Silver Bullets

Sealed brand new album first full length album in nearly two decades. Includes free digital download voucher.

If there is one characteristic that has defined the music of the New Zealand group the Chills over the course of their 35-year, on-and-off, up-and-down existence, it’s their ability to summon a kind of effortless beauty. Their best songs occur in soft focus, the vocals of frontman and sole consistent member Martin Phillipps hushed and controlled, his guitar lines sturdy and gleaming like gold thread. His best melodies arrive as easy a sigh—gliding steadily through the center of "Satin Doll", spinning through "Tied Up in Chain" between tumbling piano. Where their contemporaries in the New Zealand scene of the early '80s capitalized on shambling charm (the Clean) or loose, looping jangle-pop (the Bats), the Chills were gentler and—especially as their career progressed—more regal, the corners of their songs filled with almost baroque detail. They feel designed to soundtrack some storybook undersea kingdom, sumptuous and mystic.

This is remarkable, considering the group’s history is shot through with turmoil and darkness. Founding drummer Martyn Bull succumbed to leukemia shortly after recording "Pink Frost", the haunting meditation on death for which the group is best known. Forever tipped as the breakout band from the Dunedin indie scene, they cycled through as many as 15 different lineups, releasing an endless string of singles and EPs for New Zealand’s storied Flying Nun label, but always seemed to collapse when they were finally hitting their stride. Case in point: they inked a deal with Warner Bros. in 1990 and scored a modest success with the smart and self-aware "Heavenly Pop Hit" from the utterly immaculate Submarine Bells but they failed to capitalize on the momentum. The intervening years delivered more EPs, compilations, and even a box set of rarities, but nothing like actual forward movement, And then there was the darkness surrounding Phillipps himself: After grappling with immobilizing depression in the late-'90s, he turned to heroin, and contracted hepatitis C after sharing a needle with a fellow user who carried the disease.

So, it’s both a surprise and relief to hear Phillipps in full fighting form on the title track from Silver Bullets, the first Chills full-length in 19 years. The song—and the album that contains it—handily erases everything from 1990 forward and seems to pick up exactly where Submarine Bells left off: guitars wreathed in reverb, organs heaving, Phillipps’ voice, as quietly assured as ever—even if what he’s singing is tinged with militance. "And if it’s true they kill a heinous vampire/ Charged with magic charm/ If forced to fight your evil empire/ We have the means to harm." Much of Silver Bullets strikes this kind of oppositional stance, Phillipps positioning himself as a kind of kiwi pop Tom Joad, pushing back against larger forces that threaten to swallow the less-fortunate whole. Often, the political is personal: on the roaring "I Can’t Help You", Phillipps grapples with the knowledge that he’s done harm to others, working through his feelings as his guitar and a whistling keyboard turn somersaults in the foreground. On the elegiac "Underwater Wasteland", he uses environmental destruction as a metaphor for social Darwinism, describing plesiosaurs and sea serpents with a kind of awestruck wonder. The music that surrounds him is rich and whispering: guitars that spiral like paper streamers in a breeze, drums that seem smothered in feathers. Combining delicate grace with ornate detailing is no easy feat, but on Silver Bullets, Phillipps manages it again and again.

But the album is not without its missteps. Phillipps’ songs are most effective when his enemies are faceless and generalized—it’s better suited to the album’s storybook mystique. The leaden bromide "America Says Hello" comes off like a conspiracy theorist’s 3 a.m. Facebook rant. Ditto "Tomboy", a song about a girl who’s picked on by her classmates whose graceful melody and good intentions are undone by Phillipps’ numbing repetition of the title. And "Molten Gold", a tumbling number about the healing power of love, feels rote compared to the richness that surrounds it.

The album is best when it’s at its broadest, and it’s never more so than in the expansive, eight-minute "Pyramids / When the Poor Can Reach the Moon". It’s the most ambitious song in the group’s entire catalog, and one whose firm grasp of melody and dynamics more than justifies its length. The tension builds for a full five minutes, the rich getting richer and the poor getting smarter, until it arrives at its glorious, sun-drenched conclusion when, instead of violence and chaos, the gates to the mansion are flung open, guitars and pianos sparkle, the oppressed are liberated and, in Phillipps’ words, "the poor can reach the moon." The net effect is warm and rousing, speaking to the power of hope in the face of darkness. After three decades of near-misses and dark alleys, Phillipps has finally embraced his role as king of the underdogs. On Silver Bullets, he fights back the only way he knows how: with beauty.