Aussie popsters show no progress

Coming up on their fourth album, the three guys who make up the Australian rock outfit Silverchair still haven't figured out what kind of music they want to play. Diorama suffers from the same inexorable identity crisis that afflicted its predecessor, 1999's Neon Ballroom.\nLong gone are the alt-rock days, the comparisons to Nirvana, the pre-teen fans and the we're-just-a-bunch-of-kids excuse to cover up for any blatant mistakes that garnered so much success for the teenagers back in the mid-1990s. Now they have licenses to drink on their U.S. tour and a new label on which they can discharge all the worthless music that Daniel Johns writes.\nOK, so it's not all that bad. Occasionally, Johns finds a decent guitar riff, but then he drowns it out with orchestras and pianos. Either that or he doesn't even bother to write a bridge or guitar solo to break up the monotony. \nGranted, it's not so much that the trio has given up entirely. Johns really does sing his heart out on every track. Songs like "The Greatest View" and "Without You" show the same promise that the musicians did on their debut, Frogstomp. This album isn't nearly as scattered as their previous effort, in which the band seemed to try about every popular form of rock and failed miserably at each. \nWith Diorama, Silverchair mellows out almost entirely. There's a real dearth of hard, crunching guitars. The edge is gone; only "One Way Mule" gives fans something along the lines of rock. The rest is melancholy musings. Johns prefers to simply wallow in misery over nothing in particular, which is a problem with a lot of lyricists who, on achieving fame, realize they don't really have anything to get depressed over.\nSilverchair's latest album will not be a defining moment in the band's career. On the other hand, the threesome shows some obvious signs of maturity with conceptually complete songs and a virtually flawless recording. They're inching ever closer to some niche in the market -- maybe by the time they're 30 they'll have found it.