Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Antony and the Johnsons: Swanlight (Spunk)
28 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
This fourth album by Antony confirms what many already suspect, that a little of this divine, sublime voice can go a long way. All that high drama and quivering vocals, the allusive lyrics, the symphonic strings . . . It's all high-wire emotion and, as with Rufus Wainwright's All Days Are Nights, over the long haul it becomes demanding and undifferentiated. To his credit however Antony... > Read more
Antony and the Johnsons: Swanlights
Various Artists: Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah; 70s New York Disco (Backbeats/Triton)
28 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
Some music -- even from the first few bars -- is time-specific. The merest whiff of a particular drum sound and guitar can conjure up rockabilly of the Fifties, and some beats plus swooping strings or a horn part can just scream "disco" at you. In that case, this 11 track compilation is unnecessarily subtitled because you get its straight away: New York + Seventies. It's disco,... > Read more
The Ripple: The Beat Goes On And On
Kelley Stoltz: To Dreamers (SubPop)
26 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Let's say this for San Francisco's Kelley Stoltz, he's done his homework: his thoroughly enjoyable album Circular Sounds (here) came off like a potted history of pop for them what missed the classes on UK 1965-68 and the Beginners Guide to Songwriting (with special reference to Boyce and Hart, Harry Nilsson and Paul McCartney). This time out with a full cast of players he adds a bit of glam... > Read more
Kelley Stoltz: Pinecone
John White: The Inkadies (Monkey)
21 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
This album could slip past as easily unnoticed as White's recent New Zealand tour, it whispers rather than shouts, is mostly dreamy rather than grounded. Formerly out front of Dunedin's Mestar, White recorded these airy but sometimes fuzzy, acoustic-framed songs in Wisconsin three years ago and apparently this one follows two previous albums. Over the 11 short Anglofolk-styled songs... > Read more
John White: The Fields
K.T. Tunstall: Tiger Suit (Virgin)
21 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
Word is that a campervan trip around New Zealand in 09 and appearing at Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide reinvigorated Scottish singer Tunstall who leaped to fame overnight when a Jools Holland show six years ago. Her folksy 06 debut Eye to the Telescope captured hearts and attention, but Drastic Fantastic two years ago seemed anxiously over-produced. Those wanting a return to folksy... > Read more
K.K. Tunstall: Glamour Puss
Ardijah: The Best; PolyFonk (PolyFonk)
21 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
In the decade before hip-hop became the distinctive voice of South Auckland, the Polynesian soul-funk of Ardijah was the most prominent and carried to a wider audience by the singles Give Me Your Number, Watching U and Time Makes a Wine from their platinum-selling 88 album Take a Chance. Helmed by multi-instrumentalist/writer/producer Ryan Monga and singer Betty-Anne, the band went to... > Read more
Ardijah: Oh Baby
Various Artists: The Insatiable Moon (Ode)
21 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Soundtrack albums of songs -- as opposed to a commissioned score -- should be perhaps reviewed in the absence of having seen the movie. That way you find if they hang together as a stand alone item. Not having seen this much acclaimed film about marginalised people in an urban society (the mad, unfortunate, deluded and different) means these 11 songs are to be taken at face value as an... > Read more
AJ Bell: Drinking in the Park
Darkstar: North (Hyperdub/Southbound)
21 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
By happy coincidence I mistook this band's name for that of a prog outfit I was once curious about -- maybe if I had heard the words "dubstep electronia" (which is how they are sometimes described) I might not have so enthusiastically pulled it out of the pile. Not that prog is my thing, but the Darkstar I was thinking about had a curiously ambient take on it. And by... > Read more
Darkstar: In the Wings
Surf Friends: Confusion (SF)
21 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Auckland two-piece Surf Friends -- guitarist/singer/drum machine handler etc Brad Coley and bassist/keyboards/singer Pete Westmoreland -- are starting out in almost exactly the same place as the early Clean and Chills whose sound they effectively hijack completely for some tracks on this interesting . . . and eventually quite convincing album. Produced by Mark Howden -- who keeps things... > Read more
Surf Friends: No Oil
The Trons: The Trons (Pieplate CD/DVD)
15 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
A few decades ago Devo advanced the idea of "devolution", that Mankind wasn't going forward but actually regressing and you could see that in the behaviour of the mob. Regrettably it seems they might have been right if idiot postings on Facebook and You Tube are anything to go by, not to mention the guy who will hold up store at gunpoint for a packet of cigarettes and small change.... > Read more
The Trons: Attack of the Mute Ants
Dudley Benson: Forest, Songs by Hirini Melbourne (Golden Retriever)
