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SHAWN PHILLIPS, REDISCOVERED AGAIN (2024): Music business' best kept secret
18 Nov 2024 | 3 min read
Recently when writing about Tucker Zimmerman we observed that no matter how much archive digging you do, there will always be someone you'd never heard of – like Tucker – who suddenly appears to your delight. Shawn Phillips, born in Texas, isn't like that to us – we've had his Faces album since it was released in 1972 -- but he's probably unfamiliar to many people, despite... > Read more
As All is Played
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Dwight Yoakam: Brighter Days (Via Records/digital outlets)
18 Nov 2024 | 2 min read | 1
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this double album in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and track credits and in a classy cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . In the rush to embrace new alt.country or young mainstream artists it's easy to overlook the career of someone like the... > Read more
If Only
Fazerdaze: Soft Power (digital outlets)
18 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
One of the most deceptively clever and memorable local pop songs of recent years was the Lucky Girl single by Amelia Murray (aka Fazerdaze). It had a gleaming and upbeat sound but a close listen revealed layers of uncertainty within it. It was on her excellent 2017 debut album Morningside where the classy, mostly upbeat guitar-driven pop belied a downward arc of insecurity in a... > Read more
Cherry Pie
Nick Lowe: Dig My Mood (1998)
18 Nov 2024 | 3 min read
It is coming up close to three decades since Nick Lowe -- once a laddish and witty figure in British rock in the immediate post-punk days -- decided to take the long view on his career and reposition himself. As he told Elsewhere late in 2011, “Back when I first got noticed in the Seventies it was for being rather irreverent and popping bubbles, and I was a bit cheeky. A certain... > Read more
You Inspire Me
Chris Clark: I Want To Go Back There Again (1967)
18 Nov 2024 | 2 min read | 1
Of the few white acts on Berry Gordy's Motown label, Chris Clark -- with platinum blonde hair, pale skin and a kind of Marilyn Munroe appeal -- was undoubtedly the whitest. "Getting my singles played on radio was difficult," she said later. "Once [DJs] found out I was white they thought Motown had tried to trick them. "I always hesitate to say any of that, or that... > Read more
THE JB HI-FI GUIDE TO ESSENTIAL VINYL, VOL 5 (2024) Another 100+ records needing a good home
16 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
It is that time again when, for the fifth time, I look at the huge number of vinyl releases this past year and sieve out the best 100 or so that could deserve a place in your collection. As you may see it is once more a wide sampling of genres and artists across the decades because we have factored in the reissues alongside the new releases. And as I mention in the introduction below,... > Read more
Tricks of Light, by Sam Bambery (from Rubicator)
SHELVES OF SOUNDS (2024): Musician/producer and sound designer Eden Mulholland offers his sonic archive
16 Nov 2024 | 2 min read
Most readers of Elsewhere will have encountered the name Eden Mulholland who was part of the band Motorcade and has written for dance and theatre companies, and the World of Wearable Arts. He has won a number of awards for composition and was nominated for a Silver Scroll in 2009. More than a decade ago he – who has no formal musical training – told us, “I take things... > Read more
Tessa De Lyon: Tessa's Album (digital outlets)
15 Nov 2024 | <1 min read
We encountered Tessa De Lyon under her given name Tessa Dillion as the singer and songwriter for the excellent Mystery Waitress. Their recent album Bright Black Night is wonderful and we concluded, “Bright Black Night – the title encapsulating the dichotomies in Dillon's astute, refined lyrics – is a rare one. It rocks as much as it penetrates”. De Lyon is the name... > Read more
Rain Swim
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . PRESINCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL
11 Nov 2024 | 1 min read | 1
The evidence would tell us conclusively that English is the language of pop and rock music. From Tokyo and Manila to Quito and Johannesburg, artists who want to succeed internationally in pop and rock adopt English – sometimes just phonetic replication of the words. Sometimes badly, sometimes well. Idiomatic English doesn't always survive in translation or the artists'... > Read more
Adriano Celentano and Claudia Mori: Presincolinensinainciusol
DAVID BOWIE; THE EARLY YEARS CONSIDERED: He was an interesting bunch of people
11 Nov 2024 | 5 min read
For a while, quite a while in fact, David Bowie could do no wrong – and when something seemed like a career move (“I never did anything out of the blue”) it worked to his advantage. Even when he was The Man Who Fell To Earth after Lou Reed decked him in a London restaurant, it was the day before his new single was released – Boys Keep Swinging. You just... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Sally Stockwell
11 Nov 2024 | 7 min read
It's entirely possible that more people know Sally Stockwell's face than her voice. The actress/singer has done a lot of stage work but also appeared in Outrageous Fortune, Shortland Street and After the Fall. We caught up with her as a singer around the time of her debut album Weightless in 2015, but because a lot has happened since then we felt it timely to come and talk in more... > Read more
Far and Wide
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . BUTTERBEANS AND SUSIE: Dat ol' black magic?
