THE LAST HURRAH (2025): Martin Phillipps' last Chills album

George Harrison however knew he was on the way out and so hurried to finish what became his posthumous Brainwashed album, his first studio album in 15 years. Because he had been on notice with cancer for some years and the songs had been laid down over more than a decade, there is very little reference to his impending death.

And of course he had a very different view of death given his beliefs.

Warren Zevon faced his end with typically grim humour and realism. The album was My Ride's Here. 

When musicians die there's often the temptation to scour a posthumous release for some premonition in lyrics to suggest a knowingness about the inevitable.

Martin Phillipps – who steered his vision of the Chills from the early 1980s until his death last July at 61 – lived with mortality from an early age: his friend and Chills' drummer Martyn Bull dying in 1983; Phillipps himself facing it in the late 1990s after addictions, hepatitis-C and mental health issues.

But in the last decade the Chills – a stable line-up with excellent albums Silver Bullets (2015) and Scatterbrain (2021) – were riding high and Phillipps' songwriting was acclaimed as a late-career peak others could only wish for.

If there are any intimations of finality in Spring Board – a collection of previously unrecorded songs repolished by Phillipps, the Chills and others – it's swept aside by the sheer joy and energy across the 20 songs.

It's a measure of Phillipps' gifts he could resurrect such material and, with tweaking, breathe new life into it.

“All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting,” he said. “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.”

And they are elevated by subsequent contributions from Julia Deans, Elroy and Neil Finn, Hollie Fullbrook (Tiny Ruins), Troy Kingi, Shona Laing, Tami Neilson, Dianne Swann, Purple Pilgrims and Greg Haver.

Juicy Creaming Soda is gloriously shimmering and archetypal Chills jangle-pop (“I don't regret a thing . . . the choice was mine”); And When You're There is a blazing comet of gritty psychedelic rock; the thrusting Declaration has a bitter edge (“clear the air, set things straight . . . I won't fight for you now”) . . .

Although born of a much younger man, Phillipps delivers these songs with spirited, animated energy as if rediscovering his former self. Even the jaunty I Don't Want to Live Forever belies its title.

Certainly there was often a sublimated melancholy in Phillipps' lyrics (here on the muscular Dolphins) although If This World Was Made For Me (“I know I just don't belong”) delivers a self-aware joke: “There'd be 24 hours of great TV”.

The slight I'll Protect You is sentimental but floats atop billows of guitar and organ, the moody Lion Tamer stumbles on an awkward metaphor (“I think I'll call my lion 'fame' ”) and – given current tastes -- indie guitar pop of this kind rarely troubles the charts these days. Not even the Chills embellished by female vocalists.

Despite the punchy production by Tom Healy– which sometimes places it close to rushing energy of The Oncoming Day on the Gary Smith-produced Submarine Bells – and many familiar Chills motifs, there isn't a breakout pop hit here, heavenly or otherwise.

But its hard to deny the white-knuckle pop (Stay Longer, The Other), adolescent energy of Steel Skies and the 1980 electropop soundscapes of Slime and Meet My Eyes (“you'll see no lies”).

Or that Martin Phillipps – even when rejigging juvenilia – was among our most accomplished and unique songwriters.

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SPRING BOARD – THE EARLY UNRECORDED SONGS is available digitally at bandcamp here, on CD and double vinyl. A New Zealand edition of the vinyl includes a Martin Phillipps Scrap Book.