Music at Elsewhere
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Cass McCombs: Heartmind (bandcamp)
5 Sep 2022 | 2 min read
Although the name might not be familiar, if we judge people by the company they keep we'd be impressed by Californian singer-songwriter Cass McCombs' pals: singer-guitarist Steve Gunn (playing Auckland, Wellington and Hastings in October), Arizona's psyche-desert rockers Meat Puppets, Angel Olsen, acclaimed pedal steel player Greg Leisz (touring with Jackson Browne next year) . . . And... > Read more
Karaoke
ONE WE MISSED: Picky Hippers, Full Flavour Behaviour (bandcamp)
30 Aug 2022 | <1 min read | 1
We forgive ourselves for not knowing about this album which came out in May. Not a lot from Kaikoura comes to our attention, and it was only last month that a friend of the band got in touch but somewhat undersold it: “Would love you to take a listen of this and perhaps critique it. Picky Hippers are Kaikoura based and rocking our piece of paradise”. In the great tradition of jam... > Read more
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Joseph Petric: Seen (Redshift Records/digital outlets)
20 Aug 2022 | 1 min read
The accordion is a much maligned instrument, the punchline to many jokes by musicians. Probably a hangover from relentlessly cheerful polka bands (although not this one!). Yet in the right hands the accordion – and its cousin the bandoneon – is not only capable of great expression (think of the tango music of the late bandoneon masters Dino Saluzzi and Astor Piazzolla) but in... > Read more
Spirit Cloud
Rusty: The Resurrection of Rust (EMI/digital outlets)
15 Aug 2022 | <1 min read
Well, if it was good enough for Tom Petty to resurrect his pre-Heartbreakers band Mudcrutch, then why not Declan McManus getting back with Allan Mayes with whom he'd played clubs around Liverpool and The Wirral in the years before he lit out under the name Elvis Costello? The McManus/Mayes duo was called Rusty and half a century on they got back together to record a bunch of songs to... > Read more
Gramsci: In Formation1: A Shift in Prospects (bandcamp)
13 Aug 2022 | <1 min read
About 8 months ago Gramsci – Paul McLaney, Greg Haver and Marika Hodgson – released The Hinterlands, an album we described as existential rock, cinematic yet personal. It joined a long line of albums by McLaney – some as Gramsci, some as his more ambient persona Impending Adorations, a few under his own name – which have found considerable favour at Elsewhere. So... > Read more
Intrepid
Spiral Stairs: Medley Attack!!! (Amazing Grease/bandcamp)
7 Aug 2022 | <1 min read
Spiral Stairs is Scott Kannberg – co-founder of Pavement but now in semi-retirement – and his solo albums have always had an easy charm and, as we noted previously, sounding closer to the Saints/Chris Bailey in rock ballad mode. They can sound undemanding in the best way – the sound is familiar, tight and melodic – but there have always been layers of meaning.... > Read more
Jack White: Entering Heaven Alive (Third Man/bandcamp)
7 Aug 2022 | 1 min read
When considering Jack White's often demanding album Fear of the Dawn in April we noted it was the first installment of a paired release, Entering Heaven Alive completing what could be seen as a double album. But where Fear of the Dawn was a tumultuous and disruptive collection of heavy rock, hip-hop and dubby funk-rock, Entering Heaven Alive is a much more muted affair from the newly... > Read more
Cookie Brooklyn and the Crumbs: Singles 2013 – 2019 (Burning Log/bandcamp)
6 Aug 2022 | <1 min read
The members of this Wellington-based trio have some prior form and have appeared at Elsewhere in the past: singer/guitarist Mark Williams has been in Marineville and Erika Grant (bass) and drummer Nell Thomas were in Orchestra of Spheres. So, left-field pedigrees where nonsense lyrics and avant-poetry are woven into slightly bent pop-rock. Is There Logic in Pop? here sounds like a... > Read more
Puff of Air
RECOMMENDED RECORD: The Finn Brothers, Finn (Lester)
1 Aug 2022 | 3 min read | 1
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this reissue which comes in a gatefold sleeve as a double album with an extra record of demos. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Had it not been for Chris Bourke's thorough 1997 biography of Crowded House, Something So Strong, most people would not have been aware of... > Read more
It's Only Natural (demo)
MC Tali: Future Dwellers (Reign/bandcamp)
1 Aug 2022 | 1 min read
Drum'n'bass doesn't appear at Elsewhere that often, not for any aversion to it but . . . Well, there's just such a lot of everything out there. But we'll always stop for MC Tali, who has sustained an international career for almost two decades and still manages to come up with something special and different. This time out – on her eighth album – she brings in some emerging... > Read more
Master Musicians of Jajouka/Bachir Attar: Dancing Under the Moon (Glitterbeat/digital outlets)
