Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Luke Buda: Vesuvius (Arch Hill)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
This exceptional album by Buda of the Phoenix Foundation may take some getting used to for a few people: it is ambitious (and often lyrically funny or provocative) wide-screen pop which unashamedly doesn't shy from a McCartney-like hook, or deploying lap steel to fine effect -- as well as conjuring up the innocence of mid 60s pop (Electric Waterfall has a melody, guitar solo and vocal harmonies... > Read more
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Moana and the Tribe: Wha (Black Pearl/Ode)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
Across her previous three albums Moana Maniapoto confirmed her status as one of New Zealand's most significant voices whose sound could just as comfortably incorporate politics and culture as seduce with her flowing lyrics in te reo and her astute ear for using the traditional within a contemporary context. This album might lack the obviously powerful and overt statements of material like... > Read more
Moana and the Tribe: Te Apo
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Samuel Flynn Scott and Bunnies on Ponies: Straight Answer Machine (Loop)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
Sam Scott is the singer and main songwriter of the Phoenix Foundation (alongside Luke Buda) and wrote the music for the feature Eagle Vs Shark but this, his second solo album, sounds like a man thoroughly enjoying himself (in a somewhat serious way) out of the confines of both of those. As with the PF this is pop which has a light'n'loose feel (soft drugs I suspect) and a sense of... > Read more
SF Scott and BOP: Sodium Ions
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: James Hunter: The Hard Way (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
This Englishman with an unexpectedly soulful voice was one of the first artists posted at Elsewhere back in mid 2006 and that astonishing album People Gonna Talk was easily among the best of that year. But in this country with very little publicity (I saw none) it rose without a trace. Still, those who heard it got a wonderful slice of Sam Cooke/soul-reggae -- and it went on to be in... > Read more
James Hunter: Til the End
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Emmylou Harris: All I Intended To Be (Warners)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
The crystalline quality of Emmylou Harris' voice is often so admired that people can look past that she is also a great interpreter of a lyric and has effortlessly brought traditional or familiar songs together with her originals.This time out she calls on kindred spirits (the McGarrigle sisters, Mike Auldridge, Buddy Miller) with her band which includes keyboard player Glenn D Hardin, drummer... > Read more
Emmylou Harris: Not Enough
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Coldplay: Viva la Vida or Death And All Her Friends (EMI)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 3
One advantage of not listening to commercial radio is that you don't start going off songs or bands through over-familiarity. Which might explain why I quite like this new album by a band which seems to annoy most right-thinking people and serious music writers.But I hear so little of them -- I rarely play the albums I have -- that this one sounds intelligent and like a band prepared to take a... > Read more
Coldplay: Yes
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Paul Weller: 22 Dreams (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
A couple of months ago I was invited to give a lecture to Auckland Uni music students about a contemporary songwriter of my choosing whose catalogue of work was interesting and worth studying.I picked Paul Weller on strength of this quote from him about his forthcoming album: "It takes in soul, rock'n'roll, there are some folky moments, some psych bits, a classical piece, some avant free... > Read more
Paul Weller: Echoes Around the Sun
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: The Felice Brothers: The Felice Brothers (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
These three actual brothers (and a friend) weighed in with the Tonight at the Arizona which made the Best of Elsewhere 2007 list and turned up as many a critic's favourite Americana album.This long-awaited sequel follows an interim album sold at gigs, and a few of those songs are now available on this self-titled album (and some other tracks were, confusingly, recorded before their debut... > Read more
Felice Brothers: Murder by Mistletoe
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Beck: Modern Guilt (DGC)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
For my money there are only two indispensible Beck albums: Odelay of '96 and Mutations of two years later. That said, there are another couple I'd prefer not to live without -- and this one produced by Danger Mouse shapes up to be one of those, and is still climbing in stature on repeat plays.As always this gifted, musical changeling and sonic shapeshifter filterfeeds his way through... > Read more
Beck: Replica
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Radiohead: In Rainbows (XL)
22 Dec 2008 | 2 min read | 3
Over the Christmas 07-08 period I heard a radio interview with a young musician denouncing the gross villany of major record companies -- about which I expect he had no personal experience -- and pointing to Radiohead's on-line/download release in October 2007 of In Rainbows (with buyers paying what they liked for it) as evidence the music industry was tottering like a mortally wounded... > Read more
Radiohead:Nude
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Teddy Thompson: A Piece of What You Need (Verve)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
