(2021) The Chills - Scatterbrain


Review:
For over forty years now, New Zealanders The Chills have been a band who have inspired a cultish following. If not a name immediately associated with commercial success, they have certainly inspired and influenced many. With frontman Martin Phillips the consistent heart of the band through their various evolutions over the decades, his well-documented obsessions with intensity and conviction should ensure a new album from The Chills is always something worthy of attention. His battle with a life-threatening liver disease and his miraculous recovery was outlined in a 2019 documentary The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps. His band’s second album since getting a second chance is both reflective and sobering. On Destiny, over keyboards that peal like bells, he sings “Destiny, just set me free, I’ll set my own controls”, and that sense of life’s fragility, and taking charge of the time remaining, permeates Scatterbrain. The New Zealand singer-songwriter has previously confronted death in the most personal way in the iconic Pink Frost and I Love My Leather Jacket; here he wades in again on Caught in My Eye, getting bad news on the phone that wasn’t unexpected, but is still an emotional gut-punch. Meanwhile, he’s never been more overt about the state of the world than on the title track, ruminating about our current political climate’s deliberate sowing of confusion and misinformation. Musically, there’s a digital sheen to the sound: the rhythms tend to tickle (Safe and Sound), boom (You’re Immortal) or crunch (Scatterbrain), while dominant keyboards add ’80s pop colours, whether string washes or synthesized horns and woodwinds.





Tracklist:
1.Monolith 02:56
2.Hourglass 02:44
3.Destiny 02:55
4.Caught In My Eye 03:02
5.You're Immortal 03:09
6.Little Alien 03:35
7.Safe And Sound 03:00
8.Worlds Within Worlds 03:22
9.Scatterbrain 02:40
10.Walls Beyond Abandon 03:37


Media Report:
Genre: indie-pop, indie-rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits