More heavenly pop from the Chills

The current incarnation of the Chills, (from left) Martin Phillipps, James Dickson, Erica Stichbury, Todd Knudson and Oli Wilson. Photo supplied.
The current incarnation of the Chills, (from left) Martin Phillipps, James Dickson, Erica Stichbury, Todd Knudson and Oli Wilson. Photo supplied.

An American art dealer, a music industry mover and shaker, even the King of Thailand had a part to play in the Chills' forthcoming album.

Let's go back to January 31, 2011. The Chills had been invited to play at a New Year's Eve/50th birthday party in Queenstown organised for David Teplitzki, an American art dealer.

A fan from ''way back and impressed the Chills were still going'', Teplitzki was instrumental in forming Far South Records, on which the band released a 2013 live recording, Somewhere Beautiful.

The Chills' Dunedin based manager, Scott Muir, also has an interest in the label.

So, too, does Chris Craker, a multi Grammy nominated composer, producer and performer who, until 2008, was general manager of the international classical division of Sony BMG.

''Chris had been invited to record the King of Thailand, who apparently writes very good classical compositions,'' Phillipps explains.

''They got on well and everyone urged Chris to take advantage of the relationship and avoid all the graft, so he set up a really good studio, Karma Sound, about two hours south of Bangkok.''

Far South Records sent the Chills there in October 2013, the group recording the song Molten Gold, a new version of Pink Frost, as well as Pyramid/When The Poor Can Reach The Moon, which turned out to be one of three key tracks on Silver Bullets.

''I was a bit sneaky because we were meant to record a B side, but I knew the song was about seven minutes long, so it was never going to fit as a B side,'' Phillipps reflects.

''Everyone was really thrilled with it so we began the process of recording back at Albany St [Dunedin] in July last year. Then we toured in September through Europe and I stayed on to mix the album in London as well as do the last bits of recording.''

About a third of the songs on Silver Bullets are concepts Phillipps has been toying with since 1996 album Sunburnt. The oldest on the album is Warm Waveform, which existed as an instrumental demo version called Warm on Sketch Book: Volume One (1999).

The Otago Daily Times was invited to a preview listening session of Silver Bullets last month.

On initial impressions, it is a strong album, encapsulating Phillipps' assured songwriting, his often overlooked guitar technique and, above all, conveying a vocal confidence not always evident in the past two decades.

As Phillipps says of Silver Bullets: ''It was a battle getting some of these songs approaching what I had envisaged.

''But I wouldn't have done the album if I didn't have good songs.''


Album highlights include

Underwater Wasteland, on which reverberating, melodic guitar lines rise and fall, acting as a counterpoint to Phillipps' vocal lines; in fact, much of the song is instrumental, reinforcing its contemplative feel before a turbulent burst of distortion takes the track to its conclusion.

Pyramid/When The Poor Can Reach The Moon, whose massive textural washes convey a feeling of staring into the maw of some awful creature (Male Monster From The Id?); here Phillipps plays with harmonic dissonance before injecting a feeling of lightness via strings, then veering off into a joyous pop song.

Aurora Corona offers another example of Phillipps' meticulous guitar phrasing, while I Can't Help You is possibly the most straight ahead pop song on the album.

Tomboy, in contrast, has it all: Submarine Bells type ambition, sinuous guitars and warm slabs of vocals set to a schoolyard story that starts with a small musical idea (as do many of the tracks on Silver Bullets) before ballooning into something magical.


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