11 Nov 2024 | 4 min read
These days we are used to artists taking a few years between albums – although some were surprised Blue Nile took seven years between Hats and Peace at Last. But for the Vaudeville comedy/song-and-dance duo of Butterbeans and Susie it was a full 30 years between their last songs for Okeh in 1930 (You Dirty Mean Mistreater among them) until their return to the studio in 1960. And... > Read more
Aurora Hentunen: Little Further (digital outlets)
11 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
Now this is interesting: Aurora Hentunen is a Finnish pianist/composer/vocalist who steers her own quintet and is among the brighter lights of European jazz. As far as we can tell she is now based in Amsterdam and tours regularly. Of Little Further, she tells us in an email, “the album's music reflects the state of being during the last few years, forced collective stagnation and... > Read more
Pressured Speech
Blair Parkes: Blue Cloud (digital outlets)
11 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
Multi-instrumentalist/producer Blair Parkes has appeared a number of times at Elsewhere under his own name and as part of Running Club. He's not easy to pigeon-hole because he has effortlessly shifted ground from dense alt.rock to motorik pop and sometimes an amalgam of those + noise. This time out with longtime collaborator Miss Mercury (vocals) and bassist Marcus Thomas he announces... > Read more
Umlaut
Goodwill: Kind Hands (digital outlets)
11 Nov 2024 | <1 min read
By happy coincidence Goodwill -- Ōtautahi's Will McGillivray formerly of alt.rockers Nomad , not to be confused with the electronica artist The Nomad -- produced and mixed Mousey's impressive third album Mothers which we also review this week. And here he steps out with a debut album of lo-fi alt.folk pop which spotlights an aching and sometimes anguished vocal delivery atop... > Read more
I Will Never Let You Down
Mousey: The Dreams of Our Mothers' Mothers! (digital outlets)
11 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
Ōtautahi Christchurch's Sarena Close (aka Mousey) has appeared at Elsewhere for all of her albums, no surprise given we said of her debut Lemon Law, “even just a cursory listen would tell you there is a great depth of lyrical, vocal and songwriting talent here” We interviewed her at the time and subsequently published her thoughts on the making of her second album My... > Read more
Dog Park
Geeshie Wiley: Skinny Leg Blues (1930)
11 Nov 2024 | <1 min read
Blues singer Geeshie Wiley -- probably not her real name, more likely a nickname because she was of the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia -- recorded even fewer songs than Robert Johnson. Just six known recordings and no photograph of her exists either. She may have been with a traveling medicine show in the Twenties but, other than her recordings in an 18 month period, not... > Read more
Gurrumul: Banbirrngu – The Orchestral Sessions (digital outlets)
9 Nov 2024 | 2 min read
When the late Aboriginal artist Gurrumul (now referred to as Dr G Yunupingu) from the small and remote Elcho -- an island off the north coast of Australia near Darwin (population 2300 at the time) – emerged as a solo artist in the 2000s he was a great story, in part because he was blind and rarely spoke to the media. He was shy as many Aboriginal people are, and even though writing... > Read more
Wiyathul
THE POETS, DISCOVERED (2024): Scots wha-hey hey hey
8 Nov 2024 | 2 min read
Almost 25 years ago the obscure label Dynovox released a compilation of material by the Sixties band The Poets under the attention-getting title “Scotland's No 1 Group”. Since the Sixties there would be any number of bands from north of the Border would might more fairly claim that title, but the Poets were real contenders in their time. Marmalade might have given them a... > Read more
Now We're Thru
Tom Irvine Band: Under the Wharf (digital outlets)
5 Nov 2024 | 1 min read
For many decades – from Warren Cate and Warren Love back in the Nineties and early 2000's to Danny McCrum more recently – we've noted a strong thread of accomplished, mainstream pop-rock writers and performers who get very little traction at radio. In part that may be because they are often undemonstrative artists although their music would fit playlists on stations which play... > Read more