In the years before his untimely death in July, The Chills frontman Martin Phillipps talked of how he was going back through his archive of early unrecorded songs and finally putting them to tape for a new album. This years-in-the-making passion project, which was finished with the blessing of the band, his family and management, has now been announced: Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, a double album, will be out February 28 via Fire.
“The album seemed like an easy option,” Martin said, though also noting it wasn’t as easy as it first seemed. “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.”
In addition to the current lineup of The Chills (Oli Wilson, Erica Scally and Callum Hampton), Spring Board features contributions from Crowded House‘ s Neil Finn and Elroy Finn, Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook, Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans, Shona Laing, Tami Neilson, Dianne Swann (Everything That Flies), Purple Pilgrims’ Clementine Valentine, and more.
You can listen to “If This World Was Made For Me,” which does sound like an eerie early Chills song but with more modern production, below.
We miss you, Martin.
Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs
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