Music at Elsewhere
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Rickie Lee Jones: Balm in Gilead (Universal)
23 Nov 2009 | 1 min read | 2
Ms Jones has slipped so far down the totem pole of public attention in the past decade that her last album -- the ambitious Sermon on Exposition Boulevard of 2007 in which she meditated on Jesus and other things -- went straight past most. Jones works her own territory: one part jazz, a nod to pop, sometimes soulful or almost spoken word, and that distinctive voice which you either love or... > Read more
Rickie Lee Jones: His Jeweled Floor
Living Colour: Chair in the Doorway (Megaforce)
23 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
With their 89 breakthrough debut Vivid, Living Colour were hailed as the first black rock band, the politics of race/the media around them was talked up by the Black Rock Coalition, and guitarist Vernon Reid repeatedly noted now they were through the door the media (MTV, Rolling Stone etc) would close it. One black rock band was enough, thank you. He was mostly right. Living Colour... > Read more
Living Colour: Young Man
Caroline Herring: Golden Apples of the Sun (Ode)
23 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
The previous album by this Atlanta-based singer-songwriter, Lantana of last year, was a revelation: her crystalline vocals conjured up the purity of Joan Baez but her sometimes dark subject matter took her into that emotionally unsettling area where the likes of Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams and Eilen Jewell sometimes set up shop. The contrast between Herring’s delicate clarity and a... > Read more
Caroline Herring: The Great Unknown
Jim Ford: The Unissued Capitol Album. Big Mouth USA; The Unissued Paramount Album (both Bear Family)
23 Nov 2009 | 2 min read
As Nick Lowe recently observed, he's supposed to be an expert on American music but there are still any number of artists and albums being unearthed and brought into the light again. Ford might not exactly be in that category -- he was a major influence on Lowe and his stuff has been floating around among cognoscenti for a couple of years -- but these two albums might give him his time in... > Read more
Jim Ford: Mixed Green
Atlas Sound: Logos (4AD)
23 Nov 2009 | <1 min read
The previous outing by Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, was a real find: ambient and cinematic but with hints of hazy pop, and at the time I noted I hoped Brandford Cox -- who is Atlas Sound and also of the equally interesting band Deerhunter -- would make more such solo albums. He almost didn't. The backstory here is that his computer was... > Read more
Atlas Sound: Washington School
Tom Russell: Blood and Candle Smoke (Proper/Southbound)
16 Nov 2009 | 1 min read
Tom Russell is a cinematic singer-songwriter whose storytelling is compelling, and whose whisky’n’grit vocals can take you to the heart of Tex-Mex territory. The poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti said he was “Johnny Cash, [poet and novelist] Jim Harrison and [barfly writer] Charles Bukowski rolled into one“. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Russell spent time in Nigeria... > Read more
Tom Russell: Crosses of San Carlos
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
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
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)
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 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
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?
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
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
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
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