Music at Elsewhere

Swallow the Rat: South Locust (digital outlets)

26 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

You can guess from this Auckland trio's name they aren't in this game for the pop hits. They deliver often exciting Nineties post-punk and powered-up pop (Gravois Park), menacingly low-slung material verging on drone-rock (the standout Mind) and yet can unexpectedly seduce with more quiet-loud material (Small Plates) and something approaching uneasy pop-rock (Idea of the South, the... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Rodney Fisher and the Response: Art School Dropout (digital outlets)

25 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes in electric blue with a booklet of Fisher's thoughts about the making of the album, the lyrics for which you need a microscope to read and a classy art school cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Former Goodshirt singer-songwriter... > Read more

Keeping Up Appearances

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Macey: The Lovers (Warners/digital outlets)

25 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with an insert of the lyrics which are very important to an understanding of this very personal album affected by a relationship break-up and the death of a parent. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . After a series of increasingly interesting... > Read more

The Blind Boys of Alabama: Echoes of the South

25 Sep 2023 | 1 min read

Many people will have their favourite Blind Boys of Alabama moment, whether it was at the Womad appearance, opening for Mavis Staples or at The Auckland Town Hall. Most memorably for this writer was seeing them opening for Robert Plant's Sensational Space Shifters where 82-year old Jimmy Carter was lead around the Auckland stadium floor singing and shouting and testifying. The Blind... > Read more

Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (digital outlets)

17 Sep 2023 | <1 min read

While we open with our customary “she doesn't make music for us” caveat, we can't help but see the teen appeal of this sassy, f-wording 20-year old who came to attention via the High School Musical series, had a massive debut single (Drivers License) and now on this second album offers an implosion of noisy indie guitar rock alongside rap-like rhyming couplets, her chart-topping... > Read more

Model Home: And Nobody Made a Sound (digital outlets)

17 Sep 2023 | 1 min read

This debut album by a Christchurch band might politely be referred to as “a long time coming”: they first started playing in 2010. Plenty of time to write and record a bunch of distinctive songs, a few of which have got traction at alternative radio. Which perhaps tells you their ethos: indie guitar pop-rock. But fronted by singers Rachael Norcross (rhythm guitar) and,... > Read more

Office Dog: Spiel (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

15 Sep 2023 | 1 min read

This Auckland-based trio had its origins in Dunedin, so them finding at home on Flying Nun seems appropriate. And in places on this 12-song debut they certainly cleave to the guitar pop of the Nun's earlier bands, albeit better produced (by De Stevens at Roundhead over a couple of long days). The downbeat repetition of once-familiar bands is evident (Antidote) as is the widescreen... > Read more

The Feelers: Reimagined; Greatest Hits (digital outlets)

9 Sep 2023 | 1 min read

As we've conceded a few times, sometimes big albums go right past us. It was as recently as 2017 that we finally got around to hearing the Eagles' mega-blockbuster, two-in-every-home album Hotel California. Two years before that we got around to hearing the Feelers huge debut album from 1998 Supersytem for the first time when it was reissued. It had topped the charts and won them... > Read more

Dear Anxiety

Grim Ltd: Shakin' It Up At The Nicoberg (Frenzy)

3 Sep 2023 | 2 min read

In recent months Grant Gillanders' Frenzy label has released albums which were interesting but perhaps of most appeal to band members or those who were there at the time in the Seventies: the album-that-never-was by Cimeron and the Inbetweens' sole album reissued. But let's pull out all the stops for Grim Ltd because here was a raw'n'raucous R'n'B band recorded live at Palmerston North's... > Read more

Milk Cow Blues

The Changing Same: Go to the Movies (Powertools/digital outlets)

1 Sep 2023 | 2 min read

Outside of the intermittent career of Sneaky Feelings, Matthew Bannister developed – and sometimes abandoned – any number of other outlets: among them The Dribbling Darts of Love, The Weather, One Man Bannister and albums under his own name like his version of Rubber Soul as Rubber Solo (there was also his Evolver version of Revolver as One Man Bannister) and the most... > Read more

