Music at Elsewhere
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Soname: Plateau (Harmonia Mundi)
10 May 2009 | 1 min read
Latterly it seems that the world is resigning itself to having a Tibet in the absence of Tibet: holding the notion of Tibetanism and that country being kept alive by the diaspora, even if the country doesn't exist as it used to. Most people in the West have a misty-eyed Lost Horizon/Shangri-La view of that country as a place of deep mysticism and benign lamas, but that would deny the... > Read more
Soname: Mother and I
Cyril Neville: Brand New Blues (MC Records)
10 May 2009 | 1 min read
As with the Marleys (Bob, Rita, Damian, Ziggy et al), we are hardly short of Nevilles in the world: there are the original Neville Brothers and their offspring (notably Ivan) as well as others in the extended family (Charmaine). Here Cyril, the 61-year old Brother and co-founder of the classic pre-Nevilles band The Meters, delivers a winning blend of soulful blues in which he gets the... > Read more
Cyril Neville: Brand New Blues
Marissa Nadler: Little Hells (UN SPK)
10 May 2009 | <1 min read
Sounding as if she is being beamed in from some strange part of space down a shimmeringly beautiful cosmic line, this dreamy alt.folk singer from Boston manages to bring together a slightly eerie quality and distant guitar with a voice which could lure sailors onto rocks. There's a slightly Gothic charm at work here (she's referred to Edgar Allan Poe in the past), but you can also hear why... > Read more
Marissa Nadler: Ghosts and Lovers
The Flatlanders: Hills and Valleys (New West)
10 May 2009 | <1 min read
The great Flatlanders from West Texas - Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, each one a name in their own right -- record together so infrequently that every album (they average one a decade about 40 years) is an occasion. Unfortunately it is never quite the special occasion you wish for. This one starts with the exceptional Homeland Refugee which is as a harrowing and true... > Read more
The Flatlanders: Sowing on the Mountain
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band: Outer South (UN SPK)
10 May 2009 | 1 min read | 2
You don't have to get too far into this album -- maybe just a few chords in fact -- to click that this isn't the Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes) of previous releases, the guy who started by juggling electronica dabbles with folksiness, then moved into alt.folk and bent pop. This time out with a bunch of friends who share an affection for Seventies pop-rock and singer-songwriters -- as well... > Read more
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band: To All The Lights in the Windows
Booker T: Potato Hole (Anti)
9 May 2009 | 1 min read | 1
This was either going to be brilliant, or . . . First the background: here is the great soul-funk Hammond B3 organ player Booker T (he of Green Onions fame with the MGs, and that band behind dozens of Stax artists) teamed up with Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers who know this sound and style inside out. Oh, and Neil Young (who toured with Booker T and the MGs in the early Nineties... > Read more
Booker T: Get Behind the Mule
Arcade Fire: Miroir Noir (DVD/EMI)
4 May 2009 | 1 min read
Arcade Fire deservedly won a massive and loyal audience for their exceptional Neon Bible album, an album that was orchestrated and grand as much as it was earthy and rock-framed. It was music of achieved ambition by a band that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. This film by director Vincent Morisset -- and it very much feels like a slightly self-conscious "art film" in places:... > Read more
Arcade Fire: Intervention
Dictaphone Blues: On the Down and In (Blah-Lah-Lah)
4 May 2009 | 1 min read
If this year's New Zealand Music Month of May is anything like the last -- and there's no reason to think it will be otherwise -- then somewhere in excess of 50 albums will be released by local artists to coincide with it. Some will rise to the top by virtue of publicity more than merit, some will be lousy (that's not unpatriotic, just a fact Jack), some will be terrific but probably always... > Read more
Dictaphone Blues: 100 Suns Inside My Lungs
Justin Townes Earle: Midnight at the Movies (Bloodshot/Southbound)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read
Being the son of Steve Earle and named for Townes Van Zant might seem a burden to many (just how many step-mothers do you have? wasn't Townes a troubled man?) but it seems to rest easy enough with this young singer-songwriter who even allows band member Cory Younts a breezy whistle on the gentle pedal steel'n'light ragtime of What I Mean To You. And you just know he could play some of these... > Read more
Justin Townes Earle: Midnight at the Movies
The Handsome Family: Honey Moon (UN SPK)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read
Because we're more used to hearing this husband and wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks in a dourly poetic and dark mood, this album's prevailing sentiments of optimism (as epitomised by its recurrent images from Nature and the themes of love) comes as something of surprise. There is still that melancholy oldtime music sensibility with banjo, lap steel, violin and so on but -- as with... > Read more
