THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes: Live at the Greek (Vinyl, CD and digital outlets)
17 Mar 2025 | 3 min read
On the face of it, it looked like a case of what Father John Misty had observed on his recent, excellent Mahashmashama album, “Time makes fools of us all”. When reflecting on the 2000 double album Live at the Greek where Jimmy Page joined the Black Crowes for blues classics and a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs, Crowes singer Chris Robinson was dismissive.... > Read more
Whole Lotta Love (live)
Hayden Chisholm, Jonathan Crayford: Release And Return (Rattle/digital outlets)
17 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
In this country's numerically small but busy jazz community, this album was almost inevitable: two mid-career performers sensitively enjoying each other's company. Both players have appeared many times but separately at Elsewhere: alto saxophonist Chisholm here, pianist Crayford here. But we could find no album of them together, which makes this album of seven duets... > Read more
JC Ballad
Landaeus/De Heney/Osgood: Dissolving Patterns (digital outlets)
17 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
Perhaps because we've had a long affection for ECM albums dating from the early Seventies – and more recently because we've got family in that part of the world – we sometimes gravitate towards Scandinavian jazz. Here pianist Mathias Landaeus, bassist Nina De Henry and drummer Kresten Osgood – all seasoned artists who first worked together in 2013... > Read more
Asteroid Heroes
DIED PRETTY. DOUGHBOY HOLLOW, CONSIDERED (1991): Caught by the turning tide
17 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
Australia has unleashed scores of exciting bands and artists but as time moves on the number becomes distilled down to just the most memorable: the Easybeats, expat Bee Gees, the Saints, Birthday Party, AC/DC, the Church, Cold Chisel, INXS, Midnight Oil, the Angels, Paul Kelly, Renee Geyer, Go-Betweens, Silverchair, Men at Work . . . But just behind those big names were... > Read more
Out in the Rain
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Reb Fountain: How Love Bends (digital and vinyl)
17 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and a bonus seven inch single of her versions of How Bizarre (see below) and the country classic The Gambler. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Those of us who have followed Reb Fountain from her... > Read more
Come Down
THE BEAU BRUMMELS' COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1964-1970: Beat-pop out of LA, destination Nashville
17 Mar 2025 | 4 min read | 1
Like their peers, the Beat-era Buckinghams from Chicago, the Beau Brummels out of San Francisco formed in the wake of the British Invasion and adopted the look, style and a name which ensured that they would be mistaken for another great UK pop-rock band. Needless to say they would insist that much of this wasn't deliberate – yeah, like naming yourself after an... > Read more
Lubbock, Texas: Lubbock or leave it
17 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
There comes a time when anyone who travels becomes Blanche Du Bois, the woman in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire who famously said, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers". We might not always be as needy as that faded southern belle -- but when you need help strangers are often the ones you depend on. Joe Don was one such... > Read more
I'm Looking For Someone to Love (Buddy Holly and the Crickets)
Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street (1965)
17 Mar 2025 | 1 min read | 2
When you have guitar, a voice, a studio and an expectant audience -- and some degree of vitriol to be delivered -- why would you not fire off this bitter salvo at former friends you might feel (rightly or wrongly of course) who have betrayed you? Not many songs begin with such an arrestingly confrontational lines as, "You got a lot a lotta nerve to say you are my... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Nico: Chelsea Town Hall, Live (digital outlets)
14 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Recorded in 1985, released in '92 as Chelsea Girl/Live and now reissued (CD and vinyl), this often startling concert caught the Velvet Underground chanteuse three years before her death and, although having been ravaged by the effects of heroin, in remarkably fine form. In her own way. Her final album Camera Obscura (produced by longtime supporter John Cale) provided... > Read more
Tananore
THE PATRON SAINT OF HUMMINGBIRDS: Environmental Music Vol 1 (digital outlets)
13 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
This Californian artist – who prefers to remain anonymous – appeared at Elsewhere last year with her ambient Environmental Music Vol 2 and promised Vol 1 would follow. And here it is, a collection of atmospheric pieces recorded during the lockdown era and a restful response to the stresses that some were feeling. Well, stress didn't just evaporate at the... > Read more
Meditation V
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT (2025): The rise and return of Nothing At All!
