Music at Elsewhere

Various artists: Ost Klub, Kapitel 2 (Chat Chapeau)

3 Nov 2008 | <1 min read

The electro-ska Balkan/Russian sound seems to be taking off, what with internationally successful bands like Russkaja, Shukar Collective and Balkan Beat Box, and on the homefront too with the popularity of the Benka Boradovsky Bordello Band, and even The Mamaku Project who have assimilated just a smidgen of gypsy-rock into their sound. It seems the movement is driven out of Vienna and... > Read more

Balkan Beat Box: Hermetico

Body Corporate: Howlaround (KVA004)

3 Nov 2008 | 1 min read

Because I love the guitar landscapes of Explosions in the Sky, the brittle and dramatic widescreen noise of the early Cure/Joy Division, rowdy locals like HDU and Bailterspace, the sonic textures of Brian Eno, and latterly local instrumental outfits like Jakob and An Emerald City, this debut by an Auckland band big on all of those elements grabbed the stereo straight away. Actually, it... > Read more

Body Corporate: Everything Happens for a Reason

Grace Jones: Hurricane (Wall of Sound)

3 Nov 2008 | 1 min read | 4

It has been about 20 years since the formidable Grace Jones menaced us, but she's back and her opening salvo on this typically groove-oriented album is her declaiming "this is my voice, my weapon of choice". And that track This Is marries a Sly'n'Robbie Caribbean sensibility (and sensimilla) with the Serengeti. It is larger than life, much like Jones herself. It's quite... > Read more

Grace Jones: This is

Michael Nesmith: Rio, The Best of Michael Nesmith (Music Club)

1 Nov 2008 | 1 min read

Mike Nesmith was the first to kick against the constraints of being a Monkee: after all he was an established songwriter and proficient guitarist before he scored a role in that Hard Day's Night-styled knockabout tele-comedy -- and his original songs were covered by a number of artists, not the least Different Drum which Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys picked up, and which launched her... > Read more

Nick Granville Group: Wishful Thinking (Ode)

1 Nov 2008 | <1 min read | 1

There has been quite a wave of New Zealand jazz in the past few months: reissues of albums by Parallel 37 and Space Case, the new album by Strange Fruit, the schoolboy band Grammaphone . . . And now this very timely outing from a band helmed by guitarist Granville which arrives just after that extraordinary show by saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist John Scofield. As with Sco'n'Joe,... > Read more

The Nick Granville Group: Mr Brown

Ry Cooder:The Ry Cooder Anthology, The UFO Has Landed (Warners)

30 Oct 2008 | 1 min read | 1

Given the length - not to mention the breadth - of his career, this crammed double disc could almost still seem paltry. Cooder has recorded about 30 albums, reached from classic film soundtracks (Paris Texas and The Long Riders) to the Buena Vista Social Club, recorded concept albums (the recent LA trilogy) and pared-back acoustic material. It's quite some length and breadth, but this 34... > Read more

Ry Cooder: Dark End of the Street

Toni Childs: Keep the Faith (MGM)

27 Oct 2008 | 1 min read | 1

I didn't know this until recently, but apparently Toni Childs - who appeared with her impressive debut album Union 20 years ago - was really only big in Australia and New Zealand (she had half a dozen hits on the singles charts here), despite being Grammy-nominated for Union. I certainly remember a sell-out Supertop show and that hit which had the back-of-the-throat line "don't walk... > Read more

Toni Childs:Because You're Beautiful

Alison Moorer: Mockingbird (New Line)

27 Oct 2008 | <1 min read

Moorer has quite some story: she is the younger sister of Shelby Lynne, was 14 at time of the murder-suicide of her parents, her ballad A Soft Place to Fall appeared in The Horse Whisperer and earned her a Grammy nomination, and she is the seventh Mrs Steve Earle (although to be fair to Steve he married Lou-Anne Gill twice) with whom she currently tours. As with Earle - who only appears here... > Read more

Alison Moorer: Revelator

Russkaja: Kasatchok Superstar (Chat Chapeau)

27 Oct 2008 | <1 min read

Not sure whether the ska/guitar rock/folk-dance of this Russian/Balkan/German seven-piece from Vienna (sometimes, they tour for about two-thirds of the year) will catch on -- but my guess is once they have been sampled live they will, as they say, tick all the right bpoxes. Those boxes being: energetic (yep); danceable (yepyep); enjoyable (natch) and slightly exotic (well, they are pretty... > Read more

Russkaja: Bojko-Bojko

Ray LaMontagne: Gossip in the Grain (SonyBMG)

24 Oct 2008 | 1 min read

Frankly, after his last album - the excellent Till the Sun Turns Black which was acclaimed at Elsewhere and probably elsewhere - this is a little disappointing, but not in the way you might think. Where Sun was a muted and often melancholy affair which in places sounded close to Nick Drake and an early but glum Van Morrison, this one goes the whole soul-blues route and it might be fair to... > Read more

