Silverchair scores with 'Young Modern'

The music industry is increasingly singles-oriented - with plans afoot to put out artists' work track-by-track. Still, we're suckers for a big production album, a major statement that builds and blooms and continues to surprise like a well-paced movie.

ON THE SPOT: A perfect case in point is the new release from Silverchair, "Young Modern" (Eleven/ILG, A-).

You may remember them as a promising rock trio of the '90s, huge on home turf in Australia though never more than a cult thing here. Now they're each a ripe old 27 and returning with an album that's way more confident and ambitious.

While sometimes evoking 1970s touchstones of the glam rock and progressive pop persuasion, the multi-hued vocalist/songwriter Daniel Johns, drummer Ben Gillies and bass player Chris Joannou have gloriously surreal and melodic dreams (and nightmares) of their own.

They grabbed this writer with the hugely orchestrated (by Van Dyke Parks) "If You Keep Losing Sleep" and the honied "Reflections of a Sound," multi-part suite, "Those Thieving Birds/ Strange Behavior," and the wham bam (thank you, m'am) strutting "Low." Catch Silverchair on Saturday at the Fillmore at TLA.

Another one-man-band (literally) who hides under a group identity, Bryce Avary, will make you sit up and take notice with the taut, splashy pop-rock nuggets of his first major release as the Rocket Summer, "Do You Feel" (Island, B+). His voice is wrought-up, nervy and impassioned - typical of modern-rock front guys. But when he's leading on piano (about half the time) instead of guitar, the dude also fits into the Billy Joel-Ben Folds pomp pop continuum.

On their self-titled album for PHIdelity (B), locals Adam and Dave's Bloodline show a penchant for sinewy songs and dark tales of personal struggle. Try their paean to a neighhorhood past decline, "Corner Sloop."

SOUL II SOUL: It's a big summer for soul-band revivals. Kool and the Gang are back in the conscious groove with "Still Kool" (KTFA, B-), suggesting not much has really changed on songs like "It Is What It Is."

Lonnie Jordan, one of the survivors of the pioneering, bario funk rocking War, has lived to tell some "War Stories" (Fantasy, B+). Unlike Kool's Gang, his sound has matured into a jazz-pop swirl akin to Steely Dan on his remakes of "Baby Brother," "The World Is A Ghetto" and other hits of the era.

Speaking of which, eclectic blues man Poppa Chubby devotes two volumes to channeling Jimi Hendrix' most incendiary guitar burners on "Electric Chubbyland" (Blind Pig, each B), cut live and dirty in concert.

Better than a seance.

THEY OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES: Two movie stars who can't give up on their musical pasts have new rootsy albums out.

Billy Bob Thornton mulls life and death issues in "Beautiful Door" (New Door, B) his fourth, most autobiographical and best effort to date. Devotees of Warren Zevon and Crosby, Stills & Nash will relate - the latter especially on tracks featuring Nash's harmonies.

Minnie Driver has a lovely voice (even if Andrew Lloyd Webber wouldn't let her use it in "Phantom of the Opera") and haunting, romantic song sense. And on her sophomore set "Seastories" (Zoe, B-) she's had the good sense to diversify with two bands - the twang-rocking Ryan Adams and the Cardinals in New York and, in L.A., with a SoCal folk-rock band. The songs often start promisingly, then fail to evolve.

JAZZED OUT: Trumpeter Matt Shulman comes off like a modern-day Chet Baker or Rahsaan Roland Kirk on "So It Goes" (Jaggo, A-). The edge sharpening comes with his use of loops and split-mouth virtuosity to simultaneously blow and sing in a phat, progressive style.

Newly dug out of the vaults, the double-disc "Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964" (Blue Note, A) offers killer versions of the bass master's high-falutin' originals and some surprising covers. *