The Best Intentions

Michael Canning: Chirality (Ghostjogger/digital outlets)

31 Aug 2023 | <1 min read

Further to our recent installment of releases from Thokei Tapes out of Germany comes this new album by expat Kiwi writer/producer Michael Canning, now based in England. A previous album by him Wise Woman's Hill Rd was released on Thokei and we reviewed it at that time noting its “left field but approachable dark and crafted songs”. That assessment still stands for the 10... > Read more

Laissez Faire

Foley: Crowd Pleaser (digital outlets)

27 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

Without saying much about their popular, unadventurous, studio-crafted and upbeat danceable pop, the Foley duo of Ash Wallace and Gabriel Everett illuminate an aspect of the current music scene which mostly passes without comment: the drip-feed of songs which are combined to make an EP and then an album. Of the 10 songs on this debut album, five of them were released on “the first... > Read more

The Fuzzies: Cupid (Powertools/digital outlets)

25 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

Although many would point to the influence of the “Dunedin sound” on this album by a seasoned Auckland three-piece, there are other equally important and enjoyable threads in their sound, notably the detached monotone of vocalist Kelly's delivery on their minimalist alt.rock. It more clearly recalls Lou Reed, Tom Verlaine and other with that New York indifference. And that... > Read more

Side of My Own

Liam Gallagher: Knebworth 22 (digital outlets)

25 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

Like him or not, Liam Gallagher possessed one of the most distinctive voices (Lydon Lennon, if you will) and fronted one of the biggest British bands in recent rock. Oasis' career skidded to a halt over their final few albums and Liam's first solo work (as Beady Eye) got off to a faltering start. But as the one who kept the sound of his former band alive, things started to come right... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Various Artists: The Endless Coloured Ways; The Songs of Nick Drake (digital outlets)

25 Aug 2023 | 3 min read | 1

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a remastered double album on heavyweight vinyl with liner information on the framable inner covers about the recording details. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Conversations and experience tell me not many people actually heard much of... > Read more

Strawpeople: Knucklebones (digital outlets)

21 Aug 2023 | 2 min read

That this album – Strawpeople's first in almost 20 years – should enter the chart of New Zealand music at number two shouldn't surprise anyone: there's a lot of affection for Strawpeople who, in their heyday of the Nineties and early 2000s, effortless eased from student radio favourites into mainstream acceptance and onto National Radio. Now, without scouring student radio... > Read more

Watch You Sleep

Marc Chesterman: Jean's Piano (digital outlets)

20 Aug 2023 | <1 min read

Fascinating. The name here is that of soundtrack musician/sound explorer Marc Chesterman but in fact the piano being played – a real old-time machine – is from recordings he made of his grandmother Jean Albrecht at her home in Whitianga. But much happens to her sound as he explains. “A phrase of the original recording is selected, it becomes a 'sample', a couple of... > Read more

Jean's Piano #200 drone

Cimeron: 46 Years (Frenzy/Stebbing)

16 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

We've heard about famous “lost” or unreleased albums – you know, those things Neil Young keeps finding in his archive – but more rare is the release of an album that never was. Like Cimeron's 46 Years which is the debut album from an Auckland band which never completed an album in its lifespan but now – yes, 46 years on – has one under its own name.... > Read more

Misled Convoy: Translations III (Dubmissions/digital outlets)

14 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

Elsewhere will concede immediately that we are unfamiliar with all but a couple of the pieces here remixed by Misled Convoy – which is Mike Hodgson of Pitch Black – but that's what we also said about the previous Translations collection. However when Hodgson lays his hands on things – remixing, adding additional effects and/or instruments – we'll always pay... > Read more

Blur: The Ballad of Darren (digital outlets)

14 Aug 2023 | 1 min read

There's a very telling song towards the end of this new Blur album. It is Avalon and in it you can hear the unease which success brought them during those Britpop years when these educated middle-class chaps went head-to-head with working-class Oasis. “What's the point of building Avalon if you can't be happy when it's done?” asks Damon Albarn in an almost defeated... > Read more