Daniel Johns announces second solo album FutureNever, to be released in April 2022
‘I know I have a tendency to go missing but I’m back now,’ the former Silverchair frontman told fans ahead of FutureNever release.
Following the international success of a recent documentary podcast that dug deep into the personal challenges of becoming a globally-recognised teenage musician, the once-reclusive former Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns on Wednesday announced plans to release his second solo album.
The follow-up to his 2015 solo debut is titled FutureNever, and it will be issued on April 1 on his own record label, via a new global deal with BMG.
In a personal letter from the artist accompanying the news, the singer-songwriter said he won’t be releasing singles in advance as “the album is designed to be enjoyed as an album”.
“Call me a hopeless romantic but that’s the benefit of releasing music on your own label. Nobody can tell you what to do,” he said.
Published as a five-episode series that concluded last month, Spotify’s podcast Who is Daniel Johns? offered a compelling portrait of the corrosive effects of fame on a sensitive individual. It topped charts here and abroad.
“I didn’t know that I needed that experience but I did,” said Johns of the podcast’s success and wide reach. “The reception around the world has inspired me and I’m not anxious about what comes next anymore, I’m ready for the FutureNever.”
Johns described the album as an eclectic mix of music made over the last couple of years. “A few of my friends will be jumping on the record, I’ll be slowly revealing them in the lead up to the album,” he said, pointing fans to a website for album pre-orders that will become an “evolving, interactive platform”.
The album title refers to “a place where your past, present and future collide – in the FutureNever the quantum of your past experiences become your superpower,” he said.
“The experience of the podcast has helped me make peace with my past and I’m ready to tackle this new world bravely. I know I have a tendency to go missing but I’m back now.”
Few Australian musicians have had a more conflicted relationship with fame than Johns, the former singer, songwriter and guitarist of Newcastle rock trio Silverchair.
His experiences in the public eye began as a teen rock star in the mid-1990s. In short order, he and his bandmates Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou were globally famous at age 15.
Together they performed songs that came to define the alt-rock generation, but as the frontman, Johns became the focal point and default mouthpiece.
The intense scrutiny surrounding Johns, onstage and off, accumulated across the band’s career through to its final performance in May 2010.
His health suffered: anorexia, reactive arthritis, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder were among his afflictions.
Since then, his musical output has been slim: after releasing a debut solo album named Talk in 2015, he arranged the soundtrack for the children’s animated series Beat Bugs in 2016, and issued a collaborative album with Luke Steele in 2018 under the moniker Dreams.
Performances have been few and far between, too: Dreams played four shows in total, two at Coachella Festival in the US and two at the Sydney Opera House.
In October, though, the musician emerged from reclusion as the central figure of the five-part Spotify production, which covered his career in intimate detail.
As well as extensive and unguarded interviews with the man himself, Johns recorded lengthy conversations with musicians including his former wife Natalie Imbruglia, Tame Impala aka Kevin Parker, The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan and Van Dyke Parks, the acclaimed US composer who worked with Silverchair on its 2003 release Diorama and the band’s final album, 2007’s Young Modern.
Following the completion of the podcast series last month, these interviews were published as additional episodes.
The conversation between Johns and Kevin Parker is particularly engrossing, as the younger musician describes how he learned to play Silverchair’s songs on drums and guitar as a child.
Johns, in turn, has become a major fan of Parker’s work as Tame Impala: he even goes so far as to name its 2015 album Currents as one of his favourites of all time, a declaration from his boyhood idol that sends Parker reeling.
Who is Daniel Johns? is a must-listen for anyone who enjoyed the band’s work then and now.
For the musician’s many fans, the documentary series has offered a deep and meaningful insight into one of Australia’s most remarkable artistic minds.
For Johns himself, the podcast seems to have triggered a surprising transition.
After years holed up at his Newcastle home while rarely engaging with the outside world, his activity on social media in the past month indicates a changed man: one who is proud of his past.
“Silverchair was my first job, ” he wrote on November 10. “Child stardom is a strange beast and it’s a miracle that we all survived it. I see that as a collective victory.”
Scattered throughout the podcast like glittering jewels were snippets of new work as yet unreleased.
To that end, the news of FutureNever’s release in 2022 suggests that all his looking in the rear-view mirror of late had Johns itching to shift his gaze back to the windscreen, and the wide open road ahead.