# Freak Show (album)

Freak Show is the second studio album by Australian rock band Silverchair. It was released on 4 February 1997 by record labels Murmur and Epic. It was nominated for the 1997 ARIA Music Award for Best Group, but lost to Savage Garden.

## Recording and production

Silverchair began recording their second studio album, Freak Show, in May 1996 while experiencing the success of their debut album, 1995's Frogstomp, in Australia and the United States.
Freak Show was produced by Nick Launay (Midnight Oil, Models, The Birthday Party).
In December 1996, drummer Ben Gillies said about Freak Show, when compared to Frogstomp, "it was just more fun making this album".
In February 1997, bassist Chris Joannou said about the recording of the album, "With Freak Show we were, I guess, in a way wanting to do something different, so we thought about it a bit that way -- but, really, it just happened naturally." He also stated "We like this album a lot more than Frogstomp because the lyrics and music sound better," and "The bass is louder on this album, as well, which I'm happy about."

## Title

In late 1996, when asked about why the album's name is Freak Show, vocalist and guitarist Daniel Johns said:
   We decided to call it Freak Show because in the 1940s, there was these traveling freak shows with people with different things that [were] unusual about them. And they used to travel around from city to city and just display their talent or deformity or whatever it is, and we just thought, you know, we're not making fun of people with things different about them, we're just saying that it's similar to being in a band that travels around and just performing a show from town to town. And we thought it would be a good theme for an album.

## Content

The album's front cover image is an illustration of Grady Stiles, Jr., a sideshow performer afflicted with ectrodactyly, who used the stage name "Lobster Boy". The image is courtesy of Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Johns also stated that some of the lyrics were toned-down for release on Freak Show. Although, the majority of the songs found on the album still retain emotional and angst-fueled themes that include disease and suicide. One writer claimed the songs focused on the anger and backlash that the expectations of Frogstomp brought upon the band.
Many Freak Show songs such as "Slave", "Freak", "No Association", and "Nobody Came" were performed live two years prior to their release on the album.. Several of the songs also had different titles prior to the album's release. These include: "Cat and Mouse" ("The Closing"), "The Proxy Song" ("The Door"), and "Punk Song #1" ("Lie to Me"). A song entitled "Punk Song #2" was recorded but not renamed; it later appeared on the "Freak" single. "Punk Song #3" ("Satin Sheets") was originally recorded for Freak Show, but was omitted from the album and included on Neon Ballroom (1999) instead.
An unreleased song entitled "Slime" was recorded during the Freak Show sessions, but it has yet to be released. The existence of "Slime" can originally be traced back to the 1996 late October/early November European press release where it is listed amongst the rest of the Freak Show track listing. The song was described in the press release as "similar to 'No Association'" but "more melodic". Thematically speaking, it was described as the "linchpin" of the entire album.

## Release

Although Freak Show was shelved until February 1997 for the general public, European and Australian promotional pressings were officially circulated throughout the music press in late October/early November 1996. The release of Freak Show was originally slated for the autumn of 1996; it was later pushed back to avoid competition from Pearl Jam's No Code.
Freak Show was released on 4 February 1997. The album reached number 1 on the Australian charts and yielded three Top 10 singles – "Freak", "Abuse Me" and "Cemetery". Its fourth single, "The Door", reached No. 25. Freak Show was certified gold in the US by the RIAA on 4 April 1997 and 2× platinum in Australia.
The album was released on CD, limited edition cassette and 12-inch vinyl (coloured black in Australasia and yellow in Europe; limited to 3,000 copies worldwide). The CD release of Freak Show is an enhanced CD that includes interactive CD-ROM media from the making of the album. The material found on the Enhanced CD is accessed when placing the disc into the CD-ROM drive of a computer.

### The Freak Box

A limited edition CD box set was released in November 1997 by Murmur titled The Freak Box, and includes the four main singles from the album as well as a bonus CD containing interviews with the band members about the singles and the album.

## Reception

Professional ratings :
| Review scores ||
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
| The Buzz | (favourable) |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Rock Hard (de) | 8.5/10 |
| Spin | 6/10 |
The German music magazine Rock Hard rated Freak Show 8.5/10. Along with the singles "Abuse Me" and "Freak", they praised the songs "No Association", "Learn to Hate" and "Roses", though "Nobody Came" was considered to be the song from Freak Show.
Lorraine Ali of Rolling Stone wrote "Silverchair have loads of potential. The band may still be using other peoples' riffs to guide its post-pubescent fury, but it's the enthusiasm that makes this Freak Show more than a novelty."
American online magazine Loudwire considered Freak Show to be the 9th best hard rock album of 1997.
In his review for Freak Show, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, writing for AllMusic, wrote "Silverchair were slaves to their influences on their debut Frogstomp, but on their second album [...] they're beginning to show signs of developing their own style. While they may still concentrate too heavily on Pearl Jam and Nirvana, they're beginning to fuse the elements together in a more interesting way and are writing stronger hooks. Freak Show still has its share of mediocre moments [...] but the album shows potential that Frogstomp never did."
Chuck Eddy, writing for the American music magazine Spin, thought it was a better album than Silverchair's debut record Frogstomp, as Freak Show featured "punkier speedups, fancier breaks, and more dramatic climbing from quietude interlude to dude attitude". Spin also included "Abuse Me" at number 75 on its list "The 79 Best Alternative Rock Songs of 1997".
Jeff Gorra of Artist Waves wrote that Freak Show "truly showed how they had evolved as songwriters ... at just 17-years-old." The album's producer, Nick Launay, has said that Freak Show is his favourite Silverchair album. He said:
   During the recording of Freak Show they were incredibly wild and young, the energy and adrenaline in the room was like the biggest sugar rush imaginable. Craziest moment: Ben climbing inside a flight case with a movie camera being pushed down the long corridor at Festival Studios by the other two crashing into walls while filming from the inside. Result: black screen, shrieking screams, major damage to the walls.
In February 2017, Josh Leeson, writing for The Newcastle Herald, wrote that "for many Chair fans the tortured anger of Freak Show remains a treasured edition in the catalogue of Newcastle's finest musical export" and that "20 years on it maintains its own freakish charm in body and soul."

## Legacy and influence

In March 2007, after explaining that he felt Neon Ballroom was Silverchair's "first album", Johns referred to Freak Show as "some kind of dark, high school band skeleton" in the band's "closet".
In February 2017, The Brag wrote that the album still hold up, "but in a different, lighter way". They also wrote that Freak Show is like "seeing your high school sweetheart many decades later – you don't feel the love, but you can remember how it felt. It's how music works sometimes. But it's enough that it works at all."
Australian musician Kevin Parker of Tame Impala has said that Freak Show is the album that made him want to make music and remains one of the most important albums in his life. He stated:
   I got into this album because my brothers were into it, they listened to a lot of grunge. That time, I was 10 or 11, was all about discovering rock music and realising how bad-ass it was. My brother had a drum kit and I started learning how to play. Actually, I started playing drums before I had the ambition to be in a band, but as soon as I fell in love with grunge that was all I wanted to do. Grunge gave me a sense of identity and I remember really associating with Silverchair, who were these chilled-out Australian teenagers. The fact that they were teenagers was a big deal for me. It was like: Oh man, you don't have to be a 30-year-old to do this.
In April 2022, The Guardian ranked the Freak Show songs "Freak", "Slave", and "The Door" on their "The 25 best Silverchair songs - sorted" list at #21, #9, and #5, respectively.

## Track listing

All lyrics are written by Daniel Johns; all music written by Johns unless otherwise noted