Music at Elsewhere
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Katie Melua: The House (Dramatico)
26 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
Those who have followed Melua's career might be a little surprised by this outing -- and if you haven't then this might be the album to tune in for: dramatic, dark, hypnotic, cabaret-noir, lovely ballads, enough pop-smarts everywhere . . . and a strange sense of sonic discloaction from producer Wiliam Orbit. They all make this quite a grower. Although she previously worked with Mike Batt... > Read more
Katie Melua: The One I Love is Gone
Laurie Anderson: Homeland (Nonesuch)
19 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
From the accompanying DVD, you sense this should have been a double CD for us to fully appreciate the long arc and nuances of this, Anderson's first album in a decade. Anderson's work is allusive rather than literal or descriptive, but in these often disturbing, melancholy and dislocated meditations on the state of her country, some thread is missing between her feeling... > Read more
Laurie Anderson: Strange Perfumes
Jamie Liddell: Compass (Warp/Border)
18 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
There is certainly no shortage of white soul singers these days (Hall and Oates seem to be making a comeback too), but Liddell from the UK brings a neat post-Prince funky skew and a techno-twist to his songs which, stripped of some of the considerable sonic effects and colours here, still stand as fine, inner-city soul vehicles for his high but malleable voice. This is at its weakest when... > Read more
Jamie Liddell: Big Drift
George Jones: The Great Lost Hits (Time Life/Southbound)
18 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
Lawd almighty, but ain't there been some archival albums appearing lately? In the past few weeks Elsewhere has noted albums of Bob Dylan barely out of his teens (here); Kris Kristofferson before the fame (here), Willie Nelson's earliest material (here) . . . and now the great George Jones. The honky-tonk balladeer, country weeper (Things have Gone to Pieces -- see clip below -- is one... > Read more
George Jones: Take Me
Alejandro Escovedo: Street Songs of Love (Concord)
12 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
From the breathless pace he sets on this hard rocking album you'd never know that Escovedo out of Texas (formerly of Rank and File, a fellow traveller with John Dee Graham, co-writer with Chuck Prophet and now managed by Springsteen's Jon Landau) nearly died a few years ago. Such is the high regard he is held in by his peers that for a fund-raising tribute album Son Volt, Ian Hunter of Mott... > Read more
Alejandro Escovedo: Down in the Bowery
The Broken Heartbreakers: Wintersun (BHB)
12 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
The self-titled debut album by this Auckland-based folk-pop band was among the Best of Elsewhere 2007 list -- and they have just been getting better. No surprise really given that alongside the core duo of John Guy Howell and Rachel Bailey are Sam Prebble (who, as Bond Street Bridge, appeared in the following year's Best of Elsewhere with his album The Mapmaker's Art) and Verlaines' bassist... > Read more
The Broken Heartbreakers: Wintersun
Peter Wolf: Midnight Souvenirs (Verve)
12 Jul 2010 | <1 min read | 1
The J Geils Band popped up recently at Elsewhere with a cheap set of their early albums as a Bargain Buy -- and here is the world-worn r'n'b blues voice of their singer Wolf in a collection of memorable (and often vaguely) familiar songs which sound peeled off from the Stones '68 to '76 or the more ballad end of Chris Bailey of the Saints (who also appeared here and here). With Larry... > Read more
Peter Wolf: I Don't Wanna Know
Boozoo Bajou: Coming Home (Stereo Deluxe)
11 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
In the mid 2000s I gave up on chill-out music, I'd heard a lot of it and my life was becoming far too laidback for my own good. A Buddha Bar compliation too far I think. Germany's Stereo Deluxe label has a logo of two lounge chairs back-to-back and I thought that rather summed things up -- although I especially like things on that label, notably the tasteful, genuinely interesting stuff... > Read more
Boozoo Bajou: Fursattel
Vanessa Daou: Joe Sent Me (Daou)
11 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
My dad always used the phrase "Joe sent me", it was the old password to get into illegal bars and speakeasies and the implication was that you were gaining access to the illicit, and therefore rather seductive, world on the other side of the door. Vanessa Daou's breathy, sexually-fuelled electronica offers an entry to that kind of world. Her music oozes sensuality, suggests... > Read more
Vanessa Daou: Love Lives in the Dark
Ed Harcourt: Lustre (Piano Wolf/Southbound)
11 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
Sometimes these days it seems that more music is coming out of the Pacific Northwest than ever did at the height of grunge: the difference being it is quieter, more folksy and singer-songwriterly, and is often astutely produced with a few strings. Briton Ed Harcourt relocated to somewhere just north of Seattle (not as far as Canada, to Bear Studio) for this, his first album in about four... > Read more