15 Nov 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Those many of us seduced by Dudley Benson's previous album (and EPs which preceded it) might not have anticipated the manner of this new one, an entirely a capella art music project based on the poems (birds, the spider) by the late Hirini Melbourne who, with Richard Nunns, led the revival of taonga puoru (tradional Maori instruments) . . . and it is sung almost entirely in te reo (Maori).... > Read more
Dudley Benson: Tirairaka. Fantail
Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg: Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg (Light in the Attic)
14 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
Sex sells. It certainly sells the idea of maturity when former popettes decide to ditch the little sister look and get into barely-there leathers. Adults of course find this tasteless and the kids being manipulated, but it's nothing more than sex selling a product just like any other. Sex gets people hot under the collar (as in outraged) and you can guarantee to get a rise out of some when... > Read more
Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg: 69 Annee Erotique
Various Artists: The Rarest Rockabilly Album in the World Ever! (Chrome Dreams/Triton)
14 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
As with the blues, rockabilly is always out there, but only occasionally gets its time in the spotlight when artists such as the revivalist Stray Cats or -- more recently -- the great original Wanda Jackson get some serious attention. Expect then for rockabilly -- the up-tempo white country-based music which was a precursor to rock'n'roll in the mid Fifties -- to come to the fore then in... > Read more
Don Willis: Boppin' High School Baby
Mark Howden: Horizons (Waht)
14 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
Auckland singer-songwriter Howden appeared previously with two short albums: one of him in rock band mode, the other more of the acoustic persuasion, both under the name The Black Leaf. This new album (Horizons may be the title or the nom de disque) is an extension of the acoustic direction in dreamy, literate songs which recall the atmospheric folk-pop of Neil Halstead's wonderful... > Read more
Mark Howden: Pattern Blue
Greg Johnson: Secret Weapon (JMA)
14 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
That Greg Johnson seeded funding for this album by a pre-order subscription shows he has a loyal audience in this country – especially as he hasn't lived here for almost a decade and he's getting close to 10 albums under his own name, not counting a couple of best of/hits packages. In part that's because he's an endearing and often amusing entertainer whose shows are always worth... > Read more
Greg Johnson: No Weapons in the Bar
The Vaselines: Sex with an X (SubPop)
14 Nov 2010 | 1 min read | 1
The little-known Vaselines out of Scotland got their sudden time in the spotlight when Nirvana covered a couple of their songs, notably Jesus Doesn't Want Me For a Sunbeam on their MTV Unplugged session. By that time ('93) the Vaselines - formed around Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee -- had already broken up but they'd reformed to open for Nirvana in 1990. So that connection gets... > Read more
The Vaselines: The Devil's Inside Me
Paul McCartney and Wings; Band on the Run Remastered. (Universal)
8 Nov 2010 | 7 min read
It's sad in a way, but great albums often are a result of bad situations: death, divorce, betrayal, litigation and debilitating substance abuse seem to make for better and more interesting music than cheery times with the family on holiday. Think about it: Neil Young's Tonight's the Night (death, drugs); John Martyn's Grace and Danger (divorce, drink); Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear and In... > Read more
Paul McCartney and Wings: Picasso's Last Words
Elvis Costello: National Ransom (Universal)
8 Nov 2010 | 1 min read
The prolific Costello's last album – Secret, Profane and Sugarcane of last year – was his most interesting in years with its mix of rock, raw country, edgy ballads and bluegrass, all helmed by co-producer T Bone Burnett. Although Costello is not one to jog on the spot, this new one – in a cover by the same artist, Tony Millionaire – feels like a companion volume... > Read more
Elvis Costello: You Hung the Moon
Brian Eno: Small Craft on a Milk Sea (Opal)
8 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
In the early Seventies the ambient albums by Brian Eno -- sometimes soundtracks for quiet, imagined films -- ushered in a kind of intelligent ambient music and the music on his Obscure label brought people like Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman and others to a wider audience than they might have otherwise enjoyed. Eno's own Music for Films series, later his Apollo soundtrack and even his... > Read more
Brian Eno: Lesser Heaven
The Puddle: Playboys in the Bush (Fishrider)
7 Nov 2010 | <1 min read
For those many of us who lost touch with Dunedin's the Puddle in the Nineties, last year's album The Shakespeare Monkey (a 2009 Best of Elsewhere album) came as quite a revelation for its literary lyricism and captivating alt.pop. This one might not have that same frisson of (re)discovery, but it is no less an album for that: there is a skewed angularity to the music (from mock-pop to bent... > Read more