The latest in a semi-regular series that breaks down a poem to analyse what it’s really trying to tell us.

The Chills’ EP Rolling Moon was released just before Christmas in 1982. The songs ‘Bite’ and ‘Flame-thrower’ are on the B-side; and Martin Phillipps’ cover art is acid green and shows the band members in black and white, posing with their imagined superpowers. 

This series about poetry was always meant to include song lyrics: we have so many poet-musicians in Aotearoa. When the devastating news hit last month that The Chills’ Martin Phillipps had died it felt the right time to start writing about lyrics, and to start with Phillipps.

I have always loved the way The Chills evoke wonder and awe and mystery. One of my favourite tracks is ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ because the jauntiness of the music hides the judgement day, ecstatic apocalypse scene that plays out in the words. ‘Rolling Moon’ is a bit the same: the tune is catchy, a chart-snatcher. But the words evoke a quest into another world. To me this song, like ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’, is a spell: it sings for transcendence, for humankind to glimpse the long forgotten land in the mists and be absorbed by its possibilities. This song holds sadness and joy, excitement and melancholy. It brings childlike wonder and adult gloom together and I love that: these songs makes me emotional, happy-sad, child-wise. 

Reading notes:

We wander lost forgotten hills
Blue sky, green grass, we are still
The mists enfold us gently smelling
Breeze in our ears softly telling
Of the days of light and laughter long ago

Immediately we are transported into a lost land. A place that sounds idyllic with “blue sky” and “green grass” – classic markers of paradise. But there are mists, too. Mist is the stuff of mystery and magic; and memory and time slips. This land is Avalon-eqsue, and alive with its own stories: it has its own scent, it tells of days gone by, days of “light and laughter”. There’s an Eden unfolding here. A story of walking backwards into a happier time. 

They trace us, taste us, touch our hair
Show us a castle and show us to their lair – to their lair
And the rolling moon rocks on by
We dance until we start to cry

Who is the “they”? We’re still with the image of mist so there is something ghostly about this “they”. The people and memories of this lost forgotten land are calling the “us” into their world. “They trace us, taste us, touch our hair” is such a beautiful line. Affectionate and gentle and childlike. The castle evokes the image of the castle in the air – that faraway place of dreams and fantasy. But then we have “lair” which is such a different tone: a lair brings to mind the hunter and the hunted, a dark place of potential death. This has all the markers of a fairytale: beautiful but ominous.

“We dance until we start to cry” continues this shifted tone: there’s ecstasy here, and release, but there’s a shadow mood now. 

We’ve got feverish sweat and aching bones
But please oh God, don’t take us home
It’s pretty cool but we can’t rest
The purple sun sets in the west

The energy has spiked: the ecstasy of this far away place has worked through the visitors, wringing them out physically – “aching bones” is that bodily exhaustion that most of us experience after a huge night out (or just life post-35 years old). The line “But please oh God, don’t take us home” is a cry to stay inside the magic. Even though it’s exhausting they never want to leave and return to reality. This becomes the refrain of the song, a cry out to the powers that be, a wish to remain inside an escape. 

“It’s pretty cool but we can’t rest” mirrors the idea of dancing til you cry: doing the thing you love but being rinsed by it. “The purple sun sets in the west” is another evocative image to remind us of the awe and beauty of this place. Purple is the colour of other worlds, of royalty and castles. 

We prance on gold-red summer lawns
Dragons-blood evening, the buzz of swarms
Of lawnmowers mowing summer lawns away, far away
I realise we really are quite far away, far away

This is my favourite stanza in this song. It brings together the fantasy setting with the magic of familiar places. It’s a song of summer: the “gold-red summer lawn”s is so evocative of those long, grass-scented evenings we know in this place. “Dragon’s-blood evening” evokes a red sunset, a powerful, big sky breathing the sun’s fire. The “buzz of swarms”: flies, mozzies! And the lawnmowers – those mechanical dragons that eat up our grass and give off that fresh smell. The sound of suburban summer. 

“I realise we really are quite far away, far away” – I love this idea that the heady days of summer can feel like another planet for a while; that you can get lost in those long days where time starts to become irrelevant; but also that Aotearoa is far away. We’re in summer when that world on the either side is in winter. We’re the beautiful, heavenly land. 

Far away, far away
And the rolling moon rocks on by
We dance until we start to cry
We’ve got feverish sweat and aching bones

Here’s that refrain that’s kind of stressful. The strenuous night out, the bliss that turns to aching, the working yourself up into a frenzy and collapsing at the other end but not wanting it to stop. I love the image of the moon as a rolling stone, a boulder in the sky that marks the passing of time as well as the crisp sort of non-time of night. 

But please oh God, don’t take us home
Please oh God, don’t take us home
Please oh God, don’t take us home

And that kind of tragic cry: the wonderful escape, the night, the seasons and the ecstasy all has to end but please don’t let it. 

Thank you for the music, Martin Phillipps.