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
Oberlin: Ten More Dreamwebs (digital outlets)
10 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has frequently written about ambient albums and we sometimes refer to Brian Eno's dictum about the genre being of music which is as enjoyable as it ignorable. This album by Germany's Oberlin (Alexander Holtz) is one of a continuum of 45 releases – 45! – which are often ambient in nature but shift the needle from melody to atmosphere. This one is... > Read more
Market Song
LORDE'S ALBUM, VIRGIN (2025): Released, reviled, revered
9 Jul 2025 | 2 min read
Anyone looking for this country's dark underbelly need only consider social media comments about Lorde's new album. Some are vile, many simply stupid (“she's a wacko”), others shameful and a few telling: “I would rather listen to my 60's music.” From the tenor of many, a significant number of women among them, in the absence of former PM Jacinda... > Read more
Shapeshifter
The Reds, Pinks and Purples: The Past is a Garden I Never Fed (Fire/digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
We will admit immediately that we had never heard of the Californian artist Glenn Donaldson who goes by this endearing name and opens this album with the song The World Doesn't Want Another Band. He has apparently written a couple of hundred songs and released eight albums since 2018. Clearly we've got a lot of catching up to do, but before then we are immersing... > Read more
Slow Torture of an Hourly Wage
THE SYRIAN CASSETTE ARCHIVE (2022): Taped and bound
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Despite the conspiracy idiots, people posting photos of dinner or their dog and the usual “me living my best life” photos, Facebook is useful for some things. A couple of years ago someone posted a link to the Syrian Cassette Archive which is a project to preserve to music of that beleaguered nation which had appeared on cassette in the years before we... > Read more
THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF THE BANGLES: ETERNAL FLAME by JENNIFER OTTER BICKERDIKE
7 Jul 2025 | 4 min read
The Bangles' career – a few names before The Bangs then finally The Bangles – is neatly a decade: the big hair Eighties. Theirs is a simple story in many ways, just complicated by events which overtook them. Author Bickerdike spent considerable time interviewing them and those on the early scene in California when they were coming up (Sid Griffin and... > Read more
Manic Monday
Transcendence: The Music of Pat Metheny (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Now here's an interesting concept, the music of guitarist Pat Metheny explored by a guitar-less American trio of bass (Christopher Dean Sullivan), drums (Karl Latham) and keyboards (Bob Gluck, who published a book about Metheny's music last year). Given Metheny's melodic skills – and that he had Lyle Mays as his longtime keyboard player – this actually makes... > Read more
Offramp
ONE WE MISSED: Trousdale: Growing Pains (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Released in April but flying straight past us, this new album from the LA-based trio of Quinn D’Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones serves up concise, guitar-driven country-rock, harmonies and smart songs mostly recorded live in the studio to capture their energy and integrity. Some of this second album deals with the fatigue and... > Read more
Lonely Night
Polyrock: Your Dragging Feet (1980)
7 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
While it's always been fashionable and hip for rock musicians -- especially those in what we might call avant-rock -- to namedrop jazz or contemporary classical composers in interviews, when you listen to their music there's usually scant evidence of an influence. However Polyrock from New York -- who mostly came off as more jittery post-Talking Heads/Feelies on their... > Read more
Jazmine Mary: I Want to Rock And Roll (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Auckland's Jazmine Mary (Australian-born Jazmine Phillips, identifying as they/them) has confounded and impressed over her previous two albums: her downbeat The Licking of a Tangerine picked up Best Independent Debut at the 2022 Taite Prize and their recommended follow-up DOG appeared in many best-of lists in 2023. Their music is along the axis of noir-folk,... > Read more
Memphis
Prawns in Red Curry Sauce
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Cannot tell a lie, I borrowed this one from a CD-cum-recipe set in the generic series called The Ideal . . . Dinner Party, and you fill in the gap there with Thai, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican or French. The accompanying CD is gentle dinner party ambient music which refers to those regions. The chef whose name is attached to the series is Bettina Samain and with... > Read more
generic thai music
Autocamper: What Do You Do All Day? (digital outlets)
6 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Some days, overcome by the stress of living in the troubled first quarter of the 21st century, you just want an album to play a bit too loud and which isn't therapeutic for the artist whose troubles gets dumped on you. Welcome then to your computer, car or turntable Manchester's Autocamper who like the idea of jangly guitars and alt.rock with slightly melancholy pop... > Read more
Map Like a Leaf
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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