29 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
Elsewhere freely concedes this 110 minute double album will be a test for most. But having one of their earlier albums (recorded by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones) an Essential Elsewhere Album, and having mentioned them in the context of Ornette Coleman, who recorded with them a decade later, it would be remiss not to acknowledge this. The Master Musicians tap into an ancient trance... > Read more
Stephen McDaid: Trail Maps (bandcamp)
28 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
From a seaside village in County Donegal, 46-year old Stephen McDaid grew up playing bass in his dad's country and western band, moved into the metal and alternative scene in Dublin, moved to New Zealand in 2006 and has been playing in covers bands and My Famous Friends in Christchurch. Trail Maps is his debut album of originals recorded in a couple of takes on acoustic guitar. He's... > Read more
Martin Courtney: Magic Sign (Domino/digital outlets)
25 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
For some musicians, the most interesting thing they do is the interview: there they get to blabber on about their struggles, divorce, fears, emotional state, loneliness, social concerns, global warming and so on. Uh-huh. The album they're promoting is often just the consequence of all that -- or even incidental --and as we've called it here many times, “the album as... > Read more
Brett Adams: Black Clouds in Stereo (Rattle/bandcamp)
24 Jul 2022 | 1 min read | 1
If music were a sport, Auckland guitarist Brett Adams would be the one making quick, impressive, ground-gaining plays which bring the crowd to its feet before he slips the ball neatly to someone else who gets it over the line. While heroes are carried on shoulders Adams is quietly jogging back to the changing shed where he'll again be awarded Most Valuable Player by his teammates.... > Read more
Sleep on the Wing
Pacific Heights: The Waters Between (digital outlets)
24 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
If guitarist Brett Adams approaches the studio as a laboratory for experimentation on his debut solo album Black Clouds in Stereo, Pacific Heights sees it as a test kitchen where ingredients are mixed, refined, balanced then plated up. Pacific Heights is songwriter, producer and Wellington academic Devin Abrams (formerly of Shapeshifter), whose 2016 album The Stillness was a seamless... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Tami Neilson: Kingmaker (Neilson/digital outlets)
18 Jul 2022 | 3 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a beautiful and framable cover insert sleeve, the lyrics and the essay by Dr Jada Watson in a typeface size you can read. And on scarlet vinyl also. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Although Covid thwarted Tami Neilson's 2020 American... > Read more
SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases
18 Jul 2022 | 3 min read
Facing down an avalanche of releases, requests for coverage, the occasional demand that we be interested in their new album (sometimes with that absurd comment "but don't write about it if you don't like it") and so on, Elsewhere will every now and again do a quick sweep like this, in the same way it does IN BRIEF about international releases. Comments will be brief.... > Read more
Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands: Sun Casts A Shadow (Fishrider/digital outlets)
15 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
Emily Fairtlight's previous album of 2018 recorded in Austin came under the unpromising title Mother of Gloom, but as we noted in our generally favourable review – “more elegantly monochrome than downright 'doom-folk' (her description)” – it didn't live down to that definition. But on this album with Mike McLeod (aka The Shifting Sands), the folk here is distilled... > Read more
WIT
Joy X Libeau: No Rules for Ghosts (bandcamp)
15 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
This Christchurch duo of Hideto Kobayashi (Joy) and Natalie Joselen perhaps play their most obviously referential – and therefore weakest – song up first on this otherwise impressive six song, 33 minute debut album. The trip-hop opener Human, good though it is – and you are immediately taken by Joselen's voice – is so perilously close to Portishead it might prompt a... > Read more
Priya 2022
Various Artists: Nude Tuesday Soundtrack (digital outlets)
12 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
The jury will always be divided over whether a soundtrack should be able to stand independent of the images it accompanies. And “soundtrack” has become a very flexible description. Some are simply collections of songs (many already released) and so exist in the same world as any other compilation. We're thinking of everything from Footloose and Saturday Night Fever to Yesterday... > Read more