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
YOKO ONO, REVISITED AND RESPECTED (2025): Nonagenerian great-grandmother of avant-indie kids
15 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
When Marlon Williams sang Nobody Sees Me Like You Do at his sold-out Auckland Town Hall concert in 2018, it’s a safe bet few who loudly applauded knew who had written the song: Yoko Ono. Although she remains reviled by some older Beatle-obsessed fans for her artistic and personal relationship with John Lennon – who she has outlived by more than 40 years... > Read more
Waiting for the Sunrise, by Death Cab for Cutie
Pickle Darling: Battlebots (digital outlets)
15 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere is usually candid about certain artists – usual young women in contemporary pop whose target market is teenagers and their own peers. We simply say, they don't make music for us . . . although many times we have conceded that but said the album is excellent and worth hearing. We think we can recognise talent if even it doesn't make music for us.... > Read more
Human Bean Instruction Manual
The Tokey Tones: Butterfly, Caterpillar (2007)
15 Sep 2025 | 5 min read | 2
It’s a common occurrence: just when popular music has got up a head of steam, some supportive critical consensus, and is charging off in a particular direction along comes something which, by going the opposite way, captures the imagination. At the height of Day-Glo acid-dropping hippiedom along came the Velvet Underground in all their monochrome gloominess singing... > Read more
Yoghurt and Vinegar (from Butterfly)
MUSIC GOING HITHER AND ZITHER: Who was that man?
15 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
Every now and again a new instrument will appear in popular music. Although some were aware of the Indian sitar, it wasn't until George Harrison introduced it on the Beatles' Norwegian Wood in 1965 that it penetrated mainstream pop music. How far did it penetrate? The sitar became synonymous with psychedelic music and there's actually an 11 CD box set... > Read more
The Harry Lime Theme
Archie Bleyer: Hernando's Hideaway (1954)
15 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
The photo of Archie Bleyer here looks more like the portrait of buttoned-down but likeable banker or real estate agent. But he was at one time a middle-sized player in American music. He was a bandleader, singer, producer from the Thirties onward and had his own label Cadence Records which he started in '52 and recorded the likes of Andy Williams. He got especially... > Read more
Dead Famous People: Wild Young Ways (digital outlets)
14 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
One of the more surprising releases of recent years was Dead Famous People's “Harry” in 2020. As far as we had been aware the band enjoyed a short-lived moment on Flying Nun in the early-mid Eighties, went off to the UK and so on, the disappeared. But now there was an album where Dons Savage showed an assured touch in power-pop and knew the value of a... > Read more
In Praise of Right Now
Crystal Chen: You Can Call Me CC (digital outlets)
14 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Emerging artists often like to make a big statement with their debut album, right from the opening track. It makes sense. Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland's Crystal Chen however is confident enough to go the other way: the opener here Bloom (a gently tinkling instrumental on harp with flute for the first two of its five and half minutes) and follow-up, the sensual, smoky and... > Read more
Let's Kiss, Not Fight
GUEST WRITER JOHN BAKER remembers the late Viv Prince, a Pretty Thing, and the legacy of rock'n'roll's wild men
13 Sep 2025 | 9 min read
I was only just talking to Viv Prince on the 21st August when observing the 60th anniversary of the NZ tour: The insane New Zealand rock and roll tour by Britain's Pretty Things, the tour to end all tours! Viv, who died on September 11, age 84, was the last of the English rock and roll loons .... he mentored Keith Moon in behaviour on (and off)... > Read more
Honey, I Need
JERRY HARRISON, INTERVIEWED (1988): The name of this band is Casual Gods
12 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Here is another interview from the archive, and as with recent postings of Headless Chickens and Straitjacket Fits at crucial junctures in their careers, this comes from 1988. And it to was a pivotal point for former Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison. Talking Heads hadn't performed for three years at the time Harrison launched his band Casual Gods and although... > Read more
The Beths: Straight Line Was a Lie (Flying Nun, digital outlets)
12 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
The Beths' trajectory from indie.rock favourites to mainstream acceptance – from student radio in 2018 to RadioNZ National with Jesse Mulligan in 2022 who described them as the station's favourite band -- could be a roadmap for young bands. Their debut album Future Me Hate Me (2018) and its follow-up Jump Rope Gazers (2020)delivered exuberant, economic and... > Read more
