Soundgarden

Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell may look like a guy who has everything, but during his reunited band's Wednesday night show at Sidney Meyer Music Bowl (the second of two Melbourne gigs, Soundgarden's first in 14 years), he drops a bombshell – twice. Apparently, gold and platinum, critical acclaim, good looks, great hair and the best voice to emerge from the Seattle grunge-rock movement of the early 90s might not be everything.

Introducing ‘Blow Up the Outside World’, he describes it as a song about waking up and wanting to crawl back under the covers and tell the universe to fuck off. ‘Fell on Black Days’? Those would be the ones when you're mentally dropping bombs, 10 long years of jet-black days, he suggests, as if speaking from personal experience.

If Cornell has had gloomy days, or years, who could blame him? Soundgarden may have enjoyed multi-platinum success during its 90s run, but among the leading lights of Seattle-reared rock, he was always solidly third string. When he sings "I'm feeling outshined outshined outshined outshined" on Soundgarden's greatest hit, ‘Outshined’, a characteristically dark anthem of inferiority, he very well may have been referring to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who was enshrined in iconic gold even before he blew his brains out, and/or Eddie Vedder, whose band Pearl Jam was always slightly higher on the charts (and with whom Soundgarden shares drummer Matt Cameron).

Whether or not Cornell still needs time on the psychiatrist's couch is between him and his shrink, but judging from the audience's response to Soundgarden's two-hour dip into its vast back catalogue, neither he nor the band have anything to feel black, or blue, about, professionally speaking. Sure it takes both Cornell and the crowd a minute to hit their strides – which arrives in the form of a ‘Jesus Christ Pose’, three songs in – but that's one of the prices you pay for growing older, wiser, and less prone to moshing.

Twenty years ago, such rousing renditions of ‘The Day I Tried to Live’, ‘Pretty Noose’ and ‘Burden in My Hand’ – whose slightly more countrified kick, a rare detour from the studio-version script, inspired one of two singalongs – would have sent fans into a head-banging frenzy. But the kids of grunge rock now range in age from pushing 40 to, like Cornell, inching toward 50, which might partly explain their under-the-top physical reaction to such balls-to-wall rock’n’roll. That’s not to say the crowd isn't digging it. Soundgarden has its near-undivided attention.

If age is just a number, though, perhaps they are simply too in awe of the undiminished power of Cornell's voice – still soulful and elastic, qualities that always set him apart from his fellow Seattle frontmen – for extreme movement. He hits all the highs and lows of ‘Pretty Noose’ and an extended encore version of ‘Slaves and Bulldozers’, without serving a single bum note.

But even the most self-possessed crowd has its limit, and on this cool summer night in Melbourne, everyone seems to reach theirs in unison, when the band launches into ‘Outshined’. Chris Cornell runs vocal circles around Kim Thayil's bluesy, bulldozing guitar melody, barely pausing to catch his breath, as if it were 21 years ago. He roars, and everyone loses it.

Outshined? Please. Had Kurt Cobain lived to see this moment, it's hard to imagine that even Nirvana could have topped it.