Ed Harcourt: Haywired
Willie Nelson: Rarities Vol 1 (Great American Music/Southbound)
11 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
Another week, another Willie album? (Previously here the joke was another month, another Willie but . . .) So it has seemed lately -- but this isn't new material: here are songs by Willie from betweeen 1959 and '65, 11 of them just solo with guitar, the rest with a small band. The solo pieces -- only one breaking the two minute mark -- are lovely demos for others to discover and... > Read more
Willie Nelson: I've Seen All This World I Care to See
Tift Merritt: See You on The Moon (Concord)
11 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
To be honest, despite very much liking most of Merritt's '02 album Bramble Rose -- and concluding the review, "a name to remember, Tift" -- I lost touch with her augmented alt.country which came with a little sensuality and suggestions of Petty-like country-rock. That said, of course I remembered the name so this came qucikly to the top of the pile -- but I have to say fell away... > Read more
Tift Merritt: Feel of the World
Phosphorescent: Here's to Taking It Easy (Dead Oceans)
6 Jul 2010 | 1 min read
The last album by this band -- the vehicle for Matthew Houck -- was their tribute to Willie Nelson, but this time out it is all original material and the energy levels are kicked up, notably on the Band/Black Crowes/E Street opener It's Hard to be Humble (When You're From Alabama). Rolling steel guitars and a country-rock mood propel Nothing Was Stolen and the mood here is that you might... > Read more
Phosphorescent: The Mermaid Parade
Damien Jurado: Saint Bartlett (Secretly Canadian/Rhythmethod)
6 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
With a lovely, sympathetic production by Richard Swift -- sort of budget-priced Phil Spector -- and melodies which swell with Fifties and Sixties pop-romanticism, this is one of those album (like Swift's) which will be taken to heart with a passion by those who discover it. Previously Jurado out of Seattle came at you from the indie/alt.folk singer-songwriter territory, and none of... > Read more
Damien Jurado: Cloudy Shoes
The Gaslight Anthem: American Slang (Shock)
5 Jul 2010 | <1 min read
Normallly an amalgam of early Springsteen/E Street Band energy, Bob Seger committment, the Replacements' punky thrash and Tom Petty's way with a lyric and melody would have been right up my street -- but while Brian Fallon writes good, appropriately "mythic" songs and sings them with throat-aching passion there is something just little calculated about this outing which --- I... > Read more
The Gaslight Anthem: Bring It On
Greg Fleming: Taken (LucaDiscs/Rhythmethod)
28 Jun 2010 | 2 min read
The excellent liner notes by New Zealand's Greg Fleming (with lyrics and reflections on the genesis of these songs) tell their own story about why Taken never appeared in '95 after the excellent Ghosts Are White album (remastered and added here as a bonus disc). But we should be very glad it has come out because after the alt.rock blast of California Fishing the moods slip and slide through... > Read more
Greg Fleming: Taken
Tim Guy: Big World (Monkey)
28 Jun 2010 | 1 min read
Back in the late Sixties and early Seventies there were a number of great but ignored bands and artists (Left Banke, Dwight Twilley Band, Merry-Go-Round and their singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes who had a solo career, Sagittarius, the Millennium) who shaved off the best of the mid-period Beatles melodies, added it to some Beach Boys warmth and Association harmonies and created a sublime pop.... > Read more
Tim Guy: Beatle
Mountain Man: Made the Harbor (Spunk)
27 Jun 2010 | <1 min read
Here's an unusual and interesting one: Mountain Man are actually three young women Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath from various parts of the great USA who met at Bennington College in Vermont. Inspired by a mutual love of a kind of alt.folk and old time country -- and a cappella singing -- they formed this trio and, accompanied only by gentle acoustic... > Read more
Mountain Man: Dog Song
Kris Kristofferson: Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends (Light in the Attic/Rhythmethod)
27 Jun 2010 | 1 min read
Elsewhere agrees with itself that Willie Nelson makes too many albums these days (although the last one Country Music was excellent). But the collection to return to repeatedly is Classic and Unreleased, a '95 Rhino box set of Willie's early years. In it you can hear the gifted songwriter that everyone recognised, and the utterly personal style and delivery he brought to originals and songs... > Read more
Kris Kristofferson: Little Girl Lost
Various Artists: Do You Dream? (Angel Air/Southbound)
27 Jun 2010 | 1 min read
A few years ago I was invited to write the liner essays in a series of collections of New Zealand psychedelic Music (A Day in My Mind's Mind). What became clear was that from our end of the world where the relevant drugs arrived a bit later, musicians and producers invented their own idea of what psychedelic music was. Mostly it was bent, often heavily phased, pop-rock with a little... > Read more