Music at Elsewhere
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Norah Jones: The Fall (Blue Note/EMI)
16 Nov 2009 | 2 min read
The smaller sales on Jones’ two albums -- Feels Like Home (04) and Not Too Late (07) -- after the extraordinary figures for her 02 debut Come Away With Me (20 million and rising) were no reflection of any diminishing talent. Those follow-ups were subtle and layered outings, but on a casual listen sounded like more aural wallpaper for cafes and dinner parties where Come Away With... > Read more
Norah Jones: December
Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 (Sony CD/DVD)
16 Nov 2009 | 1 min read | 3
“We have a fire on stage. If there’s any firemen in the area . . . “ This isn’t an announcement you hear too often at rock festivals -- but nothing was beyond possibility at the volatile Isle of Wight event in 70 when non-ticketholders stormed the site, the enraged promoter abused them for being ungrateful pigs and 600,000 concert goers watched artists as diverse as... > Read more
Leonard Cohen: So Long, Marianne
Julian Temple Band: Quiet Earth (Oscillosonic/Yellow Eye)
15 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Noticed how in action movies so few actors speak these days? They tend use an amplified whisper which has the effect of raising tension -- even when very little is happening. San Francisco-born, Dunedin-based singer-songwriter Temple is like that: his husky whisper is everywhere on this acoustic-driven, sometimes folk/sometimes funk, occasionally bluesy album. It raises tension where... > Read more
Julian Temple Band: American Dream
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
White Denim: Fits (Inertia)
15 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
This three-piece from Austin were everywhere in the UK media when they were touring while I was in England and Scotland in the middle of the year -- and I kept missing them. And the more I read the more interested I became: no one seemed to have a clear bead on them and while some cited Hendrix (it's the wah-wah pedal, folks) others mentioned a meltdown of the White Stripes and the Allman... > Read more
White Denim: Everybody Somebody
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
Various: Michael Jackson; the Remix Suite (Universal)
15 Nov 2009 | <1 min read | 2
Motown may have missed their golden opportunity with the shoddily compiled 50th anniversary albums, but they aren't so stupid as to let yet another marketing opportunity go by -- and so here comes wee Michael with (mostly) the life remixed out of him. There will be a great Jackson remix album (it won't be official of course, it'll be out there in webworld) but Motown had inferior dance... > Read more
Michael Jackson: ABC (Salaam Remi remix)
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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