Grant Robertson on how the songs of Martin Phillipps took him from adolescence to adulthood

This is the way

(This Is the Way, The Lost EP, 1985)

I first see The Chills at a dance that my brother organised for the Dunedin Junior Council at the Dunedin Town Hall in 1984. In that big, cavernous space in front of the city’s bewildered youth, Martin’s guitar makes swirling circus sounds. His lilting voice turning words inside out, his lyrics bouncing around with the sentences back to front. I’m hooked.

Once we were damned, now I guess we are angels

For we passed through the dark and eluded the dangers

Then awoke with a start to startling changes

All the tension is ended, the sentence suspended

And darkness now sparkles and gleams

(Heavenly Pop Hit, from Submarine Bells 1990)