When the first track on Scatterbrain, the latest from the Martin Phillipps solo project better known as The Chills, starts with "Give me the power of ancient stones/ Honor the monolith," it's nearly impossible not to have visions of Spinal Tap dancing in your head. Two songs later, in "Destiny," Phillips having regained his balance, returns from Stonehenge and declares with no small hint of autobiography, "I'm autarchic, on the mend."
The subject of the 2019 documentary film, The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, the eccentric and not altogether likable singer/songwriter has been the chief songwriter and the only constant member since the band's formation in Dunedin, New Zealand in the early 1980s. After their jangly eccentric pop (dubbed the "Dunedin Sound") had a brush with international success following the 1990 release of Submarine Bells on U.S.-based Slash Records, the band spiraled into instability led by Phillipps' descent into almost-lethal self-abuse accompanied by—as the documentary makes clear—horrific hoarding. The 2015 release of Silver Bullets, followed by 2018's Snow Bound signaled Phillipps' return to health and his art, which has culminated in his best collection of songs and vocal performances since Submarine Bells.
Not surprisingly, Phillipps has lately been contemplating mortality and its consequences. In "Caught in My Eye" with his voice deliberately close-miked and forward in the mix, he repeats "I won't cry/ There must be something caught in my eye," before he ponders the finality of passings in verses like "Answers from the past now lie behind a sealed door/ All the things I could have asked/ They're now secrets evermore." In "Safe and Sound" the nearly 60-year-old Phillipps, with a life now approximating normality, celebrates nesting as he relishes staying home at night. The obvious single here, "Little Alien," features Phillipps placidly crooning "Linger on little alien/ Battle on little alien," over the album's most accessible melody. Perhaps it's a side effect of Phillipps' renewed enthusiasm for creativity and setting things right in his career, but this incarnation of the band with Callum Hampton (bass), Todd Knudson (drums), Erica Scally (guitar, keyboards) and Oli Wilson (keyboards) sounds unusually cohesive and committed. While the melodies and lyrics are Phillipps' strongest in many years, it's the arrangements and touches like the dramatic keyboard and drum refrains in "You're Immortal," another tune contemplating the fragility of life, that make this a welcome new chapter in The Chills' never-ending saga. © Robert Baird/Qobuz