Music at Elsewhere

Gianmarco Liguori: Ancient Flight Text (Sarang Bang)

18 Jan 2009 | <1 min read | 1

The previous album by Liguori (guitarist in Salon Kingsadore) was Stolen Paintings which found favour at Elsewhere for its jazz stylings and nicely stretching quality. This time out -- again with Murray McNabb and Kim Paterson (and percussion player Steven Tait and Wes Prince on synths for one track) -- Liguori teases the threads even further apart for evocative, improvised... > Read more

Ascending Spirals

Various: Motown 50 (Universal)

17 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 3

It would be very easy to acclaim this -- 50 of Motown's greatest hits over three discs to celebrate the classic soul label's 50th anniversary. Wow, what's not to like, huh? But then you listen to it: the copy that has arrived for Elsewhere consideration (and presumably the one in New Zealand stores) isn't the UK edition but something else. Possibly the French edition? The UK version... > Read more

The Four Tops: Reach Out (I'll Be There)

Alice Russell: Pot of Gold (Inertia/Rhythmethod)

11 Jan 2009 | <1 min read | 2

This white, funky-soul chanteuse from Britain who can sound like Nina Simone as much as having stepped out of the Motown roster, doesn't always pen the most memorable of songs -- but it's all in the gutsy and committed delivery. She can get down'n'gritty or deliver up a sensuous yelp, and she backs it up with a hot band of horns honking, offering stabbing punctuations or great sweeps of... > Read more

Alice Russell: Got the Hunger?

Gotan Project: Live (Shock)

10 Jan 2009 | <1 min read

To be honest I was never that enamoured with the little that I heard of this tango-cum-triphop outfit who seemed to command airtime at dinner parties and restaurants about five years back. (Probably hair salons too, but I never go to them) They seemed like designer wallpaper to me and I've also never got the whole "romance of the tango" thing which many got swept up in. I... > Read more

Gotan Project: Queremos paz

High Places: High Places (Mistletone/Rhythmethod)

10 Jan 2009 | <1 min read

In an article posted at Elsewhere recently I wrote of the seductive charms of the quiet albums on Brian Eno's Obscure label in late Seventies/early Eighties, and of other such albums by the likes of Harold Budd, Laaraji, trumpeter Jon Hassell and others. On one of those lovely Hassell albums -- Dream Theory in Malaya from 1981, an Essnetial Elsewhere album -- there was a piece in which he... > Read more

High Places: Namer

Various: Born to the Breed, A Tribute to Judy Collins (Wildflower)

10 Jan 2009 | 1 min read

These past few years there has been something of a rediscovery of old folkies, what with Springsteen paying tribute to Pete Seeger, the various Woody Guthrie compilations, Bob Dylan's radio show (he's something of an old folkie himself), new albums by Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Larry Jon Wilson, collections like If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi and Sowing the Seeds . . . Not to mention young... > Read more

James Mudriczki: Che

Ginger Brown: Who Scared Who (Ginger Brown)

9 Jan 2009 | <1 min read

Because I've been listening to some old Sixties vinyl -- Sam the Sham, Paul Revere, La De Das, the McCoys etc -- this album by a Wellington outfit which is driven by the organ playing of Lawrence Taula has captured my attention. There's real Sixties pop quality about the songwriting, Taula also sings like less addled Jim Morrison in places, the guitars of Matthew Armitage perhaps... > Read more

Ginger Brown: Blinded by the Light

Jim Noir: Jim Noir (My Dad)

9 Jan 2009 | <1 min read

Some six months ago the English magazine Q hailed this quirky, poppy and delightfully cheerful album as "the surprise soundtrack of summer 2008" -- which means that for us in the other hemisphere it is now we should be tuning in. Jim Noir (known to his family as Alan Roberts) from near Manchester is far from noir and in fact there is a Beach Boys breeziness at work here, married... > Read more

Jim Noir: Happy Day Today

Jeff Beck: Performing this Week . . . Live at Ronnie Scott's (Shock)

8 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 2

In a recent interview in advance of his Auckland concert next February, I put a quote to this guitar legend whose career started back in the mid-Sixties when he took over from Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds: that of all the guitar heroes his career had been the most slippery to follow. He laughed and agreed -- then I told him that quote came from 1976, over 30 years ago. He laughed even... > Read more

Jeff Beck: A Day in the Life

David Byrne and Brian Eno: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Inertia)

