Music at Elsewhere
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Edwin Derricutt: Three Hours South (Freefall/Pure)
14 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The debut by this New Zealand singer-songwriter, Symmetry, found immediate favour at Elsewhere a couple of years ago, but this album is big step up in maturity of songwriting and musicality. There's a depth and muscularity to these songs (the urgent tone of Life Boat, the sharp folk-pop of 30 Seconds, the holy stillness of Soldier) which is immediately affecting and if on the previous... > Read more
Edwin Derricutt: Life Boat
Salon Kingsadore: Mountain Rescue (Sarang Bang)
14 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
Salon Kingsadore is another vehicle for Auckland guitarist Gianmarco Liguori whose earlier albums under his own name (with stellar guests) have appeared at Elsewhere, and who seems a hard man to pigeonhole. Here for example he leads the instrumental group of keyboard player Billy Squire, bassist Hayden Sinclair and drummer Steven Tait (with guests saxophonist Brian Smith and trumpeter Edwina... > Read more
Salon Kingsadore: The Warm War
The Fourmyula: The Complete Fourmyula (EMI)
13 Mar 2010 | 3 min read
In his recent book 100 Essential New Zealand Albums, the writer/broadcaster Nick Bollinger lists three albums by the Fourmyula (1967-71) out of Upper Hutt. Not bad for a band that only released three -- and one of those Bollinger cites was the unreleased Turn Your Back on the Wind. Confused? Bollinger doesn't list their self-titled debut but includes Turn Your Back because it has... > Read more
The Fourmyula: Please Take Me (1969)
Various Artists: The Gerry Goffin and Carole King Songbook (EMI)
13 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
While Carole King went on to greater fame, it is worth remembering that of the songs she wrote with her writing partner-then-husband Gerry Goffin in the early Sixties it was he who penned those memorable and often extremely adult lyrics: think of the pre-sex doubt in "will you still love me tomorrow", the post-sex pleasures of "you make me feel like a natural woman" and then... > Read more
The Byrds: Wasn't Born to Follow
13th Floor Elevators: 7th Heaven; Music of the Spheres (Charly/Southbound)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
As with Syd Barrett, the music of 13th Floor Elevators has been overshadowed by the story of the madness, in the case of the Elevators the increasingly bizarre behaviour of their frontman Roky Erickson. Out of Austin, Texas in the mid Sixties, the Elevators were a raw and elemental garageband along the lines of England's Downliners Sect and Pretty Things, or Paul Revere and the... > Read more
The Thirteen Floor Elevators: It's All Over Now Baby Blue
The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You (American)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
This trio (and guests) is fronted by North Carolina brothers Scott and Seth Avett who recorded five albums before this major label debut on Rick Rubin’s American label. Rubin -- producer of the Beastie Boys, recent Johnny Cash albums and now the Avetts -- was taken by this band’s honest emotions whose music is framed by acoustic guitars, fiddles, banjo, upright piano and the... > Read more
The Avett Brothers: January Wedding
Memory Tapes: Seek Magic (Inertia)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
This hazy and sometimes hypnotic album is the project of Dayve Hawk out of New Jersey who also works under a number of other names. Memory Tapes is his sweeping, electronica-pop personae and this MT debut hits an unusual ground between the less outre Mika, MGMT and Empire of the Sun at the poppy end, and the more interesting experimental types like Atlas Sound (Branford Cox of Deerhunter) at... > Read more
Memory Tapes: Bicycle (Horrors remix)
Jimi Hendrix: Valleys of Neptune (Sony)
8 Mar 2010 | 5 min read | 2
The old joke -- usually applied to the death of Elvis -- is “good career move”. Death sells, just ask -- if you could -- Elvis, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, John Lennon and Kurt Cobain who saw their record sales soar after their deaths. Or would have, if they could have. As a magazine cover said of Jim Morrison: “He’s hot. He’s sexy -- and... > Read more
Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin'
Galactic: Ya-ka-may (Anti)
1 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
New Orleans may have been the birthplace of jazz and home to funky pianists (Professor Longhair, Allen Toussaint, Dr John), but in the 90s a new form of hip-hop (called bounce) came from the streets and incorporated punchy rhythms and second-line bass parts which drew from NO funeral marches. The bruising bounce movement -- the soundtrack to the dangerous wards outside the tourist enclaves... > Read more
Galactic: Do It Again (ft Cheeky Blakk)
