Absolute Elsewhere
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GRACE, INTERVIEWED (1995): North Shore to Black Sand Shore
6 Apr 2014 | 8 min read | 1
The rooms backstage at the Auckland Town Hall aren’t up to much. Clean, certainly, but this very small one comes with only a tiny mirror above the handbasin, the toilet is somewhere down the hall, and the six people waiting here are rotating in the five available seats. This is an important night for the room’s temporary occupants. Grace – the three Ioasa brothers... > Read more
Distant Blue
JASON ISBELL INTERVIEWED (2014): Living in Different Days
4 Apr 2014 | 8 min read | 3
Now well out on his own, Jason Isbell was formerly of Drive By Truckers for six years until 2007 and contributed some of their finest songs, like Dress Blue about the death of a school friend in Iraq, their classic Decoration Day and Danko/Manuel about the lives of the members of The Band. But he was young when he joined them, the road took its toll and he started drinking heavily,... > Read more
Different Days
DEAD MOON REVISITED (2014): Back from the graveyard
2 Apr 2014 | 4 min read
The promoter John Baker – who brought Dead Moon over to New Zealand for the first time – reminded me recently of when that was: August 1992. I hadn't remembered the month only vaguely had the approximate year, however I have never forgotten the moment Dead Moon came into the highly conservative offices of what people jokingly then called “The Royal New Zealand... > Read more
Walking on My Grave
JYOSNA/JYOSHNA PROFILED (2014): When the spirit moves
31 Mar 2014 | 3 min read | 1
I first met Jyosna LaTrobe in January '91 after the release of her cassette Reign of Love which I had reviewed for the Herald. I was aware of who she was – she'd been a founding member of the all-women acoustic trio Turiiya – but her album came as “a modest delight” as I called it in my four-star lead review. The musical arrangements embraced sitar and... > Read more
Sakal maner vina
ANE BRUN INTERVIEWED (2014): The selfish art of songwriting
20 Mar 2014 | 7 min read
Danish-born and Swedish-resident Ane Brun was one of the highlights at the recent Womad for her crafted songs and pure voice. And with a small ensemble (a drummer and a percussion player plus two women multi-instrumentalist backing singers) she presented quite a colourful palette of sounds. Now in her late 30s, she can look back on a career in music which began more by accident than... > Read more
Do You Remember
DELANEY DAVIDSON INTERVIEWED (2014): Christchurch, Colorado and Womad
9 Mar 2014 | 1 min read
Singer and songwriter Delaney Davidson has carved out a rare niche in New Zealand music. Along with Marlon Williams, Tami Neilson and others he has rejigged traditional and contemporary country music into something that bridges folk, country and rock. He has twice won the Country Song of the Year award and also picked up the Country Music Album award in 2013. Although he has... > Read more
Lonesome Mile
DON WALKER INTERVIEWED (2014): Cold Chisel, apples, pears and Engelbert
3 Mar 2014 | 7 min read | 1
The droll, dry and fiercely intelligent Don Walker is consider by many to be among Australia's greatest songwriters -- if not the greatest – because of his songs for Cold Chisel, with the band Catfish and also for Tex, Don and Charlie (with Tex Perkins and Charlie Owen) . . . as well as his lower profile solo releases. From a rural background in North Queensland, he came... > Read more
On the Beach
BENMONT TENCH INTERVIEWED (2014): The Heartbreaker's solo flight
3 Mar 2014 | 9 min read | 1
Benmont Tench has considerable history. He was a teenage fan in Florida of a local group called Mudcrutch whom he saw, fell in love with, went to their shows and eventually joined them as their keyboard player. When Mudcrutch broke up in '75 he, founding member Tom Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell – by then in California – formed Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and... > Read more
Wobbles
NATHAN FORD INTERVIEWED (2014): The highly proactive listener
24 Feb 2014 | 8 min read
Nathan Ford laughs quietly when I ask him about the strange, whispery folk album by Kitchen Cynics (Scotland's Alan Davidson) he's posted at his music blog. It isn't exactly what I'd call psychedelic, which is the ethos behind his impressive and rapidly expanding blog. “I've probably got a much broader definition of what people think is psychedelic. To me it is often music... > Read more
English Dream
MARTHA DAVIS OF THE MOTELS INTERVIEWED (2014): Still in total control
20 Feb 2014 | 10 min read
Martha Davis, frontwoman for a seemingly endless parade of band members as the Motels, has rarely stopped writing and performing since the first Motels line-up formed in 1971. Fame struck them much later however and although their first two albums – Motels and Careful, '79 and '80 respectively – did exceptionally well in the Southern Hemisphere off the back of the... > Read more
Mr Grey
PETE SEEGER PROFILED: The conscience of America
29 Jan 2014 | 2 min read
