Martin Phillipps Remembered on Unreleased Songs

New Zealand jangle-pop band the Chills will release a new album of previously unreleased songs in February. The album, Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, arrives following the death of frontman Martin Phillipps. The singer-songwriter, who was battling liver disease, died in July at the age of 61.

Spring Board assembles 20 archival recordings, and song fragments that Phillipps was working to complete before his death last summer. Some of the songs were first written almost four decades earlier.

The Chills were formed by Phillipps in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1980 and achieved regional success with albums like 1987’s Brave Words and 1990’s Submarine Bells. Their biggest U.S. song was “Heavenly Pop Hit,” off Submarine Bells.

Ahead of Spring Board’s Feb. 28 release, the band (and label Fire Records) have issued the first song, “If This World Was Made for Me.” It’s a moody, probing number that finds Phillipps repeating the chorus over chiming guitars.  

The Chills broke up in the Nineties, but Phillipps continued to resurrect the band with various members. Their last album was 2021’s Scatterbrain.

Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs track list:
1. “Dolphins”
2.  “Learn to Try Again”
3. “If This World Was Made for Me”
4. “Juicy Creaming Soda”
5. “I’ll Protect You”
6. “And When You’re There”
7. “Declaration”
8. “Stay Longer”
9. “Slime”
10. “Steel Skies”
11. “Jellyhead”
12. “Such Self Pity”
13. “Meet My Eyes”
14. “Bad Eggs”
15. “Lion Tamer”
16. “The Other”
17. “Since You Left Me”
18. “Watching Old Home Movies”
19. “I Saw Your Silhouette”
20. “I Don’t Want to Live Forever”