Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
The Haints of Dean Hall: Sleeper (Arch Hill)
22 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
The mystery continues as this poetic, dark alt.country outfit once more -- as on their impressive self-titled debut album -- explore understated, musically and emotionally stark songs which sometimes evoke empty rooms in spider-webbed old houses and an emotional ennui. But although they suggest a more ancient time and place these are very contemporary lyrics ("doing donuts in the... > Read more
The Haints of Dean Hall: My Pomeranian
Shearwater: The Golden Archipelago (Matador)
22 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
The problem as I see it with this sonically fascinating and musically dramatic album is that it lacks a lyric sheet and the poetic words are frequently difficult to distinguish because singer Jonathan Meiburg's vocals are often buried behind those odd instrumentations, or sung in soft high Anglofolk voice which is hard to decipher. Because of that, I defy anyone coming to this cold to... > Read more
Shearwater: God Made Me
k.d. lang: Recollection (Nonesuch)
22 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
Seeing kd lang -- "just a big boned gal from Canada" as she described herself to me an eon ago -- at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver singing a beautiful if slightly overlong Hallelujah reminded what an extraordinary talent she is. She effortlessly opened up her career from country music into big but soft-voiced ballads, performed with Roy Orbison and Tony Bennett... > Read more
kd lang: I Dream of Spring
The Antlers: Hospice (FrenchKiss/Border)
21 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
This may not sound like everyone's idea of an album to listen to -- it is a 10-track concept piece about caring for someone in a hospice who has been emotionally abusive. But whaddya gonna do? They are dying so you can hardly pay out on them. Here New York's Peter Silberman crafts a song cycle of great depth and sometimes alarmingly beauty, but which equally soars and rages in the manner of... > Read more
The Antlers: Atrophy
Boz Scaggs: Speak Low (Decca)
21 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
With his classic blue-eyed pop-soul albums of the mid and late 70s -- Silk Degrees and Down Two Then Left -- Scaggs brought a slippery rhythmic sensibility to his singing and, with famed jazz and studio musicians backing him, managed to cross effortlessly between the pop, r’n’b and soul charts. Over the decades he moved further into material from the Great American Songbook... > Read more
Boz Scaggs: Ballad of the Sad Young Men
Freda Payne: Band of Gold/Contact/Reaching Out (Edsel/Triton)
21 Feb 2010 | 2 min read
Although it was slightly ambiguous about who had failed on the wedding night, it is Freda who says her new husband should come back and "love me like you tried before". And so we might guess . . . This was interesting and slightly saucy stuff -- was he gay or impotent? -- but the sexy Payne from Detroit turned it into a hit in '70. It should have been the start of fine career... > Read more
Freda Payne: Bring The Boys Home
A Mountain of One: Institute of Joy (Pod)
15 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
After a couple of much sought after EPs the London duo of Zeben Jameson and Mo Morris here (with a lot of help from their friends) unveiled their much anticipated debut album last year. And quite some cosmic trip it was. Their often very lovely and certainly astral-aimed psychedelic sound owed debts to the likes of Pink Floyd (the Meddle period), the more pastoral side of early King Crimson,... > Read more
A Mountain of One: Lie Awake
Peter Gabriel: Scratch My Back (EMI)
15 Feb 2010 | 1 min read | 1
An album where an artist covers the material of others is hardly a new concept, but you can guess that Peter Gabriel -- the ever sensitive quality controller, with his first album in eight years -- brings something special to the table. Here he is on songs by those of his generation such as David Bowie (Heroes), Paul Simon (Boy in the Bubble), Randy Newman (I Think It's Going to Rain Today)... > Read more
Peter Gabriel: Heroes
Various Artists: The History of Rhythm and Blues 1925-1942 (Rhythmandblues/Southbound 4 CD Set)
14 Feb 2010 | 2 min read
From the opening track on this remarkable collection -- a testifying scream of faith recorded in 1934 which calls to mind Little Richard and Hasel Adkins as much as African chants -- you are offered evidence of the old saying/song, "the blues had a baby and they called it rock'n'roll". Just as Blind Willie Johnson (here with Nobody's Fault But Mine from '27, which Led Zeppelin... > Read more
Lil Johnson: Press My Button (1936)
Various Artists: The History of Rhythm and Blues 1942-52 (Rhythmandbluesrecords/Southbound 4 CD Set)
14 Feb 2010 | 3 min read
If the previous collection in this excellent series -- which went from country blues in the Twenties to swing, boogie and jump jive in the early Forties -- laid out the ground, this equally fine (and fun) set picks up the pace and moves from the clubs of Harlem into proto-rock'n'roll. In the early part of the first disc (entitled Jumpin' from Harlem to the West Coast) the shadow of the war... > Read more
Arthur Crudup: That's Alright (1946)
OK Go: Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (Capitol)
