The Chills - Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow 02/08/14

Martin Phillips has had something of a stop-start career in the thirty years since he first formed the band, which partly explains why there’s just four studio albums to The Chills’ name in that period. Band members also came and went, Phillips had his own drug and illness issues to deal with and there’s always been a nagging feeling of unfulfilled potential. You could argue that the band’s best work is the 1987 compilation Kaleidoscope World as it contains the brilliant “Pink Frost”, “Rolling Moon” and “I Love My Leather Jacket”, although Brave Words remains something of a cult classic and played a part in making Flying Nun the respected record label it is today. Cycle forward to 2013 and Phillips revealed a new single, “Molten Gold” (the first new material in over a decade) and during the set tonight he states a new Chills record will be arriving very soon with the title of Silver Bullets.

So what of the set? Due to technical issues and the organisational chaos of the Commonwealth Games, we only get a nine song set from The Chills - but each and every one of those songs sounded wonderful. Although on other dates of the tour Phillips has been keen to play around half a dozen new songs he only pulls out two of those this evening: the aforementioned “Molten Gold” sounds beamed right in from 1987, a gorgeous jangling pop beauty, beefed out by Oli Wilson’s rolling organ stabs and Erica Stichbury’s second guitar (she also plays keys and violin, effectively taking the place of Phillips’ sister and former band member, Rachel) while “Silver Bullets” again makes you feel like time has stood still with its lovely harmonious chorus and familiar sudden ending. I’ve always thought that The Chills, like R.E.M., have absolutely no idea how to end a song properly.

While the two new songs are evidence that Phillips has lost none of his pop nous and that he’s benefited from a settled line-up, everyone is really here to hear the classics, possibly for the very first time. “Night of Chill Blue” is as breathless as it has ever sounded, “Wet Blanket” and “Heavenly Pop Hit” are simply glorious indie pop songs whose DNA you can find in every sing-along independent release from 1986 to the present day and the biggest cheer of the night is reserved for “Pink Frost”. The desperation in the lyrics are still as touching today as they were all those years ago, the just-angular-enough guitars as still as nervy and although we know Phillips has come through his drug problems there remains an air of worry around the song, untouchable as it is.

Nine songs isn’t enough and I’m sure I’m not the only one that felt a bit short-changed by the organisational incompetence of the evening, yet it’s still not quite enough to overshadow the fact that we all came to see a legendary band and they didn’t let us down. I’ve no evidence to prove that The Chills have been preserved in amber since the early 1990s but given the incredibly vibrant performance I’ve just witnessed, I can’t be far from the truth. You’d wonder where the band would have ended up if Martin Phillips had a trouble-free career. What if, eh?