The Chills

Among New Zealand's standout guitar pop outfits spanning multiple generations, The Chills ranked as especially emblematic. Emerging during the 1980s, they produced a steady run of ringing, melody-driven guitar pop releases on the Flying Nun imprint before elevating studio polish across a pair of albums, most prominently 1990's Submarine Bells, issued via Slash. Their compositions and instrumental frameworks relied on overlapping guitar lines paired with vocal harmonies, yielding a rich texture that avoided excessive emotional excess. Lineup turnover proved constant, leaving singer-songwriter Martin Phillipps, the group's founder, as its sole unchanging participant. Health setbacks during the 1990s prompted an extended hiatus; Phillipps thereafter created music only intermittently until reemerging in the 2010s with several potent return albums, among them 2021's Scatterbrain, that rank alongside the band's strongest output.

Phillipps first performed with the New Zealand punk group the Same beginning in 1978. Echoing the Clean and the Enemy, that act focused chiefly on covers while blending British Invasion influences with garage rock in raw form, though it never entered a studio. Phillipps carried forward a comparable method when establishing the Chills in 1980 alongside his sister Rachel and bassist Jane Dodd once the Same dissolved.

The Chills inked a deal with the influential New Zealand independent Flying Nun in 1982 and issued multiple singles that saw limited circulation in America and Europe. Throughout this period the roster underwent sweeping changes, encompassing future Great Unwashed bassist Peter Gutteridge, the Clean's David Kilgour, keyboardist Frazer Batts, bassist Terry Moore, guitarist Martin Kean, keyboardist Peter Allison, drummer Martyn Bull, and drummer Alan Haig. These iterations generated numerous singles yet never completed an album. The band's debut full-length, Kaleidoscope World (1986), appeared as a compilation of early singles on the U.K. label Creation and later reached the U.S. through Homestead.

Featuring the tenth configuration—Phillipps, bassist Justin Harwood, keyboardist Andrew Todd, and drummer Caroline Easther—the Chills tracked their initial proper album, Brave Worlds, in 1987. Mayo Thompson, central figure of the cult band the Red Crayola and onetime Pere Ubu member, handled production, though the musicians expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome, describing it as overly relaxed and insufficiently refined. Phillipps and company found greater fulfillment in their follow-up, 1990's Submarine Bells, their debut on an American major label. Recorded after Jimmy Stephenson replaced Easther, who was contending with tinnitus, the album earned strong critical and college-radio notice yet never achieved mainstream traction in America or Britain. Two years afterward they delivered Soft Bomb, which met an identical commercial reception.

The ensuing year Martin Phillipps again disbanded the Chills and descended into drug addiction, precipitating grave health complications. He persisted in creating music regardless, releasing Sunburnt in 1996 under the name Martin Phillipps & the Chills. That project enlisted Dave Mattacks of Fairport Convention and XTC's Dave Gregory on drums and bass. Phillipps subsequently joined David Kilgour's Heavy Eights and periodically assembled musicians for occasional Chills performances, culminating in the 2004 EP Stand By. New material did not surface until 2013, when the single song "Molten Gold" appeared online. Shortly thereafter the expansive live set Somewhere Beautiful emerged, documenting a twenty-song performance from a 2011 New Year's Eve gathering. The following year a compilation of 1980s BBC Sessions arrived, heightening anticipation for fresh recordings. In 2015 Phillipps and a stable lineup—multi-instrumentalist Erica Scally, bassist James Dickson, keyboardist Oli Wilson, and drummer Todd Knudson—issued Silver Bullets on Fire Records. The group played its first U.S. concert in years at 2016's N.Y.C. Popfest before touring the U.K. and Europe. The same personnel returned to the studio with longtime Manic Street Preachers producer Greg Haver, securing a bold, contemporary rock tone for the 2018 album Snow Bound. After bassist Dickson gave way to Callum Hampton, the band reentered the studio to record its seventh album. Addressing mythology, extraterrestrials, and contemporary struggles, 2021's Scatterbrain retained the expansive rock approach of its predecessor while incorporating prog elements. Martin Phillipps died on July 28, 2024, at the age of 61.