Martin Phillipps is very much still alive in these tunes. For those thinking that perhaps this new record from The Chills is a posthumous cash-grab by his label, you're wrong. Martin was hard at work re-imagining his own, earliest compositions before his tragic death last year, and this album was always the intended result. Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, out this Friday via Fire Records, finds Phillipps and a host of contributors and band-mates breathing new life into tunes the band leader wrote in his younger days. The result, rather than evidence the sounds of a man who's 61 and dealing with health issues, presents a sonic picture of vitality. Quite simply, this is one of the most energetic and spry-sounding Chills albums in quite some time.
The twenty tracks here cover a gamut of styles and moods. "If This World Was Made For Me" and "Dolphins" soar atop nimble riffs. A slide guitar from Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House) adds some weight to the former, while the latter catches fire thanks to help from Hollee Fullbrook and Tom Healy from Tiny Ruins, along with contributions from the most recent line-up of The Chills. The lovely "I"ll Protect You" finds backing vocals from Shona Laing adding to the significant warmth of the cut, while "And When You're There" takes a crunchier approach. That one feels the most like more recent tracks by this band, though the assistance from Tiny Ruins, as well as percussion from Manics and Chills producer Greg Haver give this one an extra oomph that seems especially welcomed in the wake of Martin's death.
There is so much life in Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs that a listener almost forgets Phillipps is gone. It's only when confronted with certain tunes that the poignance of the situation becomes very real again. "Stay Longer" and "I Don't Want to Live Forever", of course, seem to be weighted with so many more layers of emotion now, even as something less obviously revelatory, like the mid-tempo "Meet My Eyes", also plucks at the heart-strings. Phillipps had certainly faced health issues before, and while it's tempting to read meaning into some of these tracks now on the other side of his demise, it makes more sense to place these compositions in the context of his work with the current line-up of the band on Fire Records. That makes Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs partly the natural next step on from 2021's Scatterbrain.
But that interplay between the material Martin Phillipps made so alive in the last decade and these new reworkings of old compositions is what gives Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs such pep. "Watching Old Home Movies" and "I Saw Your Silhouette" bounce and march, respectively. You can play these and almost guess during which era of The Chills' long career they were written in. Material this good would be clawed at by almost any other indie band but these are, for the most part, tunes Phillipps rejected. That's astonishing given how good these songs are, and how alive with possibility they seem. Stuffed with ideas, and hooks, the numbers are more "Kaleidoscope World"-ish than anything else. For fans who somehow inexplicably maybe missed the Fire records, these cuts should be especially cherished things as they share so much joy from the mind of a younger Martin Phillipps once again.
That consistency of vision is what made so many hold the music of The Chills so dear. A cocktail of emotion and intellect is what drew me to this musician in the first place so many decades ago, and while he took breaks in his career, what he offered to listeners like me was always -- always -- some of the best indie rock I was ever going to hear. Layered, deftly stitched together, and performed with heart and gusto, the songs by The Chills on Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs keep the fire that Martin Phillipps' talents lit so long ago burning bright still.
Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs By The Chills is out this Friday via Fire Records.
[Photo: Jon Thom / Moodie Tuesday]