Ray LaMontagne: I Still Care For You

Jackson Browne: Time the Conqueror (Inside)

21 Oct 2008 | 1 min read

This album title partially reflects the thoughtful Browne's frame of mind in many tracks here: he's 60 and a greybeard so it isn't surprising he might be in reflective mode - as he is on the title track, where he looks back to when “there was change in the air, it was love everywhere” and sings of an innocent love of his youth on the quite beguiling Giving That Heaven Away. But... > Read more

Jackson Browne: Off of Wonderland

Rodriguez: Cold Fact (Rhythmethod)

21 Oct 2008 | 1 min read | 3

A couple of years ago at Elsewhere, mostly for my own amusement, I started posting tracks by this Mexican-American Seventies cult figure who only did a couple of albums (although also managed a 1993 At His Best compilation long after he had faded from view) I had been introduced to his stoner charms by an Australian. Which makes sense because Rodriguez was never big in the US and after this... > Read more

Crucify Your Mind

Dengue Fever: Venus on Earth (Southbound)

21 Oct 2008 | 1 min read | 1

The back-story of this band may be be known to many Elsewhere readers but here's a brief synposis: the Holtzman brothers Ethan and Zac from LA decided to form a band to play Cambodian pop-rock after Ethan returned from a trip to that country and had been inspired by the sounds on old cassettes he'd picked up. They hooked up with expat Cambodian Chhom Nimol who was singing in LA clubs (in Khmer)... > Read more

Dengue Fever: Laugh Track

Space Case: Retrospective (Ode)

20 Oct 2008 | <1 min read | 1

Just a quick acknowledgement here of this excellent double-disc collection of the three albums by Auckland's early-to-mid 80s jazz-rock outfit Space Case which formed around drummer Frank Gibson, saxophonist Brian Smith and keyboard player Murray McNabb. To that core were added some fine players: bassist Bruce Lynch on their 81 debut album Executive Decision which came in a cover designed to... > Read more

Space case: Recurring Dream

Bonnie Prince Billy: Is it the Sea? (BBC)

15 Oct 2008 | 1 min read

Recorded live in Edinburgh before the release of his last album Lie Down in the Light (which as noted here was a slightly more upbeat if not uptempo outing for this prince of dark places) this is an exceptional release in the ever-expanding Billy (aka Will Oldham) canon. With a small band of folk-locals Harem Scarem and guest voclaist Alex Neilson, Oldham reaches right back to some material... > Read more

Bonnie Prince Billy: Wolf Among Wolves

Jenny Lewis: Acid Tongue (Lost Highway)

15 Oct 2008 | <1 min read

Frankly I'm a bit ho-hum about too much of this by the woman who brought us the terrific Rabbit Fur Coat (with the Watson Twins). When it is good it is very, very good (the eerie alt.folk of Pretty Bird, the fragile Bad Man's World with stabbing cello, the dsriking title track) but then in other places she veers off into alt.rock (The Next Messiah is an ordinary slide guitar blues rock),... > Read more

Jenny Lewis: Godspeed

Jolie Holland: the living and the dead (Anti)

14 Oct 2008 | 1 min read

There are no liner notes on the advance copy of this album I received some weeks back, but it would be interesting to speculate which of these songs from this San Francisco-based singer-songwriter were penned while on a writing retreat in New Zealand: the throwaway Enjoy Yourself ("it's later than you think") at the end perhaps where she giggles away? While there is still the... > Read more

Jolie Holland: Sweet Loving Man

Oasis: Dig Out Your Soul (Sony BMG)

14 Oct 2008 | 2 min read

Well, no one - least of all the man himself - ever said Noel Gallagher was a wizz with a lyric, but this rowdy and sometimes thrillingly psychedelic album hits some new lows when it comes to raiding his beloved Beatles or just going for the bleedin' obvious. Among the laugh-out-loud moments here are references to "revolution in her head" (Revolution in the Head was a fine... > Read more

Oasis: Falling Down

Lila Downs, Shake Away (EMI)

7 Oct 2008 | <1 min read

The new album by the US-Hispanic singer should get a good reception here given her popularity at the last Womad (see tag for interview) -- but this one sees her embracing a more centrist rock position with piercing guitars and a sharp backbeat in places, and at other times reaching for Nashville and New Orleans. Of course the Mexican elements remain prominent: there is a striking cover of... > Read more

Lila Downs: Black Magic Woman

Paul Motian: Conception Vessel (ECM)

6 Oct 2008 | <1 min read

Another in the mid-price reissue of early albums on the ECM label, this one from 1973 under drummer Paul Motian's name is an oddity in the ECM catalogue: unlike virtually every other album on the imprint where stable groups or studio-arranged line-ups present a cohesive music, this one has only Motian as the constant. And it is almost a primer into free jazz as it opens with a quite lovely... > Read more