is not the callow fifteen-year-old kid who sang Israel’s Son and Tomorrow and waved his long, dirty, blonde hair all over the stage anymore; he is, even at nineteen, a very mature, very introspective young artist–and already much more experienced onstage than many artists several years his senior.
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