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
CAT MOTHER AND THE ALL NIGHT NEWSBOYS. THE STREET GIVETH … AND THE STREET TAKETH AWAY, CONSIDERED (1969): The musicians not the music?
3 Apr 2025 | 4 min read
For the moment let's not worry about the music on this old album pulled from the shelves at random for consideration in this on-going series. The music will make itself known to us as we go. Let's instead just concentrate on the names involved, who they were, where they went and who they became. There is a story worth telling right there. The co-producer of this... > Read more
Jacco Muller and Victor Ghannam: Alhambra by Night (digital outlets)
28 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
Unless you get there when the gates open, it's likely your memory of the Alhambra in Granada will be of tour groups, excitable school kids and noise. I got lucky, I was staying in cheap digs underneath the wall so got there before anyone else and had a leisurely hour almost by myself. So few people that I could take photos with no one in them, that would be rare I'd... > Read more
Where the Sea Meets the Sun
ONE WE MISSED: Skyscraper Stan and the Commission Flats: Those Were the Days (digital outlets)
27 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
This album by Australia-based expat Stan – released in February – didn't so much go past us but was overtaken by other releases on the final sprint to the finishing tape. Although written a few years ago, many of the songs here speak to the times we find ourselves in: Run the Game pokes a sharp stick at the privileged and ambitious (“to you, all of... > Read more
Run the Game
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Various Artists: American Baroque (Ace double LP)
24 Mar 2025 | 2 min read | 1
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a double set in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes and credits. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . The words “baroque pop” may be inexact but most people get the meaning: pop songs... > Read more
Barefoot Gentleman, by the Association
Alison Krauss and Union Station: Arcadia (digital outlets)
24 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
It has been 14 years since the last Krauss album with her band Union Station, the impressive Paper Airplane. In the interim she was busy with a solo career, the Raise the Roof album with Robert Plant (the belated follow-up to 2007's Grammy-winning Raising Sand) and – to fill in a bit of time – contributing to Ringo's Look Up. Union Station now includes a... > Read more
Granite Mills
THE FREEWHEELIN' JESSE WELLES (2025): With Bob on his side
24 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
No sooner had Timothée Chalamet been announced as playing the young Bob Dylan in the bio-pic A Complete Unknown than internet naysayers weighed in. The pretty boy from Dune playing Dylan? Willie Wonka as Bob? When the film arrived questions and complaints kept coming. Why was Bob's girlfriend Suze Rotolo renamed Sylvie Russo? (A. Dylan requested the... > Read more
Wheel (from Middle)
JASON ISBELL. SOLO AT LAST ON HIS NEW ALBUM, THE ACCLAIMED 'FOXES IN THE SNOW'
24 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
Available now on CD and vinyl from JB Hi-Fi stores nationwide. Just click here to be taken to JB Hi-Fi. What Elsewhere has said of Foxes in the Snow: "Words of wisdom in song from someone who's been through it . . .and is seeing his failings and the possibilities of the future with clarity. And who has crafted it all into a terrific album." To... > Read more
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO, A TRIBUTE ALBUM: Another look in the art-rock mirror
24 Mar 2025 | 4 min read
Has there even been an album whose cultural influence far outstripped it's commercial impact more than the debut by New York's Velvet Underground? Their 1967 The Velvet Underground & Nico – in that famously provocative banana cover by the band's champion and nominal “producer” Andy Warhol (a phallic pink banana revealed when the skin was peeled... > Read more
Jason Isbell: Foxes in the Snow (vinyl/digital outlets)
24 Mar 2025 | 2 min read
Recently divorced after a decade of marriage to bandmate Amanda Shires and clearly still feeling all the various emotions which such a life-changing event can wrought, singer-songwriter Jason Isbell puts aside his 400 Unit band and -- for the first time since leaving Drive-By Truckers almost two decades ago -- sits down with just an acoustic guitar. The result, recorded... > Read more
Crimson and Clay
Maxine Brown: Funny (1961)
24 Mar 2025 | 1 min read | 1
There's something very satisfying about don't-care-anymore songs. The world is awash with the luvvy stuff but every now and again a song comes along which says, "Yep, but I'm over you". An Elsewhere favourite is Solomon King's exceptional Happy Again which really put that grand passion into perspective. Yeah, I loved and I lost and am hurt. But jeez, life... > Read more
THE LONG AWAITED NEW ALBUM BY ALISON KRAUSS AND UNION STATION, ON VINYL AND CD
24 Mar 2025 | <1 min read
"exceptional musicianship" says Elsewhere. To read the full review go here. To order direct from Southbound Records go here. > Read more
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)
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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