No Joy
Favourite Five Recent Releases
THE SEEDS. RAW AND ALIVE, AGAIN (2025): Bring the noise of screamadelica
10 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
To paraphrase Matthew in the good book, “Where two or three are gathered in the name of garageband rock'n'roll, the name of The Seeds is in the midst of them”. The Seeds out of Los Angeles in the Sixties -- lead by the extraordinary, charismatic and increasingly eccentric Sky Saxon – had more than one great moment. But their defining two and a half... > Read more
Gypsy Plays His Drums
STRAITJACKET FITS, INTERVIEWED (1988): And the Hail was about to come down
9 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time, Elsewhere discovers an old interview which may suddenly be of interest again. Here in 1988 were Shayne Carter and Andrew Brough of Straitjacket Fits just days out from the release of their Hail! album talking about money, support slots, recording and so on. With the Shayne Carter Life in One Chord documentary currently in cinemas this may be an... > Read more
CRIME AND THE CITY SOLUTION (2025): Movie posters to shock and seduce
8 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Yes, we have been down this path previously with motorcycle outlaw movies, trippy hippies on the screen and horror films. But the posters for these sub-genres are often so lurid that we can't help but go there again. Maybe one day we will get to classic foreign films or greats like Citizen Kane. But this is not that day. For a little while we look at the... > Read more
Femme Fatale, by Nico (live)
Ami Taf Ra: The Prophet and the Madman (digital outlets)
8 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
As Elsewhere readers would know, we are very comfortable with a wide range of genres and artists. Jazz (of all kinds) and world music (ditto) are certainly covered in these pages. So this debut album by a Moroccan-born, LA-based singer is something we'd gravitate to fondly. The rolling, ecstatic trance sound of Moroccan music – especially that of Sufi players... > Read more
God
FIVE ODD ALBUMS I'M FOOLISH ENOUGH TO OWN: Hey! Ho! Let's . . . not go there!
8 Sep 2025 | 4 min read
You know how it happens. An album leaps out you from a dump bin in a secondhand record store (or dumped out in some strange neighbour's rubbish when they are moved on by the landlord ) and you think . . . why not? To Elsewhere's shame (and secret pride) we have more than our fair share of such stuff (see the links at the end of this... > Read more
RICHARD FARIÑA, REMEMBERED: The man who wouldn't be king
8 Sep 2025 | 12 min read
See him there in that photo from the early Sixties, the young singer standing alongside the beautiful Baez sisters Joan and Mimi. There he is again, a key figure hanging out in the downtown New York folk scene around the Village, his original songs pulling an audience his way, their lyrics political, allegorical, metaphorical and sometimes as gentle as a butterfly... > Read more
Michael, Andrew and James
THE BACHELORS, 16 GREAT SONGS, CONSIDERED (1964): Sing those sentimental songs
8 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
The Beat-era Bachelors out of Dublin – brothers Con and Dec Cluskey with John Stokes – had an unexpected career according to Decca's Dick Rowe who signed them up in 1962. Previously called the Harmonichords, they played mouth-organs (hence the harmonica-referencing name) and when Rowe saw them in Arbroath after a message from their manager he was unimpressed.... > Read more
I Believe
Laufey: A Matter of Time (digital outlets)
8 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
In a sassy cover which refers to a classic Julie London album of jazz standards from 1960, this Icelandic-Chinese, Berklee-educated singer and cellist stakes another claim for her style with this further instalment of her sophisticated, orchestrated and gently swinging originals. In one direction she often sits squarely in the lineage of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan... > Read more
Tough Luck
Sarah Vaughan: After You've Gone (1963)
8 Sep 2025 | <1 min read
Some very serious jazz people don't take British pianist/singer Jamie Cullum very seriously. They point out he also sings pop, his repertoire includes songs by the White Stripes and hip-hop artists and . . . All the usual accusations. Like Herbie Hancock doesn't draw from contemporary music? And what of Coltrane using My Favourite Things as a vehicle? Cullum... > Read more
Lexytron: Something New (digital outlets)
8 Sep 2025 | <1 min read
This new album by a British expat now resident here doesn't exactly live up to the title because the contents riff off some established genres: Elevator is a buzzy slice of New Wave pop (“the missing song from every 80s John Hughes movie” she says); Disco Jenny looks back to the dancefloor when Dexys were going off; My Backstage Life seems to have something Irish... > Read more