Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
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
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
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: 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)
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: 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
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
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
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
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
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
Various: Alice Russell; The Pot of Gold Remixes (Little Poppet)
7 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
This may well be for a minority audience for a few reasons: not as many people liked UK soul singer Alice Russell's late 2008 album Pot of Gold quite as much as I did (but seemed to like her Auckland gig a whole lot more than me, I quit out of despair). And this is a double disc of remixes of those album tracks by the likes DJ Vadim, Mr Scruff, Mocean Worker, Kid Gusto, Shawn Lee and others.... > Read more
Alice Russell: Got the Hunger? (Ticklah remix)
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
G. Love and Special Sauce: Crumble
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
Various Artists: Come Fly With Me; Great New Zealand Rock’n’Roll 1964-72 (Sony)
7 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
A decade ago it wasn’t easy to find collections of local rock’n’roll but today we’re tripping over them: John Baker’s excellent compilations of 60s garage band rock like Pie Cart Rock’n’Roll and Get A Haircut (the latter coming up to the D4 and Datsuns); the Johnny Devlin collection; EMI’s Day in My Mind’s Mind series of... > Read more
Music Convention: Footsteps on my Mind
Pauly Fuemana: RIP
1 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
The passing of Pauly Fuemana (aka OMC) cannot not go un-noted at Elsewhere: but I have said my piece here at Public Address and so need not revisit it. Other than to say this: in the coming months we will doubtless hear the customary gossip, rumour and innuendo about Pauly's recent years. Some of it will be true. None of it however should diminish what he achieved, albeit briefly.... > Read more
OMC: How Bizarre; Instrumental mix
Various artists: Deep in a Dream (Stomp/Rhythmethod)
31 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
At some time in the mid Nineties I spent an afternoon in Melbourne talking with David McComb, the former singer-songwriter with the Triffids then Blackeyed Susans. He was as intelligent as I had expected given the depth of his lyrics in both of those bands, but he was also hesitant, slightly wary and gun-shy, and I left wondering how he might survive the obvious dependencies he had. Not... > Read more
Diving Bell: Tender is the Night
Daniel Johnston: Is and Always Was (Feraltone)
31 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
I'm probably not alone in thinking of Daniel Johnston, not just as some untutored genius and outsider artist, but as someone whose life has often been pitiable and sad. That he is disturbed is beyond question. That said, Johnston's no-fi cassette recordings (some of which have turned up on CD over the years), can be transfixing for their sheer naked honesty -- and sometimes great tunes just... > Read more
Daniel Johnston: High Horse
Jimmy Buffett: Buffet Hotel (Mailboat)
30 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
Buffett has made a career and an excellent living out of writing songs about drinking margaritas, sailing and flying, party moods with good food and better friends, beach bars and so on. He also works in political subtexts which detractors of his freewheeling lifestyle and easy music prefer to ignore. This typically interesting collection addresses the power of waving in friendship, his love... > Read more