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
IT'S A HARD, HARD RAIN AGAIN (2025): And the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
17 Jul 2025 | 2 min read | 1
On August 5 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the world's first atomic bomb used in a military context. Three days later Nagasaki was hit. The Manhattan Project had become an awful reality, at the cost of over 200,000 lives in an instant, mostly civilians. It was a “lest we forget” moment for the planet. But some did forget.... > Read more
Jay Epae: The Mercury/Capitol/Viking Recordings (Frenzy)
16 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
The archivist and avid compiler of New Zealand artists' recordings Grant Gillanders has written an excellent and assiduously researched article at audioculture about the remarkable life and career of singer/songwriter Jay Epae, a lightly edited version reproduced as the extensive liner notes for this thorough 29 song (and some soundbite promo pieces) collection. Epae... > Read more
I'll Cry Tomorrow
FRANCOISE HARDY RECALLED (2025): Les chansons pour les jeunesse
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read | 1
Sometimes music just comes into your life and you can never remember exactly how or why it arrived. So it is with the debut album by French singer Francoise Hardy which came out in her motherland in late '62, a copy of which came into my possession somehow shortly thereafter. I seem to recall it being around at the same time as I was pinning up Beatles posters... > Read more
Les temps de l'amour
ONE TO ONE: JOHN AND YOKO, a doco by KEVIN McDONALD and SAM RICE-EDWARDS
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
There have been a few voices raised against this documentary which nominally features John Lennon's performance (with Yoko Ono and the Elephant's Memory Band) in New York's Madison Square Garden in August 1972. The complaints are that the live performance – Lennon's only full concert performance after the break-up of the Beatles – is fragmented by intrusive... > Read more
THE RETURN AGAIN OF TAMI NEILSON (2025): Even cowgirls get the blues
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
In the past few years Tami Neilson must have wondered frequently what gods she had offended. She had moved to New Zealand from Canada (although her natural musical home was the America of Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and country music). She'd been part of the touring family band in the US but here started at ground zero in her career and rebuilt from modest beginnings.... > Read more
You're Gonna Fall
Arcades: Who's Most Lost (Rattle, digital outlets)
14 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
A highly unusual release from Rattle who, let's be honest, release quite a lot of highly unusual contemporary classical and improvised music. That's their thing, really. However here David Prior and Dugal McKinnon – who met at Birmingham Uni while doing PhDs in composition – offer a kind of avant-folk pop on this album which was originally released in... > Read more
You Were Born Into This
SOME SOUNDS TO RATTLE YOU (2025): And other sonic delights
14 Jul 2025 | 3 min read
Once again while our attention was elsewhere, Auckland's Rattle released a few albums in quick succession. This year for Rattle started with a drought but then came the flood and we managed to pick up some of the first deluge. Now we take a big breath and dive in again to work by musicians who have appeared at Elsewhere before, in some instances many times. Rattle's... > Read more
Jesse Welles: Pilgrim (digital outlets)
14 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Because we introduced American politico-folk singer Jesse Welles not that long ago – noting he was grounded in Dylan's solo, acoustic protest singer days – we will make this brief, although we do suggest that if you hear nothing else, check out his song War Isn't Murder we posted there. He's still mining a similar vein – one of the songs here is Grapes... > Read more
Philanthropist, ft Billy Strings
MICHAEL DeGREVE AND L.A. SOFT ROCK (2025): Echoes of the Canyon
14 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Just two decades late, in 1989 Los Angeles' Michael DeGreve recorded his album Gypsy's Lament with a crew of supportive stars: David Lindley, Graham Nash, Randy Meisner, famed session musician Leland Sklar and more. Largely out of place in the late Eighties, his breezy singer-songwriter style was closer to the soft rock of 1969 and the likes of John Denver's summershine... > Read more
Daughter of the Wind
Jean Claude Vannier: Les Mouches (1973)
14 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
French writer/arranger and producer Vannier has worked with anyone who counts in his home country (Gainsbourg, Francoise Hardy, Juliette Greco, jazz pianist Martial Solal etc) as well as Astor Piazzolla, American pop writer Mort Shuman and many others. His trippy and conceptual sonic journey album L'enfant assassin des mouches in '73, from which this track comes, was... > Read more
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
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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