Phillipps, who passed away at 61, left behind a rich catalog full of melancholic gems
. He was one of the most brilliant songwriters of his era, with a string of Eighties and Nineties guitar classics: “Pink Frost,” “I Love My Leather Jacket,” “Heavenly Pop Hit,” “The Great Escape,” so many more. Phillipps had battled liver disease for years and recently entered a Dunedin hospital, but his, at only 61, is a real loss. His tunes were full of alienation and misery, yet with his own distinct touch of human warmth.
Phillipps had an amazing hot streak from 1982 to 1993 — on a good day, he could hang with Lou Reed or Ray Davies in their prime. He was writing jagged guitar songs that had the edge of the Velvet Underground, but with a New Zealand sense of weirdo pastoral — a Lou Reed reborn on an island where sheep outnumbered humans 22 to one. Alas, it was the wrongest possible moment for his kind of songwriting to reach any broad audience.
Who the hell sings this way about a leather jacket? Who the hell sings this way about death? Who wouldn’t want their friends to remember them this way? Who wouldn’t want to have a friend worth mourning like this? And all this in a three-minute post-punk guitar rave that hops like “Roadrunner” or “Dirty Water”? This guy was in a league of his own.
But compared to the cool U.S./U.K. bands of the day, the Chills sounded shockingly earnest and irony-free. “Rolling Moon” sums up their playful spirit of young adventure, gazing up at the night sky. “The rolling moon rocks on by,” Phillipps sings. “We dance until we start to cry/We’ve got feverish sweat and aching bones/Please, oh, God, don’t take us home.” It’s a highlight ofThe title tune is his invitation to fly off in a space capsule, two lovers adrift in the cosmos.
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