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
BUY NOW by MICHAEL BROWN
2 Jun 2025 | 5 min read
The Bloomsbury Academic 33⅓ imprint is an excellent series where serious writers turn a laser focus on a particular album. This is a considerable step up from previous superficial album considerations because the writers bring into focus the context of the artist's life and work, locate the album in the bigger picture of contemporary music and drill down into the... > Read more
Pinot Noir
LISA MARIE PRESLEY REMEMBERED (2025): A child of her time
2 Jun 2025 | 2 min read | 1
Mercer Ellington did it, so did two of Sinatra's kids Frank Jnr and Nancy. Two Lennon's and George Harrison's son Dhani did it too (in fact every Beatle has a kid who's done it). So did a few Marleys, Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli and Steve Earle's boy Justin Townes. They all went into the family business. If we suspend our scepticism about this and... > Read more
Soften the Blows
GALLAGHER: THE FALL AND RISE OF OASIS by PJ HARRISON
2 Jun 2025 | 3 min read
Author, musician and Oasis uber-fan Harrison had his Beatles/Sullivan Show-like epiphany when hearing Rock'n'Roll Star as a teenager on a school trip. “Oasis changed my life. The first time I heard them it felt like someone had fired a starting gun in my brain and real life had begun”. And later he writes “the impact Oasis had on people my age,... > Read more
Some Might Say
Jameszoo and Asko Schönberg: Music for 17 Musicians (Brainfeeder/digital outlets)
2 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
A challenge perhaps and the title is the clue as it references Steve Reich's famous Music for 18 Musicians. In 2022 contemporary Dutch composer Jameszoo (Mitchel van Dinther) released the album Blind (which came with tarot deck and a short film), mostly improvised music which used vintage synthesizers alongside disklavier (a motorised piano) and which also used other... > Read more
Big Game
Throw: Dreambaby Goodbye (Failsafe/digital outlets)
2 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
Anyone who steps back and observes the changing tides of popular music would have seen the success of country music coming a little while ago. And the reasons were simple: country music tells stories, has some stock imagery and metaphors, familiar melodic patterns and allows the writer to insert their own narrative. Those stepping back to look at that bigger picture... > Read more
Freefall
Karen Dalton: God Bless the Child (1966)
2 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
The new wave of folk artists have belately come to Karen Dalton, who palled around in Greenwich Village in the early Sixties with the likes of the young Bob Dylan (who was hugely impressed with her singing and guitar playing) and Fred Neil. It's said that she is the subject of Robbie Robertson-Richard Manuel song Katie's Been Gone on the Basement Tapes with Dylan. She... > Read more
JAPANESE BREAKFAST INTERVIEWED (2025): The woman who fell to Earth
1 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
Few touring musicians would have quite the reading list of Michelle Zauner. But there aren't many like the 36-year old Korean-American of the band Japanese Breakfast. “I'm reading a great book by Jhumpa Lahiri called In Other Words: A Memoir which is about her living in Italy and learning the Italian language,” she says, “and I just read Eve... > Read more
Winter in LA
AOTEAROA MUSIC AWARDS 2025: Ake Ake and Onward
31 May 2025 | 7 min read
Every now and again someone will say that awards are a load of crap and that music isn't a competition. Unfortunately, if we are being honest, it is a competition . .. a competition for attention, chart success, listeners an audience and so on. In that harsh reality there are winners and losers. Much like life, really. The very day of this year's Aotearoa Music... > Read more
JOHN & PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS by IAN LESLIE
31 May 2025 | 4 min read
The seriously afflicted Beatle fan might not expect to find much new in any more biographies. However this insightful and interesting biography-cum-psychological study of the band's protagonists takes such an interesting and probing slant on the relationship between Lennon and McCartney that it does force a rethink of how those two came together to sometimes create one... > Read more
Martha My Dear
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RECOMMENDED RECORD: Sparks: Mad! (digital outlets)
30 May 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with all the lyrics (necessary with Sparks) and credits. And is available on white vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Sparks brothers Ron and Russell Mael (aged 79 and 76 respectively) open their 28th studio... > Read more
Lord Have Mercy
THE TREADMILL OF LIFE: Age shall not weary me?
