Music at Elsewhere
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Jim Capaldi: Oh How We Danced/Whale Meat Again (Raven)
15 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Drummer, singer and songwriter Capaldi recorded these two solo albums in '72 and '74 when he was still a member of Traffic alongside Stevie Winwood, Dave Mason and Chris Wood -- all of whom appear here as part of a stellar cast which also includes the Muscle Shoals Horns, guitarist Paul Kossoff of Free, Rick Grech, drummer Gaspar Lawal, Jim Gordon and others. Pretty much a who's who of the... > Read more
Jim Capaldi: How Much Can a Man Really Take?
The Topp Twins: Honky Tonk Angel (Topp)
15 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
To be perfectly honest I went off the Topp Twins very quickly: around the time of the Women's Web Collective album Out of the Corners of '82 and in a few subsequent years I thought they were terrific and iconoclastic, and their stage shows howlingly funny. But then their humour seemed to become more tame, mainstream and -- at a time when sophisticated comedy was all over television -- I... > Read more
The Topp Twins: Palamino Moon
The Pines: Tremolo (Red House/Ode)
15 Nov 2009 | <1 min read | 1
Quite why the Pines -- who are Branson, the son of the legendary singer-songwriter Bo Ramsey, and David Huckfelt -- didn't get more alt.country/indie.rock traction with their excellent Sparrows in the Bell album was a mystery to me. Maybe the father association put people off in that Lennon-kids way? To me they sounded like a bridge between cryptic Seventies Dylan and... > Read more
The Pines: Heart and Bones
BLK JKS: After Robots (Secretly Canadian)
9 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
It would be hard to imagine a more musically diverse, genre-defying and largely bewildering album than this by a South African rock band which has been swept off to Electric Ladyland Studios in New York where Brandon Curtis (of Secret Machines) has produced this meltdown of mad psychedelics, MOR ballads, reggae and African mbaqanga. Nine tracks like nine different radio stations. At... > Read more
BLK JKS: Molalatladi
Bill Chambers: Drifting South (Whitewater)
9 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Bill Chambers -- quite apart from being the father of singer-songwriter Kasey and producer Nash -- is one of Australia's great singer-songwriters whose work just seems to be getting deeper and more resonant. He is suitably road-grizzled these days and his work (just a reference point) sits somewhere between Paul Kelly, Kris Kristofferson and Greg Brown. Here he sings of "deisel and... > Read more
Bill Chambers: Tail Lights
Tami Neilson: The Kitchen Table Sessions Vol 1 (Ode)
9 Nov 2009 | 2 min read | 1
It's a curious thing that in New Zealand where country and alt.country of various persuasions has become increasingly popular that an album like this slips past most people. It slipped past me until very recently, although I'm pleased to note her previous one Red Dirt Angel, didn't go around the judges at the 2009 music awards who picked it as the country album of last year. Without having... > Read more
Tami Neilson: Girl on the Moon
Harmonia and Eno '76: Tracks and Traces Reissue (Gronland/Rhythmethod)
9 Nov 2009 | 2 min read
Even during his days in Roxy Music, Brian Eno professed an admiration for not just the music coming out of the German electronic movement (Can and so on) but for their collective spirit. They often lived communally and kept outside the mainstream, and (the commune thing excepted) so did he. That they had so many musical interests in common meant it was inevitable at some point they would... > Read more
Harmonia and Eno: Vamos Companeros
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Intentions: Through the Devil Softly (Shock)
9 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Sandoval was the emotionally cool, quietly mesmerising singer in Mazzy Star who has been off the radar for some while as a front person. (She has collaborated widely however, a new Mazzy album soon.) Here she fronts the band of her partner Colm O Ciosoig (of My Bloody Valentine) and various others on their first outing in about eight years. Little has changed in her emotionally close but... > Read more
Hope Sandoval: Blue Bird
Bear Cat: Presents Xiong Mao (Bear Cat)
8 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Blenheim-raised Jocee Tuck -- one half of this duo with Dan Trevarthen -- recently won Auckland University’s inaugural School of Music singer-songwriter award. Against tough competition -- a soul-pop belter, earnest young men with guitars -- Tuck delivered her original songs with lowkey charm and her ace was a complex arrangement for vibes, marimba and vocals which took her close the... > Read more
Bear Cat: Set, Set, Set My Eyes On Fire
Sarah Blasko: As Day Follows Night (Universal)
6 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
In what looked like a joke, a recent issue of the Australian Rolling Stone described Sarah Blasko as "music's most reluctant star" in the blurb above a story which ran for pages, included a lot of intimate and arty photos, and had the singer-songwriter extensively quoted. As "reluctant" goes it was hardly in the league of Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes or Scott Walker.... > Read more
