The Chills - Pink Frost
The Chills’ 1984 chart breakthrough, “Pink Frost,” gives me bad anxiety. Blankets of it. Blankets that pile on and muffle the minor-key leering that follows the chirpy opening bars. The aural suffocation feeds directly into heart-turning lyrical concerns about a girl’s sudden, shocking death (gun to my head, I think it’s an overdose) and the panicked guy who finds her that way. Shattering as it is, I have an apparently bottomless need to hear it, no matter how close to full-fledged breakdown it takes me. Of a piece, I’d argue, with the end of SLC Punk, which is true and devastating and rewatchable in kindred ways.
Classic. I love the indie pop guitar tease at the beginning—it’s just pleasant enough for the band to yank the carpet out from beneath you. Regarding the death in the song, I’ve always read the unreliable narrator as a possible culprit. (Also, the above post = instafollow for thenotes!)