30 May 2025 | 2 min read | 1
Four about four decades from my early 20s I did no active exercise: no walking, no jogging, no sports, no gym . . . Actually I think I had a brief encounter with the gym but it turned out we were incompatible. That said, with three kids in the first years, a decade of teaching which keeps you on your toes and feet, a lot of international travel and lecturing at... > Read more
PAUL McCARTNEY, MONDAY JUNE 14, 1965: Just another day
26 May 2025 | 1 min read | 2
The more you think about it, the more impressive the Beatles' work ethic becomes. In the three years after the release of their first UK single Love Me Do in October 1962 they recorded five albums of mostly original songs (A Hard Day's Night had 14 originals), made two films – A Hard Day's Night and Help! – and toured constantly. They did BBC radio... > Read more
GUEST MUSICIAN AND AUTHOR LUKE CASEY on the art of disappearing. And reappearing elsewhere
26 May 2025 | 3 min read
When you’ve been out of the public eye for sometime, it can be a bit like Troy McClure from The Simpsons. “You may remember me from such bands as...”And as another drummer, the great Art Blakey, used to say, “If you’re not appearing, you’re disappearing.” In my case it was intentional. I stopped being a touring... > Read more
FIFTIES ROCK'N'ROLL; LOUD, FAST AND OUT OF CONTROL: Rock 101, The Originators
26 May 2025 | 5 min read
Billy Joel isn't usually cited in the Elsewhere world as an insightful reference, but his feisty We Didn't Start the Fire of the mid-Nineties was a brisk, rocking historical synopsis of our time (JFK, Chernobyl etc) which was referenced a little in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues chant-poem of three decades previous. However, by starting his countdown of... > Read more
Wanda Jackson: Let's Have A Party (1958)
The Chicks: The Rebel Kind (1966)
26 May 2025 | 1 min read | 2
New Zealand has no great tradition of political pop or rock. All those years of high unemployment during the Flying Nun heyday . . . and who mentioned it? Very few. Even the Springbok tour in '81 barely generated a whisper from musicians. (Riot 111 here being the noble exception.) And during the Vietnam period? Barely a dickey-bird . . . aside from, oddly... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Voom: Something Good is Happening (Flying Nun/digital outlets)
26 May 2025 | 1 min read
For those outside his immediate orbit, Buzz Moller is something of an enigma. His intermittent project Voom – debut album Now I Am Me arrived in 1998, the follow-up Hello, Are You There? eight years later and given vinyl pressing in 2021 – have enjoyed great affection for their heartfelt, sometimes raw and always melodic alt.pop-rock which roams freely... > Read more
Crazy Feeling
Favourite Five Recent Releases
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Suzanne Vega: Flying With Angels (digital outlets)
26 May 2025 | 1 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 credits. And is available on white vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Some artists soar like bright flares across the sky and immediately engage our attention, but then... > Read more
Chambermaid
Ocean Beach: Long Road Home (Freezing Works Records/digital outlets)
23 May 2025 | <1 min read
Although the charts would suggest there's no great demand for them, people still form guitar-driven rock bands. Something in the camaraderie of like minds as much just getting together to make a thrilling noise? Auckland five-piece Ocean Beach -- named for the former freezing works in wind-blown Bluff at the bottom of the South Island -- manage both on this debut... > Read more
On My Way
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Viagra Boys: Viagr Aboys (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Set aside the silly band name, because here is a band which is part rocking Beck in slacker-punk mode, part Beastie Boys, part political comedy act and probably a bit more of other things. This Swedish outfit – fronted by US-born singer-writer Sebastian Murphy – are frequently described as dance punk and garage punk. They seem adequate descriptors for a... > Read more
Dirty Boyz
Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The classy songwriting and delivery of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner has been one of the delights and discoveries of the past decade as they weave soul, r'n'b, funk and pop into art-pop. But they also deliver more as on this album which, despite the sheen of the surfaces and the clever music, has something to say about these straitened times. This from the hypnotic... > Read more