Music at Elsewhere
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MGMT: Congratulations (Sony)
18 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
Anyone who tuned in for the pop-silly, enthusiastic debut Oracular Spectacular by these guys knew they were smart cookies and going to be around for a while: they seemed the perfect post-modern pop package which drew from all kinds of sources with knowing winks and nods -- and are so knowing and winking this time out that on the cover they say about their track entitled Brian Eno, "A smile... > Read more
MGMT: Brian Eno
Harper Simon: Harper Simon (Liberator)
18 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
Even on a blindfold test you'd probably only need the first few bars of the second song here -- after the traditional All to God -- to spot this is either Paul Simon, or someone very close to him. Harper is the 37-year old son of Paul (and you'd have to say by association also of Garfunkel given his light, melodic voice) and he would also have grown up around singer-songwriter Eddie... > Read more
Harper Simon: Wishes and Stars
Natalie Merchant: Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch)
18 Apr 2010 | 1 min read | 1
This fascinating, self-funded double CD (available in a single disc "Selections" version) has preoccupied the former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman for the past five years -- but if literate and literary music is your thing you'll conclude it was worth her efforts. After the birth of her daughter, Merchant -- as musical parents are wont to do -- decided to record an album of lullabies.... > Read more
Natalie Merchant: The Walloping Window Blind
The Bird and the Bee: Interpreting the Masters Vol 1 (Blue Note)
12 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
This will be brief because you could essay at length the trend of artists covering the work of their predecesssors: Scarlett Johansson doing Tom Waits, Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet's Under the Covers series, knob-twiddlers on Kraftwerk, the Judee Sill and Townes tributes only the most recent. You could look at how there is a sometimes slightly kitsch quality to some of these projects... > Read more
The Bird and the Bee: Kiss on my List
Jakob Dylan: Women and Country (Sony)
12 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
The previous solo album by Dylan, Seeing Things, confirmed that he had stepped well out of the shadow his famous father (and the Wallflowers band) and had found his own voice -- or at least Jackson Browne's by way of alt.country. And although he sounded wise beyond his years he was on the cusp of 40 so . . . This time out with producer T Bone Burnett providing the rather too warm and... > Read more
Jakob Dylan: We Don't Live Here Anymore
Holly Miranda: The Magician's Private Library (XL)
12 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
This is effectively the solo debut for New York-based Miranda (there was an album only available at gigs about six years ago) and it doesn't want for aural ambition. Co-produced by David Sitek of TV on the Radio, it rides on strings, electric guitars, mellotrone, horns, organ and much else, and others from TV on the Radio and Antibalas also guest. This is a big and layered sound for the... > Read more
Holly Miranda: Joints
The Leisure Society: The Sleeper (Inertia)
12 Apr 2010 | <1 min read | 1
There is a lot of neo-folk around and you suspect the success of Fleet Foxes has prompted interest in people like Mumford and Son, the Unthanks and Joanna Newsom. This oddly named British outfit – which suggests an ambient-lounge act – should appeal to an even wider audience. With hints of McCartney at his most pastoral, a little Crosby Stills and Nash harmony vocals, a... > Read more
The Leisure Society: Cars
The Triffids and Guests: It's Raining Pleasure (Madman DVD)
11 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
Elsewhere recently noted the tribute CD to David McComb of the Australian band the Triffids who died in February 1999. That all-star concert released as Deep in a Dream was to help raise funds to complete a doco on McCombs' short and sometimes troubled life. Now comes this film taken from four nights of shows (which pre-dated the Deep in a Dream show by a few months) which included the... > Read more
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (Shock)
11 Apr 2010 | <1 min read | 1
It's instructive but perhaps unfair to put this album from the former member of Drive By Truckers alongside their most recent album, The Big To-Do: after a flawed solo debut Sirens of the Ditch in 07 Isbell here sounds in command again, whereas the Truckers album is pretty ropey in places. Here Isbell and his band (on an album that came out a year ago Stateside but gets belated release... > Read more
Jason Isbell: Sunstroke
Jonsi: Go (EMI)
9 Apr 2010 | 1 min read | 1
At the time, some critics and people were more taken with the last Sigur Ros album than I was (the one with the absurdly long, impossible to type title). My problem was that in making economic (if still spectral and widescreen) pop in most places they had lost the very thing that made them different, interesting and quite special. I've noticed in discussions with people about this group... > Read more
Jonsi: Boy Lilikoi