11 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
In those ancient days before the internet made self-promotion easy and lazy, artists had to create their own audience through live shows. Anticipating the emergence of garageband rock'n'roll bands like the Datsuns, Hellacopters, Von Bondies, Detroit Cobras, Guitar Wolf and others, the Nothing At All! trio out of Auckland's North Shore took their punk-fuelled rock'n'roll... > Read more
GET UP, STAND UP AGAIN (2025): The resurrection of All Fall Down
10 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
It was long ago and, from where we sit, far away: Christchurch in the Eighties to be specific. There were a lot of bands around at the time and with just the EP My Brand New Wallpaper Coat released on Flying Nun in 1987 it seems almost inevitable that All Fall Down should be one of those here-today-and-gone bands from that era. But All Fall Down were – as we... > Read more
Star Sign (live)
Favourite Five Recent Releases
The Tubs: Cotton Crown (digital outlets)
10 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
This London-based Welsh band come off as a smart marriage of REM's indie.rock jangle, slightly yobby British post-punk pop and a revved up version of Scotland's Proclaimers. In other words, they make smart and memorable folksy power-pop. And there's a real sense of desperation in places (the nervy Illusion, the Pogues-punky Chain Reaction). Singer Owen Williams has... > Read more
Illusion
COLE WILSON AND HIS TUMBLEWEEDS: COUNTRY SONGS VOL 1 and 2, CONSIDERED (1952): That old time C'n'W religion. Yodel-eh-ee-hoo.
10 Mar 2025 | 3 min read
Pulling albums from the shelves at random for this column is, of course, not without its risks. Sometimes you get to greet a familiar friend, other times you encounter barely known strangers. And then . . . Then you pull out Cole Wilson and His Tumbleweeds' first album of country songs, and so you might as well listen to the second volume which was right beside... > Read more
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
Favourite Five Recent Releases
THE LAST HURRAH (2025): Martin Phillipps' last Chills album
10 Mar 2025 | 3 min read
David Bowie knew his end was coming and so his final album blackstar – released on his 69th birthday and just two days before he died – contained references to his impending departure. Leonard Cohen's posthumous Thanks for the Dance in 2019, released three years after his death, may come with a title like a farewell note but the songs were part of his... > Read more
Juicy Creaming Soda
The Rolling Stones, The Unstoppable Stones (1965)
10 Mar 2025 | 4 min read | 1
The early albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones appeared in different versions in Britain and the States. New Zealand being a colony thankfully got the UK versions for the most part, just as the gods intended. But in some instances we got something different from both -- and in this case, better. The album The Unstoppable Stones only ever appeared in... > Read more
You Can't Catch Me
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Jaki Byard: Blues for Smoke (Candid/digital outlets)
10 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
This 1960 solo album by pianist Byard gets a welcome remastering and reissue because Byard seems a largely forgotten figure. His powerful playing and inventiveness showed him capable of working in an almost barrelhouse style as well as playing with Charles Mingus (notably on Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), Art Blakey, Roland Kirk, George Benson and in big bands. His... > Read more
Jake's Blues Next
Mavis Rivers: Farewell Samoa (1950)
10 Mar 2025 | 2 min read | 1
Because her career as singer was mostly in the United States -- where Sinatra apparently called her the purest voice in jazz -- Mavis Rivers was for many decades after 1953, when she made the first move from Auckland, more respected in New Zealand than actually heard. Yet in her brief period in Auckland -- the family originally from Apia, Samoa arrived in Auckland in... > Read more
GUEST MUSICIAN PAUL McLANEY backgrounds his new album Know Return
7 Mar 2025 | 3 min read | 1
When the first Gramsci album Permanence was released 25 years ago, at the turn of the millennium, I had the notion that I was embarking on a body of work and I decided that the first letter of each album title should create the overall title. Sophomore album Object followed two years later. As it turned out, by the time Dave Holmes - my original partner in crime - and I... > Read more
The Point of No Return
Bunchy's Big Score: Happy Birthday, Daniel Johnston!!! Don't Be Afraid (digital outlets)
5 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
The album title's reference to the late American eccentric and somewhat emotionally damaged pop artist Daniel Johnston – and the childlike cover art – flag that this album is a kind of left-field inspired amateurism by this self-described art-rock trio from Otepoti lead by singer/writer Max White. As with Johnston's often bizarre and sometimes very moving... > Read more