Live Review: The Chills at Leeds Belgrave Music Hall

In the words of Freddie Mercury, ‘the show must go on’. And to paraphrase another old rogue, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is the life a band commits to, especially when outside of the confines of a recording studio.

The Chills have seen it all before of course, briefly flirting with globality with 1992’s ‘Submarine Bells‘ but since then, outside of their New Zealand home, they’ve remained largely a well kept secret.

Shows do go on of course, even ones when the turn out is less than stellar. Live4ever was once entertained royally by Emiliana Torrini telling us she’d played to “four men on acid…and a dog”, and whilst the Belgrave isn’t exactly that deserted, the cloak room attendant had probably finished his Killer Sudoku Volume 6 by ten o’ clock.

But there’s always things to give everyone cause to still believe in the unquenchable goodness of the human spirit. The few dozen in are noisy and enthusiastic – if a little bemused by the cartoon post Riot Grrl thrash of local support Nervous Twitch – and with good cause; their first new material in 16 years, The Chills’ last album ‘Silver Bullets‘ proved to be a quiet tour de force, songwriter Martin Phillipps unerringly threading lyrics about love, power and the ecology around deft indie pop melodies.

Phillipps and co. remain wonderfully sanguine, remarking straight-faced when he regales the crowd with the line “we played Primavera at the weekend, it wasn’t better, just different” whilst pulling on a catalogue stretching back as far as the waking-dreamy swirl of ‘Kaleidoscope World‘, beatific opener ‘Night Of The Chill Blue‘ and ‘Pink Frost‘s cloistered post punk.

It’s testament to the quintet that they’ve lost none of their zest despite the contrast between Leeds and Barcelona. They could’ve been forgiven too for resigning themselves to the belief that it just wasn’t their night as the early exchanges are beset by intermittent equipment gremlins. At times it’s worth the admission fee alone to see drummer Todd Knudson, a study in trance-like envelopment, singing every word and frequently rising from his stool at the song’s end as if in doing so he was defending its honour.

The last time L4E saw the band (in 2014), Phillipps had addressed the subject of the yet to be released ‘Silver Bullets’ creation with obvious pride, the very process almost in defiance of the bad luck and bad choices he’s now consigned to a non-bitter past. All of its different facets are represented tonight, from ‘Warm Waveform‘s cherished intimacy to the strident eco-warning of ‘Underwater Wasteland‘ and ‘America Says Hello‘s bristling anti-imperialism.

No-one here though is being indoctrinated; it’s not that these songs are overtly political, just you sense made by people blessed with the perspective of coming from a small part of a big world. The music itself remains patently uninterested in making concessions to modernism without being anachronistic; warm and inclusive, it loves the audience and the audience loves it back, big or small.

The night finishes with ‘Heavenly Pop Hit‘, their most famous ditty and yet one that sums up the vagaries of not knowing whether you want something or not, of the rational mind’s doubts versus that sanctity of the inner child’s fearlessness. Bums on seats would for instance tell the head that promoter-bashing nights like tonight are a sign, but as Phillips sings “it’s a heavenly pop hit if anyone wants it”, a look at the ecstatic faces it brings cuts to the essence of keeping faith and resilience against the little earthquakes of strife.

It still is, and we still do.

(Andy Peterson)

Live4ever’s full photo gallery from the London Koko gig is right here