Reviewed on Wednesday January 13 (photo by Jamie Williams)
New Zealand band The Chills – signed to the now-revered Flying Nun Records label – lit up the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent in Hyde Park’s Festival Village as part of Sydney Festival.
“Sorry it’s been so long. We got lost,” said frontman Martin Phillipps to a room brimming with greying New Zealand expats and smatterings of young Australian music geeks and middle-agers. He wasn’t wrong, either. The Chills’ new album, last year’s Silver Bullets, arrived a long 19 years since their last, Sunburnt.
The evening was heavy with plugs for the new record, which is something of an ode to environmentalism. This theme emerged as early as the third song ‘Aurora Corona’: “Oh, Gaia show mercy today”.
They played 1984’s ’Pink Frost’ (the moment I’d been waiting for, and judging by the woos and yeahs emanating from the crowd, I wasn’t alone). The smoke machine was up to 11, blowing smoke across stage as if a gentle breeze were pushing purple haze across a moody, dank moor.
‘America Says Hello’ is another newbie with a political/environmental bent, and it was affecting. Phillipps captured the issues facing dormant bands who release new work and hit the road again when he quipped, “We can’t play all the old ones,” in response to people shouting out song requests. However, 1986’s ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’ did get an airing. It was the third last track and, to be honest, it was one of those tracks that had to happen, lest the band inspire a mob uprising with a median age of 50.
An encore was uncertain, but as someone near me amusingly pointed out, “They have to; there’s nowhere else for them to go,” referring to the cramped conditions offered by the Spiegeltent stage: part Bavarian beer hall, part Romani caravan. The crowd was pleased to see The Chills return for one more song, but also just to see them performing again in Australia after such a long hiatus.
All is well in the land of The Chills; this was an overwhelmingly fun gig. Their sound was seamless, cohesive and loud. The old hits were delivered perfectly, received wonderfully, and even the new stuff went down well – no small feat for a mature ‘nostalgia’ band.