This son of Richard and Linda keeps good company: among his friends and fellow travellers are the Wainwrights (Rufus, Martha, and their father Loudon), guitarist Marc Ribot, the Band's Garth Hudson and other hip congnoscenti.His last album Upfront and Down Low was mostly a country covers outing. And despite possessing the same kind of effete world weariness and post-sexual languor that infects... > Read more
Teddy Thompson: In My Arms
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Eli Paperboy Reed and The True Loves: Roll With You (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 2
For the past week or so I have been listening to old vinyl by Dusty Springfield and Southside Johnny (a New Jersey bar-band chum of Springsteen and Stevie Van Zandt) and have been reminded again just how many white singers have been immersed in soul/r'n'b.And there seems to be a new wave again with James Hunter, Duffy and Beth Rowley, all of whom have been Elsewhere favourites. Of course Van... > Read more
Eli Paperboy Reid: I'll Roll With You
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Willard Grant Conspiracy: Pilgrim Road (Southbound)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
For some people the radar-avoiding WGC are like an alt.country version of the late and lamented Australian band the Go-Betweens. Not for any similarity in sound, but in that if you discovered the songwriting skills early you tended to follow the central members' every move (solo or with the band).WGC has largely been the vehicle of Robert Fisher with now-departed Paul Austin and the 2004... > Read more
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Malpensa
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Bond Street Bridge: The Mapmaker's Art (Monkey Records)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
Opening with an arresting, one minute challenge of scraped and stabbing violin you could be forgiven for thinking the one-man band of Sam Prebble who is Bond Street Bridge is being beamed at you from the Contemporary Classical department. It’ll certainly grip you, as will dark alt.folk drone Black Market Soul Transplant which follows (“the devil got me drunk . . . woke up... > Read more
Bond Street Bridge: Rain
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 TV on the Radio: Dear Science (4AD)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 5
There are very few bands in rock culture that you could describe as genuinely avant-garde, but this ambitious New York outfit certainly fits the job prescription: they are musically ambitous, possess a sense of history but also a 21st century grandeur in their sonic approach, and write on a big scale. It's enough to observe that there are elements of Prince and Bowie-funk in here as much as... > Read more
TV on the Radio: Golden Age
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Lucinda Williams: Little Honey (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
After her last, quite exceptional but largely melancholy album West (in part influenced by death in the family) it is almost as if Williams is here staking her claim again to some sassy rock'n'roll threads. The opener Real Love blazes off the disc and the closer is a cover of AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll) which, it must be said, she delivers in her... > Read more
Lucinda Williams: Little Rock Star
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Emiliana Torrini: Me and Armini (Rough Trade)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
Only the most diligent Elsewhere reader with perfect recall might remember this Icelandic singer who appeared on the Next Brel compilation/tribute to the singer-songwriter Jacques Brel which appeared here some time last year. Torrini was one of the standout performers on that album and she has certainly drawn enormous praise for her previous albums released in he UK. Of her last one the... > Read more
Birds
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Deerhunter: Microcastle (4AD)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
To be honest, this album by Bradford Cox and his Athens, Georgia band -- he's also the man behind his solo project Atlas Sounds, an album reviewed very favourably here some weeks ago -- sounds like a lot of other people, but what a lot of great other people: the Velvet Underground, the Church, the Pixies, the Cure, Mojave 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, early 90s shoe-gazer/paisley underground pop... > Read more
Deerhunter: Nothing Ever Happened
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Micah P Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra (Inertia)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 3
This slight American singer-songwriter impressed hugely on a brief New Zealand tour a few years ago when he delivered his reflective acoustic songs and wry between-songs banter to very small but appreciative audiences.Cult figure then -- and much the same today I am guessing.Here with a small string section (and his own impressive catalogue of keyboard and string instruments) he takes his dark... > Read more
Micah P Hinson: Sunrise Over the Olympus Mons
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Loudon Wainwright: Strange Weirdos (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
Longtime cynic, straight-shooter and occasionally misanthropic singer-songwriter Wainwright shows no sign of losing his touch even though he is now in his 60s. His subjects will always provide plenty of material: they are life in general, himself, his family, and sometimes astute socio-political observation. He is a sensitive singer-songwriter -- if that also means being sensitive to... > Read more