14 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
At the recent Laneways Festival it was noticeable every young band delivered up its obligatory noise segment -- feedback, atonal guitar trash'n'trash -- as if to prove its indie-alt cred. But if everyone is doing it then how independent and alternative is that? You've just conformed to type. And most such noise isn't that interesting anyway. I suspect that live this LA band might do the... > Read more
OK Go: Last Leaf
Various Artists: Womad New Zealand Sounds of the Planet 2010
12 Feb 2010 | <1 min read | 1
Here is the official 14 track compilation of artists at the 2010 Womad in Taranaki (March 12-14) and includes the exotic oud-folk-pop of Kamel el Harrachi, alt-world by Calexico, Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed, the Skatalites, the lively tropicalia-cum-flamenco of Ojos de Brujo . . . As with all such fit-for-purpose sampler items, this is perhaps only useful as a memento if you are at the... > Read more
Mariem Hassan: La Tumchu Anni
The Tindersticks: Falling Down A Mountain (4AD)
8 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
At this point in their long and rather marvellous career I'm as sure as the various Tindersticks that they're never going to gatecrash into wider public consciousness, despite hypnotic and melodic music which insinuates into your consciousness rather than announces itself loudly. The previous album The Hungry Saw was an absolute, if slightly dark, delight but this one is even more fully... > Read more
The Tindersticks: Keep You Beautiful
Gil Scott-Heron: I'm New Here (XL)
8 Feb 2010 | 2 min read | 1
When Gil Scott-Heron -- the American poet, activist and conscience of his nation from the Vietnam years to the Reagan era -- was jailed for cocaine in 2001, then again in ‘06 and ‘07, it seemed it was going to be the beginning of a slow, sad end for one of the most important voices out of black America. If he had done nothing more than The Revolution Will Not Be Televised -- a... > Read more
Gil Scott-Heron: Where Did the Night Go
Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu: Chiaroscuro (ECM/Ode)
8 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
The album title here perhaps suggest rather more shadowland than is evident in these beautiful, sometimes light-filled duets by acoustic guitarist Towner and flugel/trumpet player Fresu. Certainly they head to the shadows for a lovely treatment of Blue in Green (from Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue), but with Towner's rich and inclusive playing which alludes to his Brazilian influences and... > Read more
Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu: Postlude
Basia Bulat: Heart of My Own (Rough Trade)
8 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
Canadian singer/songwriter and auto-harp player Bulat appeared at Elsewhere with her confident if slightly disconcerting debut album Oh My Darling of '07. She has the kind of vibrato you might not have heard since Melanie's Brand New Key. But she is a powerful folk-rock singer and here really lets her passions fly (the folk-psychedelics of the fiddle-driven Gold Rush) while also letting her... > Read more
Basia Bulat: Sugar and Spice
Scalper: Flesh and Bones (Border)
8 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
Scalper is Nadeem Shafi who was previously a vocalist in the exciting London mutli-culti hip-hop (and beyond) outfit Fun-Da-Mental. These days he lives in New Zealand but little of the rather more benign South Pacific atmosphere intrudes on this dark, brooding and menacing mood-piece where his up-close and urgently delivered vocals speak of a spiritual fog, the horrors of war, bloodshed,... > Read more
Scalper: Treacherous Disciple
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: The Live Anthology (Universal)
8 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
They used to say you could always judge a band by its covers. But today many bands write "originals" which sound exactly like their influences (like these people), or seem to be above such direct referencing. You suspect only the most confident of bands play other people's songs simply because they love and respect them. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were always confident and... > Read more
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Louisiana Rain
John Morales: The M&M Mixes (BBE)
7 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
Recently I have been reading some interesting political histories of disco: how anti-gay and anti-black elements (notably in white radio and rock culture) conspired to kill the music, and how the combination of cocaine, money and the hijacking of the culture by the Studio 54 types ripped the music away from its roots. When all those factors came into play disco was effectively shut out and... > Read more
Margie Joseph: Move to the Groove
G. Love and Special Sauce: Long Way Down (Philadelphonic/Shock)
7 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
After the terrific debut single Cold Beverage in the mid 90s (a slice of lazy blues hip-hop for which Sony resurrected the old Okeh label to release), this trio from Philadelphia fell from sight and commercial viability, then broke up for a while. Pity, because they nailed a laidback acoustic hip-hop style which anticipated the folkadelic movement, owed a little to Beck, and were much more... > Read more