Martin Phillipps remembered: Time capsules from The Chills’ history
Martin Phillipps performs with the Chills at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, Netherlands on 16th April 1989. Photo / Getty Images
As fans at home and abroad mourn the passing of Martin Phillipps, 61, who led his Dunedin band The Chills for forty-plus years, we revisit two pieces from the Listener about him at pivotal moments in his career.
Both are by the late Roy Colbert, the writer and record shop proprietor who was dubbed “the Godfather of the Dunedin Sound” for his support of the southern city’s bands.
The first is from late 1982 with Colbert writing about the emergence of The Chills – and Phillipps as a singular songwriter – as the band released debut single Rolling Moon having been one of four groups on the Dunedin Double EP earlier in the year.
The second is from 1999, as Phillipps emerged from a period of depression and drug dependency after his music career effectively foundered in the wake of The Chills’ third and fourth albums Soft Bomb and Sunburnt.
December 1982
Variable Chills
As the curtain comes down on 1982, Dunedin’s Chills have left us with a record that should be poking Christmas from the top of every Christmas the stocking - their debut single “Rolling Moon”.
An irresistible slice of pop that bounces from the speakers with a grin from ear to ear, “Rolling Moon” comes backed with a pair of powerful Flip sides “Bite” And “Flamethrower” which together form a record that builds on the promise of the band’s three contributions to Dunedin EP earlier this year rather like Christopher Wren built St Paul’s Cathedral from ideas first floated in little chapels around Cambridge.
Frank Stark noted in this column a couple of months ago that the Chills had found the middle ground between Jonathan Richman and the Loving Spoonful.
That was “Kaleidoscope World”, the one that made it on to Radio with Pictures from the Dunedin Double EP. The single is something again.
“Rolling Moon” is the sort of song that could give the Jam the decent-sized hit they have deserved in this country for some time. “Bite” crosses the Clean and Toy Love at their most rampant (partly through the presence of the former’s David Kilgour on guitar), and “Flame-thrower” bows out with a drum-propelled climax that could have come straight out of the Electric Prunes’ Great Banana Hoax.
Dunedin Double has already shown three more sides to The Chills, and which coming up still we have “Pink Frost”, which has been sitting in Flying Nun’s vaults for some time, possibly scheduled to lead off an EP early next year, along with the instrumental “Purple Girl” and the two that were filmed for Shazam and Radio With Pictures in October " – the excellent Oncoming Day” and “Dolphins” (it is, incidentally, a measure of The Chills’ appeal that they’re an fit neatly into both television programmes.)