Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Black Keys: El Camino (Nonesuch)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Although Black Keys' previous album Brothers was on the Best of Elsewhere 2010 list and this one will certainly be in this year's final countback, the two albums are very different. Where Brothers was grounded in classic soul and old school r'n'b and blues, this one kicks up the primal rock'n'pop from the get-go. As a touchstone consider Gold on the Ceiling which sounds like the Glitter... > Read more
Run Right Back
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
A propos of not much, Fleet Foxes' chief songwriter Robin Pecknold recently recorded New Zealand singer-songwriter Chris Thompson's Where is My Wild Rose? for an EP and it appears on You Tube (just with stills) here. But . . . to the matter in hand. If it's fair to say FFoxes' debut album was unexpected, then we might also observe that this one is highly anticipated. However their... > Read more
Fleet Foxes: Battery Kinzie
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Howe Gelb and a Band of Gypsies: Alegrias (Fire)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 2
The enormously prolific Howe Gelb (interviewed here in depth) is behind the Tucson band Giant Sand (from which Calexico became a more commercially successful split-off) and has also recorded a dozen albums under his own name. And as a reissue programme of about 30 Sand/Gelb albums starts to filter through he also releases this, a beguiling project which saw him taking his dark vocals,... > Read more
Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies: The Hangin' Judge
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Jeffrey Foucault: Horse Latitudes (Signature)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
For his first album of originals in five years – the follow-up to his gripping Ghost Repeater – this beardy and rustic Americana singer/songwriter ups the stakes as his strong, dark brown and assured voice takes on life, loss and love in iron-hard images which bring to mind Leonard Cohen (“strange birds on the fence line, it's going to get cold tonight”) or Tom... > Read more
Last Night I Dreamed of Television
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Marcin Wasilewski Trio: Faithful (ECM/Ode)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Pianist Wasilewski who leads this trio has appeared a number of times previously at Elsewhere, with this group, as a member of Tomasz Stanko's ensemble and with trumpetr Enrico Rava. He -- and his trio -- has impressed every time. But this album finds them really pushing themselves: Night Train to You is a 10 minute piece which swings and is full of sparking, energetic piano; the album... > Read more
Woke Up in the Desert
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Juju: In Trance (Real World)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
That alt.world between late 60s psychedelic blues-rock, frantic village folk, and fiery world music is a strange place. It's where LedZepp, speedmetal-folk, Afro-blues, the Mississippi Delta and a fiddle-playing Jimi Hendrix (who isn't Nigel Kennedy) come together and live in . . . if not harmony, then at least the same bar where they drink moonshine and palm wine. This album is... > Read more
Nightwalk
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Kimbra: Vows (Warners)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
For most people flicking the music channels and being confronted the relentless and facile bump'n'grind r'n'b or ever-so-serious young men with guitars, the clips by Kimbra -- formerly of Hamilton, now based in Melbourne -- come as delightful surprises. They look fresh and eye-catching, intelligent in the face of the sexed-up drivel (her musings on married life in Settle Down) and just... > Read more
Good Intent
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Wilco: The Whole Love (Warners)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Artists who make lurching changes of direction often revert to prior form after a while: Certainly after U2's darker trilogy -- Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop -- they went back to their familiar stadium-shaped mainstream ballads, and Radiohead's most recent output has been more accessible than the unsettling Ok Computer and Kid A. Even David Bowie -- after the "Berlin trilogy" of... > Read more
Sunloathe
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Jonathan Besser: Campursari (Rattle)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Since coming to New Zealand more than 30 years ago, the pianist-composer Jonathan Besser has enjoyed a highly successful and diverse career, first with violinist Chris Prosser in the Besser and Prosser duo, with electronic artist Ross Harris in Free Radicals, then his own ensemble and latterly with the small group Bravura. His works have been performed by the NZSO, the New Zealand String... > Read more
Shine
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Rumer: Seasons of My Soul (Atlantic)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
There are a lot of wonderful new soul singers around these days -- Mayer Hawthorne, Adele, etc -- and any number of artists who have you reaching for a historical reference in the same territory (Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw in the Sixties for the first Duffy album). It is almost to easy to do the same for this British singer-songwriter. So let's do it anyway: Karen Carpenter, Dionne... > Read more
