The Week In Rock

The Australian teen trio silverchair flew to New York City recently to work on the group's second album, Freak Show, which is due out in February. We stopped by the studio to pay a visit, and found that not only are the lads somewhat older and wiser now, they've also discovered the joys of strings and sitars. Here's the story.

MTV: Remember the story about the three 15 year olds from Australia who catapulted to superstardom after they won a demo-tape contest sponsored by a local television show? At the crusty age of 17, the lads in silverchair still aren't old enough to go out and see bands they're not opening up for, but they've had no problem producing their second album called Freak Show. Freaks they may be in their own minds, but sudden fame bestowed before the 11th grade hasn't turned them into the primadonnas one might have expected. Despite their recording and touring schedule, they still have to go to class and do their homework.

CHRIS JOANNOU, Bass: School's all right, yeah... I haven't really failed anything this year.

MTV: They're also hoping that their new album will pass muster, but they don't seem to be too worried about it.

BEN GILLIES, Drums: It has to be better than the first one, supposedly. But we don't really feel there's that much pressure. We don't care. It turns out how it turns out.

MTV: Which isn't to say that they weren't serious about the initial recording process back at home in Australia.

DANIEL JOHNS, Guitar/Vocals: When we were recording this album our parents were just left at home. We didn't want any interruptions from anyone. There were really no visitors in the studio at all.

The new album's changed from the first album, but it wasn't a conscious effort to change, just to change for the sake of it. It just happened the way it happened.

JOANNOU: The strings and all that sort of stuff that we've been listening to, that was sort of a bit mind boggling because we'd never sort of done that sort of stuff before. But most of the other stuff was basically what we did before, but we had a lot more input, and knew what we wanted to do, and knew how we wanted to play it. So it was a lot easier. silverchair will play a concert in Seattle on December 7th, after cyber-previewing some Freak Show tracks on December 3rd. The group will then fly home for an Australian tour, returning to play more U.S. dates in February.

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