The Story Behind The Song: The Chills’ fitting tragedy, ‘Pink Frost’
During the late 1970s and ’80s, a flourish of musical activity in New Zealand took heed of the concurrent post-punk trends of Europe and North America. A particularly inviting scene developed in the South Island city of Dunedin, led by the eminence of The Chills, The Clean and The Verlaines. Such bands helped to establish the Dunedin Sound movement, inspired by bands like The Velvet Underground, Television and Buzzcocks and the contemporary jangle-pop trend.
In 2021, Matthew Goody published Needles & Plastics: Flying Nun Records 1981–1988 via Jack White’s Third Man Books. The book explores the Dunedin Sound phenomenon as facilitated by its most associative label, Flying Nun. The extensive chronicle pays particular attention to the label’s most popular acts, The Chills and The Clean.
Following the dissolution of his earlier band, The Same, vocalist and guitarist Martin Phillipps formed a new band named The Chills in 1980. The band gained immediate traction in the Dunedin scene but fell into dormancy in 1981 following an exodus. Isolated, Phillipps became an ancillary member of The Clean, performing keyboards with the David Kilgour-led band on tour.
The Chills regrouped in the summer of 1981 and recorded three songs, ‘Kaleidoscope World’, ‘Frantic Drift’ and ‘Satin Doll’, for submission to a local artists compilation LP titled Dunedin Double. The band struggled to maintain momentum into 1982, leading to another period of dormancy. “That year not doing anything was quite bad,” Phillipps reflected in Goody’s chronicle. “I wrote a lot of songs, but because I wasn’t playing, I didn’t develop.”
Compounding the period of stagnation was the tragic news of drummer Martyn Bull’s cancer diagnosis. After seeking holistic treatment for leukaemia, Bull felt well enough to perform by April 1983. The Chills excitedly returned to the studio, now joined by keyboardist Peter Allison and Kilgour, who had experienced a similar dry spell with The Clean.
“It was really exciting,” Phillipps later said. “But there were daggers in people’s eyes half the time. No one was able to chuck around ideas at all”. Unfortunately, Kilgour left the band after several practice sessions, shortly followed by Martyn Bull, whose illness had begun to take its toll again. Tragically, Bull passed away three months later, on July 18th, 1983, aged 22.
After such a devastating loss, The Chills’ future hung in the balance. The loss had a particularly disarming effect on bassist Terry Moore. “With Terry, after Martyn died, the music sort of lost its purpose,” Phillipps once told Rip It Up. “It was a period of meandering for me. Martyn’s wife and others didn’t want to see The Chills name used any more… I didn’t want to use it anymore.”
When Phillipps finally reformed the band, he changed the name to A Wrinkle in Time. However, the new handle didn’t sit well with Flying Nun Records, who pressured him to revert to The Chills. After realising that most fans concurred, he acquiesced to the reversion.
Feeling somewhat guilty about retaining the name, Phillipps reunited with Moore in Auckland in 1984, hoping to pay tribute to Bull in some way. In May 1982, Bull, Phillipps and Moore had recorded two songs at The Lab but abandoned them, deeming the mixes substandard.
“I really had forgotten all about ‘Pink Frost’ and ‘Purple Girl’, and then we decided to remix them,” Phillipps recalled. In honour of their fallen friend, Moore and Phillipps recorded new vocal and guitar tracks to exhume ‘Pink Frost’. Morbid and tragic, the song’s frost is pink with blood in a scene where the narrator has woken to discover that he’s killed his partner.
The new recording of ‘Pink Frost’ was snapped up by Flying Nun and released in June 1984. The original 7″ sleeves featured a tribute to Martyn Bull on the back cover, and etched into the vinyl run-out were the words “For Martyn”. The Chills also donated all profits generated by the single to Cancer Research.
‘Pink Frost’ remains The Chills’ most famous song and is at least partially responsible for the band’s longevity. Although they remain active to this day, The Chills observed a particularly successful spell through the 1990s with acclaimed albums like Submarine Bells and Soft Bomb.
Listen to the beautifully haunting ‘Pink Frost’ below.
