Music at Elsewhere
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Vampire Weekend: Contra (XL)
18 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
Coming to this second album by a very buttoned down and upper crust outfit from New York (who met at Columbia University) will be a surprise if you took from their name they were some dark and moody emo outfit. When the second track White Sky kicks in you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd spent their vacation on Long Island sipping iced tea and immersing themselves in Paul Simon's Boy in... > Read more
Vampire Weekend: Run
Blakroc: Blakroc (Blakroc)
11 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
While nu-metal spawned some horrible offspring in terms of rap/rock collaborations or assimilations of one into the other, there has always been more in common between the two genres than many would concede. If nothing else, some of that bad nu-metal at least prepared the mind for this collection where the one-time blues-rock duo Black Keys (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) get... > Read more
Blakroc: What You Do To Me (with Nicole Wray)
Hyacinth House: Black Crows' Country (Phantom)
11 Jan 2010 | <1 min read | 2
Very belated acknowledgement of an album that was recorded in 2007, came out Stateside in 2008 (to little fanfare) but to the best of my knowledge only appeared in New Zealand in late 2009. This dark, edgy country-rock (and beyond) band with a revolving door membership -- who perhaps take their name from the Doors song of the same title? -- deliver a convincing line of tense uptempo but... > Read more
Hyacinth House: Whiskey Nights
Helen Henderson: Twisting Wind (Ranui)
11 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
Tough and often earthy blues rock/alt.country from a New Zealand-born LA raised singer-songwriter who here calls up some big names (guitarist Doug Pettibone, Spooner Oldham on keyboards) whose credentials (Dylan, Ronstadt, Neil Young, Lucinda Williams) adds lustre to what is a fine collection of self-produced, mostly original co-writes (with guitarist Matt Downs). When Henderson unleashes... > Read more
Helen Henderson: Stateless
Michael Hurley: Ida Con Snock (Gnomonsong)
5 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
Michael Hurley's laidback style which bridges traditional and alt.country hasn't gone overlooked by his musical peers although their audiences seem a little slower to catch on: he has toured with Lucinda Williams, Bill Callahan, the Palace Brothers (aka Bonnie Prince Billy) and others, and he counts Cat Power and Vetiver among those who have covered his songs. Perhaps it is because he falls... > Read more
Michael Hurley: I Can't Help Myself
Frank Turner: Poetry of the Deed (Epitaph)
4 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
One part youthful Billy Bragg and another of very early Springsteen (the Asbury Park period) and a Pogues-styled energy propels this manic, politicised, wordy outing by this English post-punk folk poet who does a terrific line in taking down myths: "There's no such things as rock stars there's just people who play music, and some of them are just like us and some of them are dicks. So... > Read more
Frank Turner: Live Fast Die Old
Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed: Me and Jerry, Me and Chet (Raven/EMI)
4 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
Doubtless one for guitarists (of the country pickin' persuasion too perhaps), this two-fer pulls the '70 and '72 Grammy-grabbing duet albums by Atkins and Reed onto one disc and adds eight bonus tracks. There is a small band (which includes pianist Floyd Cramer) on the Me and Chet album. With Chet on the right and Jerry on the left you can discern their stylistic differences (Reed rocks,... > Read more
Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed: I Saw the Light
Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of a Friend (Acony)
4 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
The quiet and often largely invisible power beside Gillian Welch, guitarist/singer-songwriter Rawlings here comes into the spotlight with a collection of folk-country and alt.folk-rock songs which would mostly not fit Welch's canon but here have an understated charm of their own. They still possess some of that old time quality which has been a hallmark of his work with Welch but here (with... > Read more
Dave Rawlings Machine: Bells of Harlem
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Lawrence Arabia: Chant Darling (Rhythmethod)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 3
In a blog at publicaddress.net about the 2009 Big Day Out I hailed the pop acts on the day while noting that in New Zealand we like pop music, but prefer it to come from somewhere else. We're a little suspicious of it when one of our own starts to make it. At least critics and radio programmers seem to be, other people just get on and enjoy it. We like our pop with a vinegar lyric or... > Read more
Lawrence Arabia: Look Like A Fool
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Bonnie Prince Billy: Beware (Spin)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 2
The previous album by Bonnie Prince Billy -- aka Will Oldham -- was the uneven but enjoyable Lie Down in the Light which found our former melancholy fellah in a somewhat more upbeat mood. It was bound to divide longtime listeners, most of whom probably preferred his "I see a darkness" side, or his wonderful The Letting Go which made the Best of Elsewhere 2006 list. A consumer... > Read more
Bonnie Prince Billy: You Can't Hurt me Now
