Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Various Artists: Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers (Crammed Discs/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Subtitled “Alternative Takes on Congotronics”, this well-annotated double disc lets loose alternative and post-rock acts on the lo-fi but compelling music from Kinshasa dance clubs where cheap keyboards and beat-machines were slammed alongside traditional thumb piano, found instruments (pots'n'pans), megaphones, electric guitars and drums. The bands Konono No 1 and Kasai... > Read more
Au Vs Masanka Sankayi: Two Labors
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Ben Sollee: Learning to Bend (Shock)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Here's a striking opening couplet on an album: "If you're gonna lead my country and you're gonna say it's free, I'm gonna need a little honesty . . . just a few honest words, it shouldn't be that hard". That these spare but blunt sentiments are delivered over cello rather than angry guitars make them even more powerful, and when Sollee says he doesn't need handshakes, fancy... > Read more
Ben Sollee: Bend
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Bruce Springsteen: The Promise (Sony)
12 Dec 2010 | 4 min read | 3
“You know kids go, 'Hey, when are you gonna make a record?',” Bruce Springsteen said in March 77, “I say, 'One of these days'.” And they were difficult days for the man they call The Boss. After his breakthrough album Born to Run in '75 – which sold around 10 million globally and took him to the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week in October... > Read more
Bruce Springsteen: Ain't Good Enough For You
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria (ECM/Ode)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
Because music on the ECM label often invites a litany of familiar adjectives -- austere, cool, detached -- it's a pleasure to throw this disc into the player and find yourself thinking more along the lines of . . . muscular, vigorous, assertive. Even the cover here suggests fireworks --- and while the music isn't exactly incendiary this young Swiss group lead by pianist Bartsch... > Read more
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Modul 55
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Neil Young: Le Noise (Warners)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
A preference declared: I've never been as smitten as many by Neil Young's acoustic albums -- never had a copy of Harvest for example, although I hardly needed it, everybody else played it incessantly. But I have always cranked up his rowdy albums with Crazy Horse (most of them) and believe albums like Rust Never Sleeps and Arc-Weld are among his best alongside disturbing albums like... > Read more
Neil Young: Walk with Me
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Jim Jones Revue: Burning Your House Down (Liberator)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
You really gotta love the JJ Revue who deliver hotrod rock'n'roll which draws from the Fifties (Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis) as filtered through the most wild and dissolute of Rod Stewart/Faces (or the Quireboys with more rocking honky-tonk blues in their soul) with the kind of trash energy of Grinderman. Produced by Jim Sclavunos (who has done similar for Cave/Bad Seeds), this one... > Read more
The Jim Jones Revue: Big Len
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Giant Sand: Blurry Blue Mountain (Fire/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The next few months sees the re-presentation of the Giant Sand back-catalogue, the Tucson-based band helmed by singer-songwriter Howe Gelb for these past 25 years which has had among its ranks the core of Calexico (John Convertino and Joey Burns) and a guest list which has included M. Ward, the late Vic Chestnutt and Rainer Placek, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate, Neko Case and many other... > Read more
Giant Sand: Better Man Than Me
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Great North: Newfoundland (GNMR)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 2
This Auckland band impressed mightily with their Soldiers EP of last year and this debut album really steps up to the plate. Coming from an alt.country end but with discreet influences from the likes of Springsteen, Dylan, Neil Young and the Waterboys as much as muscular poetry and indie.rock (the landslide of guitars which bury All Eyes right at the end), this album has a broad reach.... > Read more
Great North: Hands
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Eva Prowse: I Can't Keep Secrets (Eva Prowse/Rhythmethod)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Prowse -- here with her debut album -- has probably crossed more people's paths than they might think: she has toured with Fly My Pretties, opened for Wanda Jackson and appeared on the excellent album Trouble on the Waterfront by her father Chris Prowse. That is emblematic of her musical dexterity, and the fact she has the Phoenix Foundation's Samuel Flynn Scott producing and playing here,... > Read more
Eva Prowse: Complacency
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Dear Time's Waste: Spells (DTW/Isaac)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The previous EP in '08, Room for Rent, by this Auckland singer/writer Claire Duncan was notable for its droning and hypnotic qualities (guitar washes) alongside delicately realised folk, and you detected a talent which could stretch in many directions, from a constrained Bjork-meets-JAMChain to slightly disconcerting meditations on love . . . and throughout pastel shadings which were quite... > Read more
Dear Time's Waste: Son of a Fright