Sarah Blasko: Lost and Defeated
Delgirl: Porchlight (Yellow Eye)
4 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
This trio from Dunedin impressed on their debut album two, maybe three, days ride which saw them nominated for a Tui award and, as I noted at that time, it was a real step up from their first EP. This even better album -- 15 tracks -- confirms what I have always believed, the more you work (ie play, perform and record) the chances are the better you will get. There is a musical maturity... > Read more
Delgirl: Stars
Wolfmother: Cosmic Egg (Universal)
3 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
To be honest I rarely watch music television, but the other night I caught about 30 seconds of these Australian rockers and was hooked: they seemed to be nothing especially new but were genuinely exciting. I heard a bit of early Black Sabbath, some terrific guitar sounds of the kind that used to be common in the late Sixties, a swag of Seventies pre-stadium rock (Black Oak Arkansas) and whole... > Read more
Wolfmother: New Moon Rising
The Brunettes: Paper Dolls (Lil' Chief)
3 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
The cute and coy pop of the Brunettes has always been much enjoyed here at Elsewhere for its humour and slightly twee quality, and their previous album Structure and Cosmetics remains a Firm Favourite, as they say. But frankly on this one some of the charm is wearing off: they work the same lyrical quirkiness about domestic matters and observations as always; the "relationship"... > Read more
The Brunettes: Magic (No Bunny)
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Advance Base Battery Life (Tomlab)
2 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
When the superbly named CFTPA (Owen Ashworth from Chicago) played before a couple of dozen in Auckland a few years back he was utterly beguiling: a small selection of lo-fi keyboards; a voice soaked in melancholy; and pointed songs which had a bed-sit consciousness without moping or self-pitying. His 06 album Etiquette was chock full of poetic miniatures, but this collection of singles,... > Read more
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Sunday St
Dead Man's Bones: Dead Man's Bones (Anti/Shock)
2 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
This will be an acquired taste but its release around Halloween is I suppose apt, especially if for you Halloween is a Serious Event and doesn't have a lot to do with buying a witches' hat or trick'n'treat. A project for the actor Ryan Gosling and his mate Zach Shields, this is like a faux-spooky meltdown of a kitsch carnival House of Horrors, a small part of Tom Waits, a BBC sound effects... > Read more
Dead Man's Bones: Buried in Water
Wall of Voodoo: Dark Continent/Call of the West (Raven)
2 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Stan Ridgway, frontman for Wall of Voodoo, was one of the smartest, story-telling songwriters -- and nervously energetic singers -- to emerge in the wake of American new wave in the early Eighties. Sadly most people might only know them for their terrific single Mexican Radio and relegate them to that one-hit-wonder category reserved for bands which turned Japanese (the Vapors) or sang of... > Read more
Wall of Voodoo: Call of the West
Noah and the Whale: The First Days of Spring (Shock)
2 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
Beauty is not a quality that popular music (ie pop, rock, r'n'b, indie-rock or whatever) places much store in: yet from the Velvet Underground through Mazzy Star and the early Cowboy Junkies to the Fleet Foxes, or from Eno to the landscape of guitars in Explosions in the Sky, there has been beauty aplenty. Beauty need not be sentimental or cringe-inducing. So when a record company... > Read more
Noah and the Whale: Stranger
Doug Cox: Without Words (Black Hen)
2 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
Dobro player Doug Cox from Canada appeared here previously with his lovely album Slide to Freedom where he worked with Indian slide guitarist Salil Bhatt. That album alone would recommend this compilation of instrumentals from his obviously extensive back-catalogue. Cox has a light touch, plays without unnecessary embellishment and brings a beautifully warm tone out of his instruments... > Read more
Doug Cox: Easy Place to Be
Jan Hellriegel: All Grown Up (Blind Date)
27 Oct 2009 | 1 min read
The title tells its own story, it has been well over a decade since Jan Hellriegel made an album and that might explain the huge interest in this one: lotsa interviews, articles and media attention, my guess from people who remember Hellriegel fondly for her swagger and sensitivity in bands and on her solo albums. The swagger is still here on this widescreen and often dramatic... > Read more
Jan Hellriegel: Orange Liqueur
Ned Collette and Wirewalker: Over the Stones, Under the Stars (Fabric/Rhythmethod)
26 Oct 2009 | <1 min read
When Australian Ned Collette's previous album Future Suture appeared at Elsewhere the closing line was "check this guy out". I suspect few did, even though he visited New Zealand a couple of times. But here's another chance, although this sounds a little different to its predecessor: often downbeat, lean and less augmented, more clearly defined as he teams up with his longtime... > Read more