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
JULIAN REID: SOUNDS AND VISION (2025): The album as travelogue
1 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Expat songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Julian Reid has lived in Britain for more than two decades but in the past five years his work has taken him to through Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Pakistan and India, Canada and the United States. And elsewhere for holiday downtime. He has become a well-known photographer but he has always written music. We have... > Read more
Raised
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, TRACKED DOWN AGAIN (2025): The Boss gets synthy and loopy
30 Jun 2025 | 4 min read
When Bob Dylan released the 1985 Biograph box set -- where he mixed alternative versions, rarities, unreleased songs and live material -- he stuck a marker in the ground which dared others to do the same. Most artists, even of his age at the time, wouldn't have quite that much material available, and not of that quality. Six years later he changed the game again with... > Read more
Blind Spot
MID-YEAR REPORT: THE TOP 25 OF '25 (2025): Lend me your ears . . .
30 Jun 2025 | 5 min read | 1
It's the middle of the year and progress cards are being sent out. Here Elsewhere singles out excellence from the many dozens of albums we have written about so far this year. But note, these are only chosen from what we have actually reviewed: we heard more but didn't write about them. And we also didn't hear albums which are doubtless your favourites from the... > Read more
REVVED-UP REBELS (2025): The poster art of motorpsycho movies
30 Jun 2025 | 2 min read
It is one of the great lines in movie history, the teenage girl turns to Johnny and asks, “What are you rebelling against?” The leather-jacketed Johnny, all hooded eyes and sullen says, “Whaddya got?” Between Marlon Brando's moody and angry Johnny – leader of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang in the 1953 classic The Wild One – and to... > Read more
Born to Be Wild, by Steppenwolf
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Annahstasia: Tether (digital outlets)
30 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with full credits on an insert sheet, a fold out lyric sheet and a framable cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . If we're honest, few artists are wholly original or have the capacity to surprise. Most work in... > Read more
Take Care of Me
THE NEO-FOLKIE BOHOS OF THE NINETIES: Talking New York City
30 Jun 2025 | 5 min read
In the early Nineties – three decades after the original urban folk movement in Downtown – there was a whole new neo-boho scene in New York. Michelle Shocked was just the first and copped the publicity but behind here were Kirk Kelly, Roger Manning and Cindy Lee Berryhill -- all of whom dressed like fashionable alternative-Eighties types (black jeans),... > Read more
Cindy Lee Berryhill: Damn, I Wish I Were A Man
The Bangles: How is the Air Up There (1982)
30 Jun 2025 | 4 min read
Until the Herbs EP Whats' Be Happen? in 1981, Aotearoa New Zealand had no great tradition of political songs. There were the odd gestures (the Howard Morrison Quartet's humorous My Old Man's an All Black) but these were unusual. There were however an increasing number of songs which were about teenage rebellion, dissent and anti-social comment. Johnny... > Read more
PACIFIC MUSIC AWARDS FINALISTS (2025): The sounds of our South Pacific
29 Jun 2025 | 4 min read
The finalists for the 2025 Pacific Music Awards were announced last week at the Mangere Arts Centre in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. This year’s celebration of Pacific music marks the 21st anniversary of the event. And this year there are a record 34 finalists across 13 categories. Among the finalists are 15 first-time nominees - a testament to the... > Read more
Evan Silva: 6IX (digital outlets)
29 Jun 2025 | <1 min read
Those with a very long memory may recall Evan Silva as singer in The Action in the Sixties and as the more soulful man with the large Afro (he wrote his autobiography, Beneath the Afro, a few years back). He's been long gone from this country but had a decent career in Australia and as a committed Christian he has a podcast, has done jingles and intermittently releases... > Read more
It's Gett'n Late
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' (2025): Goodbye to Brian and Sly
29 Jun 2025 | 2 min read
As news helicopters swirled overhead, demonstrators and troops faced off and smoke rose over Los Angeles, California became the focus of world attention last week. It seemed bleakly ironic that two musicians who helped define the promise and dream of the Golden State should die within days of each other. In very different ways Brian Wilson and Sly Stone, both 82, had... > Read more
