The Chills’ Frontman Martin Phillipps Honored with Posthumous Album

November 27, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

Music

Phillipps had been working on the newly-announced Spring Board record at the time of his unexpected passing in July.

Martin Phillipps of The Chills performs on stage during Primavera Sound at Parc del Forum on June 4, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.

Jordi Vidal/Redferns

Months after the passing of New Zealand musician Martin Phillipps, the late frontman of the Chills is to be remembered with a newly-announced posthumous album.

The record, titled Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, will be released under the Chills moniker on Feb. 28, 2025 through Fire Records, and is in fact the product of many years of hard work from Phillipps himself.

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Alongside his work as a member of the Chills, Phillipps had spent the final years of his life trawling through his archives, rediscovering many “easy songs and musings” which were revisited and revised ahead of being collected on Spring Board. Described as a “dedicated reimagining of his earlier unreleased songs that became his artistic farewell”, the record has received the blessing of his band, family and friends.

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“The album seemed like an easy option,” Phillipps was quoted as saying. “All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting; a 60-year old man couldn’t just stick to the lyrics of those formative years. And some of the songs were just vague recollections, incomplete, only blossoming during recording.”

Alongside his Chills bandmates – including Oli Wilson, Erica Scally, Callum Hampton and Todd Knudson – the record also features appearances from appearances from Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans, Shona Laing, and Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz fame.

Phillipps passed away unexpectedly in July at his home in Dunedin, on New Zealand’s south island. He had played what was called “an integral part” of the university town’s scene in the 1980s, and of Roger Shepherd‘s Flying Nun Records family, whose roster would include the Clean, the D4, Headless Chickens and Tall Dwarfs, Chris Knox, Straitjacket Fits and the Verlaines.

Following a lengthy hiatus, Philipps reactivated the Chills in 2013, with a number of new albums following, supported by a run of domestic and international tours. Their most recent LP, 2021’s Scatterbrain, would reach No. 4 on the New Zealand Albums Chart – their highest placing in close to 30 years.

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