8 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 1

It has been almost 30 years since David Byrne and Brian Eno teamed up for the groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts which brought sampling, found sounds, world music, trip-hop beats, studio manipulations and much more together in way that really hadn't been heard before. But anyone expecting this collaboration to be in a similar vein hasn't been listening to the work of either in... > Read more

David Byrne and Brian Eno: My Big Nurse

The Aliens: Luna (Pet Rock)

6 Jan 2009 | 1 min read

Back in the late Ninenties the Beta Band from Britain were, for some of us at least, the most exciting and promising thing around. They released three charming folkadelic EPs -- packaged on CD as, you guessed it, The Three EPs -- and they were heard at the best barbecues. They were pastoral, trippy, sort of hip-hop if you only had acoustic instruments (although they had a turntablist), and... > Read more

The Aliens: Dove Returning

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, The Bootleg Series Vol 8

22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 4

After the less-than-essential Vol 7 which accompanied the brilliant Martin Scorsese Dylan-bioflick No Direction Home (if you got the DVD you could probably pass on the CD) this on-going series of unreleased/rare/alternative versions hits another peak with this exceptional collection. There are a number of reasons for that: look at the period it covers and you may see it is the late-career... > Read more

Bob Dylan: Tell Ol' Bill

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes (SubPop/Rhythmethod)

22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 2

With its references to late 60s folk-rock, baroque pop flourishes, close harmonies, art-rock progressions and the jigsaw-puzzle of arrangements for voices and a small array of instruments (all deployed with precision, skill and understatement), this extraordinary album seems an unlikely one to have been embraced by hip rock magazines.It is is complex and yet poppy, sometimes oddly... > Read more

Fleet Foxes: Ragged Wood

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Hayes Carll: Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway)

22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read

You'd think with strip malls, fast food franchises, saturation low-cost reality television and the widespread levelling out of mainstream culture that guys like Carll would have been ironed out of American life But he's one of those crinkles in the texture, an alt.country-cum-trad.country guy who is a little early Steve Earle and Joe Ely, and a bit of Basement Tapes Bob Dylan, but also very... > Read more

Hayes Carll: Girl Downtown

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: James McMurtry: Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod/Elite)

22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read

The murky photo of a small, barroom audience on the inner sleeve of this brittle and typically dark album by singer-poet McMurtry might have included me. It looks like it was taken in the Continental Club in Austin where I caught him and his band the Heartless Bastards a couple of years ago playing their regular gig. Since his remarkable debut Too Long in the Wasteland at the opening of... > Read more

James McMurtry: Ruins of the Realm

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: MGMT: Oracular Spectacular (Sony/BMG)

22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read

As regular visitors to Elsewhere are aware, not everything posted here is a work of unalloyed genius which will be treasured down many lifetimes. (Although there are however more than a few like that I would hope.) But sometimes albums just come along that you are very glad to have heard and simply enjoy for what they mean to you on some odd subconscious level. I suspect this one is like... > Read more

MGMT: The Youth

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Van Morrison: Keep It Simple (Lost Highway)

22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read

Another year and another Van album on yet another label . . . And with the reissue of his earlier albums drawing attention to great work like It's Too Late to Stop Now (read about it in Essential Elsewhere) it would hardly be surprising if this one was ignored by even longtime followers, many of whom might be picking up the remastered back-catalogue or one of the new greatest hits... > Read more

Van Morrison: No Thing

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Duffy: Rockferry (Rough Trade)

22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 2

Funny how the UK rock press works, innit? Just a month or so ago this soulful, young Welsh singer who has a mainline to Dionne Warwick, Spector girl groups and Motown was being hailed as the next big thing/one to watch etc. Her record company had slipped out an advance sampler CD/7 inch which was so terrific it was posted here at Elsewhere about three months back as a very early heads-up.... > Read more

Duffy: Serious

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Ryan Bingham: Mescalito (Lost Highway)

22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1

We live and we learn -- and I have been living and relearning by repeat plays of this exceptional debut by someone called Ryan Bingham of whom I know nothing. And in a way, I'm grateful he has lived whatever he has in my place. The hard lessons he seems to have learned, I'm happy to just hear from this distance. I hear dark alt.country, brittle back-country, outsider art, folk-framed... > Read more

Ryan Bingham: Sunrise

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride (4AD)

22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 3

Co-produced by John Vanderslice, the typically opaque lyrics by John Darnielle are given space and clarity so as to bewilder and bemuse you by turns. Not many people write songs with titles like Sax Rohmer #1, How to Embrace a Swamp Creature, Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident and Michael Myers Resplendent. But here augmented by some discreetly dramatic strings and the small band, and with... > Read more