Music at Elsewhere
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New and Noted
13 Dec 2009 | 3 min read
At this time of year -- Christmas but 10 days away -- there is a slew of releases and while no sane reviewer would want to deal with every Yuletide-themed album (Dylan's worthy outing doesn't get a mention at Elsewhere, you can figure that one out for yourself) there are still a number of albums clamouring for attention which at least deserve to be acknowledged. Here then are potted reviews... > Read more
Carla Bley/Stev Swallow: O Holy Night (from Carla's Christmas Carols, see below))
Various Artists: s3d (ear and eye) Atoll CD/DVD
13 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
In 1996 Ellipsis Arts in the US released a CD and book package entitled Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones: Experimental Musical Instruments. It was compiled by Bart Hopkin who had edited the journal Experimental Musical Instruments for over a decade at that point. The foreward was written by Tom Waits who had begun his career-changing journey into using odd instruments and machinery, some... > Read more
Yek Koo on cardboard record players
Lisa Germano: Magic Neighbor (Young God Records)
13 Dec 2009 | <1 min read
Given that the cover art here is by Auckland's West Coast artist Dean Buchanan, we might guess that singer/violinist/composer Germano encountered his work when she was in New Zealand in April 2001 for Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide project. Certainly Buchanan's dark and mysterious work is appropriate here because Germano's music is much the same: there is a surface loveliness hinted at but... > Read more
Lisa Germano: Snow
Various Artists: The Lennon and McCartney Songbook (EMI)
12 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
While there have been quite a number of such compilations in the past interest alights on this one in particular because it has been pulled together by EMI New Zealands in-house memoryman Bruce Ward who does a fine job on such collections -- and here writes the intelligent liner essay. The Lennon and McCartney team were giving away hits in their early career until about late '65 and a few of... > Read more
Bernard Cribbins: When I'm Sixty Four
Guy Clark: Somedays the Song Writes You (Dualtone)
7 Dec 2009 | <1 min read
Now in his late 60s -- he turned 68 in November -- this great Texas singer-songwriter is sounding very weak'n'weary in these 10 co-writes and his cover of Townes Van Zandt's If I Needed You. And that is its very strength. Clark brings a melancholy reflectiveness or quiet gravitas to these lyrics and whether it be considering the mysteries of the songwriting process ("you can search... > Read more
Guy Clark: Eamon
Bap Kennedy: Howl On (Lonely Street Discs)
7 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
After time in the Irish band Energy Orchard, Kennedy spent many years in the America he was obsessed with as a child. For this moving tribute to the America of his dreams -- and specifically the days of the Apollo Mission to the moon and Woodstock -- he gives concept albums a good name. Now back in Belfast after his Nashville period, he reflects on his recent passion for the moon landings... > Read more
Bap Kennedy: The Right Stuff
Brilleaux: Decade (Brilleaux)
6 Dec 2009 | 1 min read | 2
You -- well, I -- admire a rock'n'roll r'n'b band that names itself after the late lead singer of the British pub rock band Dr Feelgood whose Stupidity album from '76 is mandatory in any Essential Elsewhere collection. And this four-piece who make their energetic pub-rock sound at jazz and blues festivals (and I am guessing excellent parties), don't stray too far from the Feelgood... > Read more
Brilleaux: It Wasn't Me
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Strike: Sketches (Strike)
6 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
Don't know about you, but just out of curiosity I'd listen to a piece of music which featured "water nipple gong". That particular instrument -- and I'm not going to ask further -- is but one in the battery of percussion played by the New Zealand ensemble Strike: water vibes, spoons, PVC pipes, various bowls and flower pots (in the manner of Stephan Micus), plastic tubs and brake... > Read more
Strike: Hydrophonics
Rupa and the April Fishes: Este Mundo (Cumbancha)
6 Dec 2009 | 1 min read
The implosion of Latin American party music, gypsy-swing, klezmer jazz and loping reggae is familiar enough in this country: from Kantuta, the Nairobi Trio and the Jews Brothers Band to the Mamaku Project and the somewhat questionable Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band we in New Zealand have been seduced, educated, charmed and dragged onto dance floors. We seem to like it, although the... > Read more
Rupa and the April Fishes: La Estrella Caida
Fatcat and Fishface: Birdbrain (Jayrem)
6 Dec 2009 | <1 min read | 3
This irreverent outfit who sing songs ostensibly for children but with major adult appeal, have appeared at Elsewhere previously with their very silly The Bestest and Most Horriblest Songs for Children. They are more Spike Milligan and Monty Python than Teletubbies and Play School. This one is aimed rather further up the kiddie demographic than Bestest (8 to 14 would be my guess) because it... > Read more