The Handsome Family: A Thousand Diamond Rings
King Creosote: Flick the Vs (Domino)
2 May 2009 | <1 min read
Scottish singer-songwriter Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, gets away more albums and EPs than I see local buses: I think he's closing in on Bob Dylan's tally somewhere in the mid-40s -- and he seems to average about three a year on his own Fence label. So if you've missed him, or don't have the time for this one, don't worry about it: within a few weeks he'll be back with something else.... > Read more
King Creosote: Camels Swapped for Wives
Red Red Meat: Bunny Gets Paid (SubPop/Rhythmethod)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read | 1
The now familiar "Deluxe Edition" is usually reserved for albums which have achieved some special position in people's lives: classic albums (Sabbath's Paranoid), cornerstone releases, Essential Elsewhere items and the like. And now this by a long disbanded band from Chicago that only a few heard about? Not even going to pretend here but will just give you the backstory as I... > Read more
Red Red Meat: Variations on Nadia's Theme
Eleni Karaindrou: Dust of Time (ECM New Series/Ode)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read
The Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou released an extraordinary double album in 2005, Elegy of the Uprooting which employed a full orchestra, choir, herself on piano, singer Maria Farantouri and many more. In evocative passages of aching music and the most delicate of melodies she delivered an evocation of people suffering from exile or abandonment, or going through the emotions of homecoming... > Read more
Eleni Karaindrou: Waltz By The River
David Kilgour and Sam Hunt: Falling Debris (Arch Hill)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read | 2
As we all know, song lyrics are rarely poetry -- and conversely poems, especially contemporary poems which don't bother with rhyme schemes, can't often be readily adapted into the service of a song. Singer-guitarist David Kilgour of the Clean here takes some of Sam Hunt's poems (despite the attribution, Hunt's distinctive sing-song voice isn't heard here) and works them into a breezy... > Read more
David Kilgour and Sam Hunt: Every Time It Rains Like This
Brian Blade: Mama Rosa (Verve Forecast/Universal)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read | 1
This multiple-threat recently appeared in New Zealand as a member of the John McLaughlin-Chick Corea Five Peace Band and even in that illustrious company made an immediate impression as a drummer of exceptional character and energy (see bottom of this page for a Five Peace Band concert review.) Jazz drumming doesn't come much more intelligent, musical or as enjoyable to watch than Blade when... > Read more
Brian Blade: Get There
Various: Troubadours Vol 1 (Exile)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read | 3
My guess is that you'd have to look long and hard (possibly through secondhand bins) to find albums by Glen Moffatt, Al Hunter and Red McKelvie who, from the late Eighties to the mid-Nineties carried the flag for contemporary New Zealand country music. They didn't owe a lot to Nashville other than the sense of a song but were too straight to be alt.country (which at the time was still an... > Read more
Al Hunter: Sleep Won't Come
Various: The Great New Zealand Songbook (Thom/Sony)
2 May 2009 | 1 min read | 1
This nattily packaged double disc with Dick Frizzell's clever twist on an iconic and familiar Kiwi image as the cover arrives in time for New Zealand Music Month -- but already has the feel of the perfect Christmas gift for those living abroad. Especially when it includes Frizzell postcards to send off-shore. There are two versions: the ordinary double disc set, and the A4-sized book which... > Read more
Liam Finn: Better to Be
Various: Motown Love (Motown/Universal)
1 May 2009 | 1 min read
This triple-disc set suffers from the same problem as the previously released and quite dreadful Motown 50 collection: an unacceptable and unnatural inclusion of Michael Jackson/Jackson 5 and Diana Ross -- and in this instance of course you get a dollop of soppy Lionel Richie as well. Alarmingly Smokey Robinson, who wrote some of the label most beautiful (and adult love) songs gets only... > Read more
Rita Wright: Where is the Love
Jon Hopkins: Insides (Domino)
1 May 2009 | 1 min read
This quietly wonderful electronica album certainly didn't announce itself (my advance copy came with no cover, no promo information) but it has been a constant repeat play item on the stereo since I got it about three months back. It has been music while I worked, music while I drank wine, music while I did nothing in the heat. That I have been so delighted by it in the absence of knowing... > Read more
Jon Hopkins: The Low Places
Chris Isaak: Mr Lucky (Universal)
29 Apr 2009 | 1 min read
I've got a soft spot for Chris Isaak for a couple of reasons: I interviewed him and he was a genuinely likable and funny man, and his television series was an astute and self-deprecating show about the life of a musician in which he didn't spare himself from ridicule for his self-delusion, pomposity and arrested adolescence.. In one episode Isaak --- who played "himself", the... > Read more