People of the Sun: People of the Sun (digital outlets)
27 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
Out of New Plymouth, this heavyweight trio of Joseph Anderson, Djordje Nikolic and Tom Scrase don't want for ambition with this debut album which opens with a slow heartbeat and taonga puoro then moves into the relentless, steadily building acid rock on the eight minute Lisurgen. These announce an album of real substance from accomplished musicians who ride the line... > Read more
Elders
Leigh: Empathy for my Future Self (digital outlets)
26 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
This confident and mature debut album by an Auckland-based singer and multi-instrumentalist embraces electro-noise (She's Back), thrusting electro-pop (He's Giving, March of the Cucks), disruptive pop (Purple Pals, the skittering Comfortable?) and classy, swooning pop (Twenty-Two). The album's backstory here is in Comfortable?: “Take another name, 'Ca-me-ron'... > Read more
I Still Love the Moon
THE RENEGADES, REDISCOVERED (2025): What might have bin
23 Jun 2025 | 2 min read
Of all the bands who have carried the name The Renegades down the decades -- some moderately well-known and most probably only languishing in the memory of the members -- the British group from the Sixties is among the more interesting. They weren't that well known in their own country – a brief flicker in 1964 with their rejigging of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody as... > Read more
Thirteen Women
The Bajanaires: The Last Cowboy (digital outlets)
23 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
From the cover to the contents this is damn fine album of Americana (with some local inflections) from musicians with real road miles behind them: multi-instrumentalist Rob Sinclair, writer/singer Ann Frances Woolliams and writer/ multi-instrumentalist Bevan Revell. The Bajanaires – like Gary Harvey who takes a more tough Texas blues approach – are grounded... > Read more
Country Road
TONTON MACOUTE: TONTON MACOUTE, CONSIDERED (1971): The jazz-rock classical connection
23 Jun 2025 | 3 min read
It's likely the most familiar name on the 1971 debut album by British jazz-rockers Tonton Macoute isn't that of any band member or even engineer Martin Rushent (who went on to produce the Buzzcocks, Stranglers and Dr Feelgood among many others). It was that of the sleeve designer. Keef – photographer/designer Keith McMillan – is known for his work for the... > Read more
THE SHARP SARACENO AND THE MYSTERIOUS MARKETTS: Tales from the farce side
23 Jun 2025 | 4 min read
After the accountants took over what used to be called the entertainment business, there was less room for "real characters". Perhaps it was a good thing to get the Mafia out of the music business (for that story you should read Tommy James' autobiography Me, the Mob and the Music), but those larger than life people -- cigar chomping, money juggling and often... > Read more
Out of Limits
OF TIME AND MEMORY: Gifts given and dreams taken away
23 Jun 2025 | 2 min read | 1
When I was 10, maybe 11, my parents gave me a watch for my birthday. This wasn't like getting a balsa wood model airplane to make or a book about the adventures of Robin Hood. This was a serious gift, almost like a passage into the adult world. With a brown leather strap. Within a week however I had fiddled with the winder and pulled it right out accidentally.... > Read more
The Randall Knife
TWO EXPERIMENTALISTS WALK INTO A STUDIO . . .(2025): Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe get Lateral and Luminal
23 Jun 2025 | 2 min read
It never takes much for Elsewhere to be interested in an album with Brian Eno's name attached. Over the years we have essayed his innovative work in that decade after he left Roxy Music. And right up to his more recent albums. In the Seventies however he released a series of studio-crafted, influential left-field albums redefining the possibilities of pop. Even at... > Read more
Suddenly
Phoebe Rings: Aseurai (digital outlets)
23 Jun 2025 | 1 min read | 1
We come at this in reverse because when we went to see the American band Japanese Breakfast we were delighted to find that the opening act was Auckland's Phoebe Rings . . . and we had been listening to this new album (launched on the night) all day in anticipation of writing a review. It's a damn good album as you may read, but on the night they were a little... > Read more
Drifting
Doris Willingham: You Can't Do That (1968)
23 Jun 2025 | <1 min read
We've posted a track at Elsewhere previously by this soul singer, but she was Doris Duke then. Between being born Doris Curry and Doris Duke, she was Doris Willingham and had worked in Motown's New York office and as backing singer for Nina Simone. You'd think that would have meant she was well placed for success but it wasn't to be, not even with slice of shouty... > Read more