When I was growing up and the sound of the Beatles and the Stones was the soundtrack to my life, the folk movement out of the US just seemed quaint and grounded in another era. While artists such as Joan Baez and the young Bob Dylan made an impact, a bunch of buttoned-down college boys in sweaters singing "hang down your head Tom Dooley" or women in chunky-knits whining "we... > Read more
Pete Seeger: Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
DAN WALSH INTERVIEWED (2014): Down the dark path
28 Jan 2014 | 5 min read
At 26, British musician Dan Walsh is living the dream. He's highly acclaimed by the media and his peers, has three albums behind him, writes a very interesting and often amusing touring blog at his website, last year was invited to collaborate with some Indian musicians in Kolkata, tours regularly in Britain and now has made his way to New Zealand for a short tour (dates below).... > Read more
Mwawash/Egyptian Cottage
ROSANNE CASH INTERVIEWED (2014): The river that runs through her
27 Jan 2014 | 7 min read | 1
As the daughter of the late Johnny, Rosanne Cash could have had big boots to fill. But she wisely took out on her own path and, with both her first husband Rodney Crowell and her second John Leventhal, crafted country rock albums which staked out their own territory. Her career has been intermittently interrupt by illness and taking time out to raise children, but she has become... > Read more
The Sunken Lands
OKKERVIL RIVER. AN UPDATE (2014): Watching the river flow
27 Jan 2014 | 3 min read | 1
One of the most interesting and unexpected albums recently came from the emotionally damaged Roky Erickson – formerly of 60s psychedelic Texas rockers Thirteenth Floor Elevators – who had his brain fried by electroshock treatment and prescription drugs back in the late 60s/70s and spent many years in institutions. The album True Love Cast Out All Evil (2010, see... > Read more
Pink Slips
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO, AGAIN (2014): Still at all tomorrow's parties
24 Jan 2014 | 3 min read | 1
Every now and again when music magazine editors get bored, or some significant anniversary rolls around, they gather the staff and usually some guests to vote on The Greatest Albums of the Rock Era. Or something like that. In the two decades after its release in 1967, the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's frequently took out the top spot – often juggling it with Marvin Gaye's... > Read more
Run Run Run (live)
THE BEATLES' US ALBUMS REISSUED: How America misheard the Beatles
20 Jan 2014 | 7 min read | 3
Thanks to record company exec Dave Dexter Jnr, Americans got to hear the Beatles . . . although if Dexter had had his way they might not have. Dexter – the Capitol Records man charged with releasing non-American acts in the States – turned down the first Beatles singles on offer from the UK (Love Me Do, Please Please Me, Ask Me Why and She Loves You, plus their... > Read more
Help! (US version)
MATMOS CONSIDERED (2014): The art of understatement and the unusual
20 Jan 2014 | 1 min read
In the secretive world of code-breakers and cypher-deciphering the Enigma machine is legendary. It is one of that family of highly complex machines designed by mathematicians and boffins used to crack the codes of Nazi comunications during the Second World War. But for the Baltimore electronica duo Matmos -- Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel -- it became another tool for creating and... > Read more
For the Trees
NICK DRAKE, AGAIN (2014): Songs from a troubled soul
13 Jan 2014 | 2 min read | 1
Anyone hearing Nick Drake's hushed final album Pink Moon from '72 or looking at photos of that young man -- eyes averted, the frail figure hunched, the mouth rarely smiling – might have guessed here was a soul too sensitive for this wicked world. And sure enough he was dead in late November 1974, at just 26. But there's another view of this doomed and depressive romantic... > Read more
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, REDUX (2014): The Return Again of White Light/White Heat
10 Jan 2014 | 4 min read | 2
Elsewhere has previously quoted Brian Eno from 1976 about Velvet Underground, but it bears repeating. He said, "I knew that they were going to be one of the most interesting groups and that there would be a time when it wouldn’t be the Beatles up there and then all these other groups down there. “It would be a question of attempting to assess the relative values of the... > Read more
The Gift (instrumental only)
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BILL HALEY (2013): Don't knock the rocker
27 Dec 2013 | 13 min read
One of the first victims of rock'n'roll was a founding father of the style: Bill Haley. A country singer with a love of Western Swing, Haley was 30 when his signature song Rock Around the Clock became a massive hit in '55 when it appeared on the soundtrack to the juvenile delinquent film Blackboard Jungle. He would also appear in the first real rock'n'roll film Don't Knock the Rock the... > Read more