Rumer: Come To Me High
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Azam Ali: From Night to the Edge of Day (Six Degrees)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Nominally lullabies from around the Middle East, this breathy and exceptional album by the Iranian-born Canadian-resident Ali -- singer in the band Niyaz -- becomes something much more hypnotic as here keening voice explores those delightful microtones common in the music of the region. Very much the global citizen -- she lived in India as a child, relocated to LA with her mother in '85,... > Read more
Dandini
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Ryan Adams: Ashes and Fire (Sony)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
Those with a passing interest in Ryan Adams' highly productive career -- which most recently stretched to published books of poetry -- will be understandably bewildered that there is a new album, given he announced his retirement in '09 . . . and subsequently kept releasing albums from his not inconsiderable song vaults. This solo album however is a return to his career with an album... > Read more
I Love You But I Don't Know What To Say
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Bats: Free All the Monsters (Flying Nun)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
The rolling, aural signature of the Bats' guitars and locked-in rhythm section has always sounded at its best when it drops the tempo and engages with a romantically woozy sound which -- when married to lyrics of optimism and gentleness -- just brings a smile. This lovely album - which doesn't stray far from their template -- will have you smiling with recognition and warmth as it unveils... > Read more
When the Day Comes
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Tom Waits: Bad As Me (Anti)
19 Dec 2011 | 3 min read | 4
At the end of the local edition of this exceptional album -- Tom Waits' first studio album in seven years -- there is a disconcerting litany of images entitled with seeming certainty After You Die, but which in fact asks the more pointed question, "what is it like after we die?" Waits yowls through it like a man broken on a rack, and it's a scary ending to an album which touches... > Read more
Satisfied
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Fatoumata Diawara: Fatou (World Circuit)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Yet another artist out of Mali who confirms that country -- alongside only Jamaica perhaps -- seems to have more gifted and distinctive performers per head of population than any other country on the planet. This debut from the ear-pleasing, hypnotically melodic and folk-framed Diawara is given subtle, warm and clean studio production by label boss Nick Gold in conjunction with Diawara and... > Read more
Bissa
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Checks: Deadly Summer Sway (Pie Club)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Auckland's Checks could easily have sat on their Sixties rhythm and blues-based style (think young Stones, Yardbirds, Who etc) and won themselves a wide audience, but they were always destined for something bigger than the familiar. Now 10 years on from their first but enormously impressive gigs as teenagers (I think I first saw them in a kitchen at a flat?) they have shifted their ground... > Read more
Winter Sun
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Gin Wigmore: Gravel and Wine (Universal)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Although the remarkable Gin Wigmore mostly co-wrote here, you'd have to say it is her voice -- not just her musical voice -- which comes through with utter clarity. And yes, this extraordinary album is full of her stylistic vocal signature . . . but there is something much more interesting and exciting going on here. These days many young artists drown themselves in references: the... > Read more
If Only
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Keith Jarrett: Rio (ECM)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
In one of the most colourful ECM covers in memory comes this equally vibrant solo piano set by Keith Jarrett, recorded live in Rio in April 2011. This richly textured double disc -- six unnamed pieces on the first, nine on the second -- finds the pianist in total command of his gift for rhythmically complex and melodically unpredictable improvisation. Jarrett dips (and frequently dives... > Read more
Rio Part IX
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Glen Campbell: Ghost on the Canvas (Inertia)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 2
Alongside his Alzheimer's diagnosis and a farewell tour comes this self-announced “final studio album” by the 75-year old legend whose career spans from LA session guitar work in the late 50s as one of the famous Wrecking Crew on Phil Spector productions, to being a touring Beach Boy, solo hits with Jimmy Webb songs and movies all before the close of the Sixties.... > Read more
Hold on Hope
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Adele: 21 (XL)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Adele's debut album of two years ago -- 19, when she was 19 -- announced the arrival of a great British soul voice even if some of her original material wasn't quite as strong as it could have been. Still, she was only 19 -- but she hardly deserved to be lumped in with the new breed of British women singers coming through (notably Amy Winehouse, Duffy et al). Not that she needed to worry,... > Read more