Album Review: The Chills - Silver Bullets

New Zealand band The Chills' ambitious fifth full-length record arrives almost two decades after their previous album. 

Lead singer and songwriter Martin Phillipps' recent battles with addiction and disease are nowhere to be heard in his soothing voice, as his erudite lyrics glide over the shimmering instrumentation on Silver Bullets. However, there's often a sense that his writing is attempting to kill too many birds with one stone, such as on stinkers America Says Hello, Liquid Situation and Tomboy. Thankfully, the rest of the tracks are some of the best the band have written. Pyramid/When The Poor Can Reach The Moon in particular helps make the album another sterling addition to the band's catalogue.