Jaga Jazzist: One Armed Bandit (Ninja Tune/Border)
1 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
In which our Norwegian big band of jazz-and-elsewhere players borrow heftily from all comers (epic soundtracks and European art films, minimalists, Afrobeat, jazz-rock) and deliver something of a quilt of jazzy colours. They say it is "Zappa-esque, more humorous prog-rock" but in its scale and changing moods, much of it sounds written with an eye on getting soundtrack... > Read more
Jaga Jazzist: Toccata
Kath Bloom: Thin Thin Line (Caldo Verde)
1 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
Although this wobbly-voiced American folkie has been around since the late Seventies I confess I have never heard/heard of her. On a first hearing I can't say I think I missed much: vocally she comes off like a shaky-voiced version of Daniel Johnston and Yoko Ono (when Ono gets in "ballad" mode). Notes are there but sometimes a little out of reach and that quivering top end of the... > Read more
Kath Bloom: Long Ago
Johnny Cash: Cash, American VI; Ain't No Grave (American)
1 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
In recent years I have been lecturing in contemporary music (rock'n'roll to hip-hop) and it has been an insight for me. After showing clips of a young and wild Elvis for example some students will come to me afterwards and express surprise: they only knew him from parodies as that boring fat guy. History is reductive: it's necessary to remind people that Elvis was only a porker for the last... > Read more
Johnny Cash: Satisfied Mind
The Clientele: Bonfires on the Heath (PopFrenzy)
1 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The charming, wispy and intimate pop of this London outfit has long been an Elsewhere favourite: their album God Save the Clientele was among The Best of Elsewhere 2007 and they share the same PopFrenzy label as equally delightful pop bands such as Camera Obscura, Lightning Dust, Radio Dept and Institut Polaire. The Clientele embark here on an even more pastoral, breezy and light direction... > Read more
The Clientele: I Know I Will See Your Face
The Ruby Suns: Fight Softly (Li'l Chief)
1 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The dreamy pop landscape that Ryan McPhun, mainman behind the Ruby Suns, conjures up usually wouldn't sound too far removed from that of bands on the PopFrenzy label which Elsewhere has always favoured. The last Ruby Suns album Sea Lion had an identifiable pop-folkadelic quality coming from the Pacific Rim (he's a Californian transplanted to New Zealand) but this time out there is a... > Read more
The Ruby Suns: Dusty Fruit
Pavement: Quarantine the Past; The Best of Pavement (Matador)
28 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
We'll make this a quick product description to coincide with this great alt.American band playing in New Zealand -- here is a remastered 23-track collection which draws on their singles, tracks from their classic albums (Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, Brighten the Corners) and adds three early songs from before their Matador signing plus a track from an obscure... > Read more
Pavement: Stereo (1996)
20th Century Steel Band: Warm Heart, Cold Steel (Mr Bongo)
28 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
The fate of this reissue by a mid Seventies steel band from the UK (in disco-funk outfits) is probably going to be on one of those summertime radio programmes where wild'n'crazy hosts play odd versions of big hits. And this group can certainly oblige because here are steel band treatments of the theme to Shaft, Papa Was a Rolling Stone, a dramatically brooding spoken-word version of Standing in... > Read more
20th Century Steel Band: Heaven and Hell
Arbouretum: Song of the Pearl (Thrill Jockey)
27 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
Although this album was released almost a year ago Stateside it has only just appeared here -- but its collision of electric Neil Young, heavy strum Anglofolk and indie.rock should see it find a ready audience in the post-grunge era. No unique ground is staked out by this four-piece and so the appeal is in the extension of the familiar rather than the shock of the new, but when the guitars... > Read more
Arbouretum: Thin Dominion
Various artists: Crazy Heart soundtrack (New West)
23 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
This soundtrack album is from the excellent movie which has been picking up Jeff Bridges acclaim and awards, as it should. He does a terrific job as an aging country singer whose career has been derailed by booze and drugs and itinerancy. And who looks for all the world like Kris Kristofferson might have if he hadn't pulled himself up a notch or two. As Bridges (who plays singer/songwriter... > Read more
Jeff Bridges: Fallin' and Flyin'
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