Album Review: Snow Bound by The Chills

After coming back with 2015's Silver Bullets, an album that reasserted the genius of Martin Phillipps but sounded a little tentative at times, the Chills' second album of the 2010s is a brilliant pop hit that's bold, bright, and confident. Snow Bound is a big pop statement, overflowing with singalong choruses, ringing guitars, rich arrangements, and Phillipps' typically trenchant observations. It's reminiscent of the Go-Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane, Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen, or the Chills' own Submarine Bells; albums that have ambition and reach but don't sacrifice an ounce of humanity in the process.

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A happy man is a platitudinous man. In his sixth decade, the Chills' Martin Phillipps sounds this note of wary optimism. "Even bad sugar makes bitter taste sweet" goes the first chorus of Snow Bound, his classic New Zealand pop band's sixth album in thirty years, barely a minute in. The same songwriter who penned the rumbling, wounded classic "Pink Frost" goes so far here as to title a song "Easy Peazy." Of course, calling a heroin-triggered hepatitis C survivor and admitted hevay drinker a happy man attests to the delusionary glint inherent in Phillipps' heavenly would-be hits.

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"Even bad sugar makes bitter taste sweet," Martin Phillips confides on the generously sweetened opening track of this seventh full-length for the New Zealand band. Certainly bitter and sweet have always been essential elements for the Chills, whose "Pink Frost" ranks as one of rock and roll's best and most devastating death songs, but whose other big single was the aptly named, frothy "Heavenly Pop Hit." Yet here on Snowbound, mid-life ruefulness vies with what sounds like genuine good cheer. Shiny, happy organ trill whistle through reverbed guitar caverns.

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