Fatcat and Fishface: Kea
Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains in New York (Yep Rock/Southbound DVD)
30 Nov 2009 | 2 min read
Robyn Hitchcock is one of those enjoyably intellectual, slightly eccentric English singer-songwriters who are either central to your life or barely come to your attention. He first made his name in the punk era with the folkadelic punk band the Soft Boys, and there were few bands of that era which wrote songs with titles such as It's Not Just the Size of a Walnut, Where are the Prawns?,... > Read more
Karen Hunter: Words and Groove (Rawfishsalad)
29 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Those who have followed Auckland singer-songwriter Hunter's long career will confirm that she has progressively moved from a kind of alt.indie outsider status with albums such as The Private Life of Clowns ('98) and Inside Outside ('03) which bristled with ideas from rock, spoken word, jazz-blues and alt.folk to something closer to mainstream jazz cabaret and boho-Beat poetics on her '07 album... > Read more
Karen Hunter: Purify
Port O'Brien: Threadbare (Dew Process/Isaac)
29 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
I have been to pretty, but pretty dull Cambria in California where the core of this group hail from and I can understand why they might want to take to the road. They did and seem to have spent a lot of time in Alaska where one of them is a fisherman and the other works as a baker in Larson Bay. Then they started touring and touring after their debut album in 2008. They are a small... > Read more
Port O'Brien: In the Meantime
Pylon: Chomp More (DFA)
29 Nov 2009 | <1 min read | 1
Anyone taken by the jerky and anxious sound of the Essential Elsewhere album by the Feelies, Crazy Rhythms, might find this one a similarly enticing proposition. Released in '83 by a four-piece out of Athens, Georgia fronted by Vanessa Briscoe's yelp'n'edgy vocals, this was the second album for Pylon who were much admired by the young REM. But it is the tense, sometimes surf-guitar... > Read more
Pylon: Gyrate
Bert Jansch: The Essential Bert Jansch (Union Square)
29 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
In the liner notes to this 26-track double CD collection Jansch says, "I only know how to play a guitar and write songs. I don't know anything else when it comes down to it." The likes of Jimmy Page who was influenced by Jansch's acoustic folk style and fans such as Devendra Banhardt, Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon and dozens of others in the new folk movement (Fleet Foxes etc) would... > Read more
Bert Jansch: In This Game (1972)
Graham Coxon: The Spinning Top (Transgressive)
29 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Damon Albarn has had the more visible profile outside of Blur -- Gorillaz, his Mali Music album, The Good, The Bad and The Queen -- but for the band’s former guitarist Coxon (who left after Think Tank of 03) The Spinning Top is his seventh solo outing and extends his interest in Anglofolk of the Nick Drake, Bert Jansch and Richard Thompson kind. To Blur, Coxon brought US indie-rock... > Read more
Graham Coxon: In the Morning
The Renderers: Monsters and Miasma (Last Visible Dog)
29 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Once known as “the only country band on Flying Nun" (Trail of Tears in 90, their sole album for the label), this on-going project of Brian and Maryrose Crook has progressively taken a darker and deeper path the past decade. These 10 songs owes debts to old murder ballads, the Velvet Underground and the Doors, acoustic Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt and Marianne... > Read more
The Renderers: A Little to the Left
Old Crow Medicine Show: Live at the Orange Peel and Tennessee Theatre (Shock DVD)
27 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
The rocked-up country-cum-bluegrass outfit haven't ever fully convinced on CD, although the best of their previous outing Tennessee Pusher certainly explained why they are such a potent live act. This DVD of shows filmed in Asheville, North Carolina and Knoxville, Tennessee capture them touring that album but generously throwing in some real oldies (a country cover of Down Home Girl which... > Read more
Volcano Choir: Unmap (Jagjaguwar)
23 Nov 2009 | 1 min read | 1
This album was on repeat play while I was at my desk and after a few times through I thought it one of those projects where people just make a interesting noise but haven't actually got a tune that is memorable. It seemed like a very pleasant art school project by some probably very nice people who had listened to a bit of new folk from the likes of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, enjoyed creating... > Read more
Volcano Choir: Island, Is
The Gladeyes: Psychosis of Love (Lil' Chief)
23 Nov 2009 | 1 min read | 6
In a recent article for an art magazine I wrote about some of the work I had seen by young painters in Sydney: I noted there was a frequent and conspicuous retreat into whimsy which seemed an early admission of defeat, as if these young talents were abdicating from the demands of making any serious statement. It was as if cute of itself was enough and that it would be elevated into importance... > Read more