Frogstomp | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 27 March 1995 | |||
Recorded | 27 December 1994 – 17 January 1995 | |||
Studio | Festival Studios, Pyrmont, New South Wales, Australia | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 44:49 | |||
Label | ||||
Producer | Kevin "Caveman" Shirley | |||
Silverchair chronology | ||||
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Singles from Frogstomp | ||||
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Frogstomp is the debut studio album by Australian rock band Silverchair. It was released on 27 March 1995, when the band members were only 15 years of age, by record label Murmur. The album features the band's commercially most successful single, "Tomorrow".
Frogstomp was recorded in nine days. [1]
When asked if the record was made live in the studio, singer and guitarist Daniel Johns said:
Yeah, that's the thing that I do really like about that album – it sounds exactly like we sounded. There was no big American producer calling the shots behind the desk and telling us to do this, this and this. It was literally this guy, Kevin Shirley, who was a great producer, just saying, "I want it to sound like you guys, but I want it to sound really f—ing loud and I want the guitars really f—ing loud." So to me, I was like, f—ing yeah! The songwriting might not be genius, but I think sonically, the performances are really good. It's really honest; it's just three Australian kids thrashing it out in the studio and that's exactly how it sounds. [2]
When asked why the album's name is Frogstomp, Johns said:
I was at a guy from our record company's house one night and I was looking through his CDs because he's got a really good collection. I found this '60s pop collection record and I was just going (laughs), "Why do you have this?" I looked at the back and there was this song that some guy did called Frogstomp and I said, "That's a pretty good name." (laughs) I just rang up Ben and Chris and we just thought it was really funny so we used it for the album. [1]
Frogstomp was released on 27 March 1995 by record label Murmur.
It reached number 1 on the Australian ARIA Albums Chart. On 20 June 1995, Frogstomp was released by Epic in the United States. It has since been certified double platinum by the RIAA.
The LP version of the album is sold in a green vinyl with "Blind" as a bonus track limited to 3,000 copies worldwide. There is also a limited cassette edition of the album.
On 27 March 2015, a remastered edition of Frogstomp was released as a two-CD/DVD set to mark the twentieth anniversary of its release. [3]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [4] |
Bucket List | 8.5/10 [5] |
Entertainment Weekly | B− [6] |
Kill Your Stereo | [7] |
Mystic Sons | [8] |
Renowned for Sound | [9] |
Rolling Stone | mildly favourable [10] |
Soundscape Magazine | [11] |
Soundsphere | [12] |
The Village Voice | C [13] |
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album 4 out of 5 stars, and wrote, "For their age [15 years old], their instrumental capabilities are quite impressive, as the guitars and vocals growl with the force of rockers in their early twenties. At the same time, their songwriting abilities aren't as strong, and they are never able to break away from the standard grunge formula. Nevertheless, the record does deliver a collection of songs replicating the thunder of "Tomorrow". [4] Chuck Eddy of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "the songs on Frogstomp almost all start out like dreary Metallica ballads and build toward gloomy, by-the-numbers grunge." [6] David Fricke of Rolling Stone , on the other hand, wrote: "Truly shameless wanna-be's [ sic ] like Bush should be so lucky to have the hard smarts that Silverchair – particularly the band's main writers, singer-guitarist Daniel Johns and drummer Ben Gillies – show on such Frogstomp-ers as 'Pure Massacre' and 'Israel's Son'. When these guys turn 18, they'll really be dangerous." [10]
In 2015, James Rose of the Daily Review wrote of the album, "As an album in its own right, it's pretty good. As a debut by three 15-year-olds, it's about as good as it gets. There are still kids out there today listening to Frogstomp and shitting themselves. And so they should." [14]
The album was ranked #25 on Double J's list of Top 50 Australian Albums of the '90s. [15]
Mixdown listed the album as among the seven best Australian grunge albums. [16]
The Amity Affliction member Ahren Stringer said of the album: "I was obsessed with Frogstomp as a 12-year-old boy. I wanted to be Daniel Johns." [17]
ABC wrote that in 1995, Silverchair provided a "thrilling synthesis of rage, confusion and pain, and as a distillation of teen angst, you couldn't get a purer generational timestamp than Frogstomp." [18]
In December 2021, the album was listed at no. 6 in Rolling Stone Australia’s '200 Greatest Albums of All Time' countdown. [19]
All tracks are written by Daniel Johns and Ben Gillies, except as noted
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Israel's Son" (Johns) | 5:19 |
2. | "Tomorrow" | 4:26 |
3. | "Faultline" | 4:19 |
4. | "Pure Massacre" | 4:59 |
5. | "Shade" | 4:02 |
6. | "Leave Me Out" | 3:03 |
7. | "Suicidal Dream" (Johns) | 3:13 |
8. | "Madman" (Johns) | 2:43 |
9. | "Undecided" | 4:37 |
10. | "Cicada" | 5:10 |
11. | "Findaway" (Johns) | 2:58 |
Total length: | 44:49 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
12. | "Blind" | 4:50 |
Total length: | 49:39 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Tomorrow" (from Tomorrow EP) | 4:27 |
2. | "Acid Rain [a] " (from Tomorrow EP) | 2:48 |
3. | "Blind (live) [b] " (from Tomorrow EP) | 3:32 |
4. | "Stoned [c] " (from Tomorrow EP) | 4:56 |
5. | "Madman" (vocal version) | 2:44 |
6. | "Madman" (live at the Cambridge) | 3:46 |
7. | "Blind" (live at the Cambridge) | 5:33 |
8. | "Tomorrow" (live at the Cambridge) | 4:44 |
9. | "Faultline" (live at the Cambridge) | 4:17 |
10. | "Pure Massacre" (live at the Cambridge) | 7:25 |
Total length: | 1:29:01 |
Silverchair
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA) [34] | 6× Platinum | 420,000^ |
Canada (Music Canada) [35] | 3× Platinum | 300,000^ |
New Zealand (RMNZ) [36] | Platinum | 15,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [37] | Silver | 60,000^ |
United States (RIAA) [38] | 2× Platinum | 2,000,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
[a] The song "Stoned" is incorrectly listed as "Acid Rain" on the album's track listing.
[b] The song "Acid Rain" is incorrectly listed as "Blind (live)" on the album's track listing.
[c] The song "Blind" is incorrectly listed as "Stoned" on the album's track listing.
Daniel Paul Johns is an Australian musician, singer, and songwriter, best known as the frontman, guitarist, and main songwriter of the rock band Silverchair. Johns is also one half of The Dissociatives with Paul Mac and one half of Dreams with Luke Steele. He released his first solo album, Talk, in 2015. Johns' second solo album, FutureNever, was released on 22 April 2022.
Silverchair are an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Newcastle, New South Wales, with Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars, Ben Gillies on drums, and Chris Joannou on bass guitar. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo competition conducted by SBS TV show Nomad and ABC radio station Triple J. The band was signed by Murmur and were successful in Australia and internationally. Silverchair has sold over 10 million albums worldwide.
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