Silverchair weren't much good, but it's difficult to throw stones at a group of teenagers who just got damn lucky, winning an Australian radio contest Pearl Jam-esque demo. Their reward was a hit single and a recording budget, used to create a platinum album, and their worst crime was watering down Helmet and Soundgarden riffs. Don't blame them; blame the record labels, blame alternative radio, blame the 90s. However, former Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns is entirely to blame for the failure that is the Dissociatives. And this debut, created with co-writer Paul Mac, is a sweeping, Technicolor failure but like train wrecks and plastic surgery makeover shows, it's an oddly fascinating mess.
"We're Much Preferred Customers" opens the LP with a soft 4/4 thud and manipulated vocals. Johns then whispers non-sequiturs like "And skin that flakes like ancient paint/ Suffocate contentment" over sparse piano before the song builds to a pounding climax of keyboards and multi-harmonized nonsense. It's such a shameless imitation of Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" that it'd be grounds for infringement if their attempt wasn't so laughable. But from there the album moves from merely bad-- the strained, disjointed electro-pop "Somewhere Down the Barrel"-- into the brain-melting disaster "Horror with Eyeballs". It features a carnival-like verse melody and another wall of Johnses on the chorus, singing "All of this time on my hands/ So far has gone/ To feeding my animals" amid distorted, barking "na-na-na's". It's a mad professor's experiment that's been given a pop polish, and it sounds like Backstreet Boys covering Captain Beefheart in a bad way. Only the strong will make it through the entire track.
The rest of the tracks songs are merely bland: "Forever and a Day" is whiny adult-contempo, and "Old Man, Young Man" sets its compass towards the Beatles, almost making it out of mire before the chorus turns into Collective Soul. "Thinking in Reverse" is another near-miss that squanders a kinetic beat on an overwrought melody.
Leftfield techno vet Paul Mac seems stale working away from a club-oriented context, but it's Johns who seems out of his depth. Maybe he can write a three-chord rock song, but here he under-sings, over-emotes, and writes melodies that spiral off in insane directions before ending up nowhere-- all while multi-tracking his vocals to cover his failings. In a way, this album validates the achievements of the aforementioned Radiohead and other electronic-dabbling rockers: ProTools and bong hits do not an artist make, nor will an electronic sheen save Johns' turgid performance.