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Leonard Cohen: Live in London (DVD, Sony)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 1
Those who saw Cohen's New Zealand concerts earlier this year -- and even those whose wallets couldn't stand the cruel gouging -- will find much to enjoy in this, almost exactly the same show, here filmed live in London's O2 Arena last July. Musically this was an interesting concert (again, what you see here is almost identical, jokes and all, to what he did everywhere on that tour) and his... > Read more
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Bob Dylan: Together Through Life (Sony)
17 Dec 2009 | 2 min read
Bob Dylan doesn't exactly make easy listening music, but Together Through Life finds him in a musically mellow mood and although darkness lurks in the lyrics (guns, death, danger, songs of love and loss) there is something relaxed and almost settled about most of these 10 songs. Where its superb predecessor Modern Times (his first number one Billboard album since Desire 30 years... > Read more
Bob Dylan: I Feel A Change Comin' On
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 The Puddle: The Shakespeare Monkey (Fishrider/Yellow Eye)
17 Dec 2009 | 2 min read | 1
Dunedin's The Puddle should have been bigger (and perhaps better) than they were during New Zealand's vibrant indie-rock scene in the Eighties and early Nineties. But they were sometimes "indisposed" during the heyday of their famous label Flying Nun -- although they still managed to release a couple of interesting and almost excellent albums (and probably a single or two, who... > Read more
The Puddle: One Romantic Gesture
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 St Vincent:Actor (4AD)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
Not having heard the (apparently) much acclaimed debut Marry Me by St Vincent (aka Annie Clark out of Texas) means coming to her particular talents with fairly high expectations -- and she doesn't disappoint. This is a sonic circus with her gentle and melodic voice as the centrepiece, but it is the crashing arrangements for strings, voices and distorted guitars around it which command... > Read more
St Vincent: The Strangers
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (UK Spin)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 2
At a time when yet another Neil Young album and a truly dire Stevie Nicks live outing command major media attention, it could be slightly depressing that this one by the great Bill Callahan will probably go straight past most reviewers, and his potential audience. Often appearing under the name Smog, Callahan has always appealed to people attuned to Bonnie Prince Billy, the Handsome Family... > Read more
Bill Callahan: The Wind and the Dove
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Elvis Costello: Secret, Profane and Sugarcane (Starbucks/Universal)
17 Dec 2009 | 2 min read
On his what is his thirtysomethingth album here's Elvis Costello's problem as I see it: it is his thirtysomethingth album. As with Eric Clapton who could deliver the best album of his career tomorrow and watch it go largely ignored (as McCartney found with Flowers in the Dirt of '89 where he co-wrote with Costello), a lot of people have stopped listening to artists who seem to have always... > Read more
Elvis Costello: She Handed Me a Mirror
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 An Emerald City: Circa Scaria (Banished/Border)
17 Dec 2009 | <1 min read | 1
Because the previous EP by this Auckland-based group was widely hailed at Elsewhere, and that there is now a profile of the band posted under Absolute Elsewhere, this will be brief. For my money this band is the most interesting, musically ambitious and creative I have seen in this country in many years. They possess that rarity in New Zealand music, an aesthetic sensibility -- and it... > Read more
An Emerald City: Reindeers Running
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador)
17 Dec 2009 | 2 min read | 1
Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth recently noted that they were the Grateful Dead or Rolling Stones of their generation. He meant it seemed they had been around a very, very long time and were still out there doing it. And they are. This is, depending on how you are counting, at least their 16th studio album (which sort of puts them around their Some Girls/Emotional Rescue period?) but rather... > Read more
Sonic Youth: Massage the History
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 Wild Bill Ricketts: John Dryden (Ricketts)
17 Dec 2009 | <1 min read
Certainly not what you might expect: an outlaw reading the poems or plays of Dryden. The Ricketts here is the percussion player (and songwriter) in the wonderful Phoenix Foundation (Dryden was an ancestor apparently) and here he coaxes various members of Trinity Roots, Opensouls, Fat Freddys and the Black Seeds to assist on an album of gently Pacific-flavoured songs which are gorgeously... > Read more
Wild Bill Ricketts: New J
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2009 M Ward: Hold Time (4AD)
17 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 2
The previous album by M Ward, Post-War, was one of the Best of Elsewhere 2006 albums for its dark hues, free-range musical approach (blues, alt.rock, indie-folk, Americana etc) and the fact it had something to say. At that time I noted his musical magpie tendencies (a good thing) and because of its layers said it would stand the test of time. It has round my way, and although I missed his... > Read more