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Mumford and Sons: Sigh No More (Universal)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
This four-piece from London may have a banjo on hand and a similar way with an archaic lyric and alt.folk melody as Fleet Foxes, but here on their debut album with widescreen producer Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire's Neon Bible) they bring some dramatic urgency which kicks them clearly into the alt.rock territory. With songs which have a sharp sense of dynamics – a rush of blood and... > Read more
Mumford and Sons: Thistle and Weeds
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Naked and Famous: Passive Me Aggressive You (Somewhat Damaged)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
From She Loves You and She's a Mod, pop music has always rung to the affirmation of "yeah yeah yeah" -- and to hear this Auckland band work it so well on their newly minted classic single Young Blood (which recently won the Silver Scroll for songwriting) was thrilling. This debut album has been so well canvassed and reviewed that little remains to be said about it: it feels like a... > Read more
The Naked and the Famous: Spank
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Robert Scott: Ends Run Together (Flying Nun)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The last time Robert Scott (of the Clean, the Bats and Magick Heads) appeared at Elsewhere it was for the cupboard cleanout of tapes which made up the lo-fi Tascam Hits. This collection of much more polished, expansive and augmented songs from the sagging shelves of his tapes enjoys assistance from Clean guitarist David Kilgour and Lesley Paris on drums in places, and production by... > Read more
Robert Scott: The Moon Upstairs
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Devils Elbow: Sand on Chrome (Hit Your Head)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 1
This raw, sometimes wilfully ragged and largely terrific duo of Alec Withers (vocals, guitars) and drummer-singer Andrew Gladstone formerly in Garageland (and a couple of friends in places) deliver up hook-filled alt.country rock which owes a nod to Joe Strummer as much as Steve Earle, and they also possesses that free-wheeling spirit which made the Replacements so special. As with the... > Read more
Devils Elbow: These Days
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Arcade Fire: The Suburbs (Merge)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 1
The first film by many aspiring directors is often a low budget affair about hookers, junkies or/and zombies. Being young they believe there is drama (or at least cool dress-ups) in these worlds -- but as many later realise there is more true human emotion and drama in that most mundane of subjects: life in the suburbs. Behind the curtains and the seeming mundane daily lives in ordinary... > Read more
Arcade Fire: Wasted Hours
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Richard Thompson: Dream Attic (Proper)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Quite what has enraged the exceptional and much admired English guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson we can only guess, but let's hope he stays angry because this blistering live album -- of all new material, recorded at various venues in the States -- finds him in top form. With a small band -- guitarist Pete Zorn also pulling out saxes, mandolin and flute; Joel Zifkin on violin --... > Read more
Richard Thompson: Sidney Wells
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Marilyn Crispell and David Rothenberg: One Dark Night I Left My Silent House (ECM/Ode)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
American pianist Marilyn Crispell is one of those rarities: classically trained, she jumped in at the very deep and demanding end of the jazz pool – free jazz, Cecil Taylor, the ferociously intellectual Anthony Braxton Quartet – and used her instincts and training to keep afloat. Then she struck out confidently. Crispell – now in her early 60s – has never... > Read more
Crispell and Rothenberg: Stay, Stray
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Black Keys: Brothers (Shock)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Albums are usually far too long these days, and this is no exception -- but just when you think you might lose interest here the Keys pull out another angle: around the midpoint there are some superbly dark and soulful blues (Ten Cent Pistol, Sinister Kid) which sound steeped in Howlin' Wolf/Muddy Waters, then a new classic on The Go Getter (a moody barroom creeper which Etta James should... > Read more
The Black Keys: The Go Getter
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Willie Nelson: Country Music (Rounder)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
Willie Nelson makes so many albums these days – from Western Swing with Asleep at the Wheel and Tex-Mex to jazz stylings with Wynton Marsalis – that it's helpful this title is a product description. So here's Willie – now 77 – going back to songs by Ernest Tubb, Doc Watson, Hank Williams and others, as well the traditional I Am a Pilgrim, Nobody's Fault But... > Read more
Wille Nelson: My Baby's Gone
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate: Ali and Toumani (World Circuit)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read | 1
When the great guitarist Ali Farka Toure from Mali died in late 2005 he left an exceptional legacy of wonderful albums, not the least being the exceptional In the Heart of the Moon with kora player Toumani Diabate. That album was why sites like Elsewhere exist (J.Lo hardly needs our help. right?) Their mesmerising music was like a portal into another world, and a very benign and relaxing... > Read more