The Weakerthans: Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre (Anti)
6 Apr 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Anyone who has travelled around Canada with the car stereo flipping across the dial will discover that whole new world of rock, folk, pop and alt.music which exists north of the place which so often dominates our airwaves. The Weakerthans from Winnipeg have an understandably loyal following in their home territory for their literate, often melancholy version of... > Read more
The Weakerthans: One Great City
Anika Moa: Love in Motion (EMI)
6 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
Curiously enough, the initial whisper on this fourth album by the New Zealand singer-songwriter was that she had, after albums of an acoustic persuasion, "made a rock album". That might in part have been that she was working with musicians from more mainstream rock bands, and perhaps a few people heard the first single Running Through the Fire -- which to these ears is the least... > Read more
Anika Moa: Secrets & Lies
Joan Armatrading: This Charming Life (Hypertension/Southbound)
5 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
After the success (critical and saleswise) of her last album Into the Blues, you'd expect attention would be drawn to this new album from one of rock's long distance runners who has long since fallen from media and wider public attention. That said, this outing is much more patchy than the tightly coherent predecessor which roped together various styles of blues. Here Armatrading aims... > Read more
Joan Armatrading: Best Dress On
Josh Rouse: El Turista (Bedroom Classics)
5 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
The musically itinerant Josh Rouse has long been an Elsewhere favourite for his musical curiosity (Seventies singer-songwriters, Nashville, indie-rock and so on) and he doesn't disappoint here as he gets his passport stamped and takes off for the tropical pleasures of Brazilian moods and music (in Portuguese mostly) which come subtlely orchestrated or deliciously understated. And yes, by... > Read more
Josh Rouse: Duerme
The Imagined Village: Empire and Love (ECC/Southbound)
5 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
Every now and again the English music press gets infatuated by traditional folk (to make amends for hailing Gay Day and other such rubbish Britrock?) and embarks on a brief essaying of various musicians and artists who would otherwise languish in finger-in-ear folk clubs. The Imagined Village -- a changing line-up of folk and elsewhere musicians -- is the most recent to receive such... > Read more
The Imagined Village: Cum On Feel the Noize
Helen Van Der Linden: Helen Van Der Linden EP (HVDL)
5 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
This EP arrived from the winnner of last year's Gold Guitar award at the annual Gore country music festival and she has already taken herself to Tamworth in Australia to further her career. And you'd expect she will go far. Here with a small and seasoned band -- and covering Tami Neilson's Cigarette -- she moves easily between slightly swinging country (Planet of Love) and a slightly more... > Read more
Helen Van Der Linden: Bread and Water
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Beat the Devil's Tatoo (Abstract Dragon)
5 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
When I saw the BRMC in their early days at the Troubadour in LA I came away convinced they were, if not the future of rock'n'roll, then they would have at least a lot of interesting noises to make until the future arrived. They roared and rocked, swapped instruments, played psychedelicised rock'n'roll with references to a few other marginal styles and . . . I fell for them. Ours has... > Read more
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Mama Taught Me Better
Pop Mechanix: Now-Then; One Hit Windows (Failsafe)
5 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
It would be fair to observe that when the countback of Kiwi bands of the Eighties is done the name "Pop Mechanix" comes up much less frequently than it should. Yet here was a hard-working and thoroughly entertaining live band from Christchurch which cracked urgent singles like Radio Song ("my music, I want to hear it on the radio") at a time when radio programmers were... > Read more
Pop Mechanix: Jumping Out a Window
Various artists: Nowhere Boy soundtrack (Sony)
5 Apr 2010 | 1 min read
This is the music from the film which traces the life of John Lennon from a child to . . . Well, to where the film Backbeat picks up actually. And as with the soundtrack to Backbeat which featured The Backbeat Band (Greg Dulli, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and others playing rock'n'roll of the era) so too this album has material by the Nowhere Boys (the film's cast of... > Read more
The Nowhere Boys: In Spite of All the Danger
Son of Dave: Shake a Bone (Kartel/Rhythmethod)
5 Apr 2010 | <1 min read
You can't say you weren't warned. A couple of years back when he released his '02' album Elsewhere said you'd be hearing more of this human beat-box, one-man foot-stompin' blues band which is Ben Darvill. Here recorded by Steve Albini in Chicago he once more abuses that harmonica, makes his own percussion and becomes a wall-shakin' blues-rock outfit -- or, better, takes the mood down to... > Read more