Music at Elsewhere
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Kokomo: Futura (digital outlets)
23 Sep 2024 | <1 min read | 1
If you haven't heard of Kokomo – and they have appeared at Elsewhere a few times – that is hardly their fault. Formed in 1991when Tauranga singer/guitarist Derek Jacombs hooked up with harmonica player Grant Bullot to play blues, they added members, played every festival possible from Sweetwaters 1999 to folk and jazz events, and along the way recorded more than a dozen albums.... > Read more
Something Funny Going On (Red Mix)
Dateline: It's All Downhill From Here (digital outlets)
23 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
Dateline's 2022 debut album had the self-deprecating title Dumb For My Age (“when will I learn?”) and songs included Don't Know What To Do With Me and Country Rock Emo (“the good days are few and far between”). This new album arrives with a similarly wry title (the opener is the New Wave pop of Please Knock Me Out) and delivers classic indie rock on the... > Read more
Choose Me
Molly Payton: YOYOTTA (digital outlets)
23 Sep 2024 | 1 min read | 1
Sometimes the first track on an album is an announcement of what is to follow, although increasingly we have notice a number of artists ease their way slowly – and sometimes at great length – with that first piece. So as with the book/cover cliché which contains an element of truth, it's best not to make up your mind just one track. Case in point this debut by London-based... > Read more
A Hand Held Strong
Louisa Nicklin: The Big Sulk (digital outlets)
21 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
There are albums where, as a reviewer, you are tempted to quote great swathes of lyrics because the writer is so astute, descriptive, insightful or moving. On her second album Louisa Nicklin brings a rare daring to her work but her lyrics are also an outstanding feature. However rather than quote we leave them over to you to discover. But a little background: Nicklin –... > Read more
The Shroud
Nala Sinephro: Endlessness (digital outlets)
16 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
The enormous critical and popular success of last year's Promises collaboration between Pharoah Sanders and Floating Points – although not the best work from either – perhaps prepares the ground for this swooning, ambient-cum-jazz outing by Caribbean-Belgian synth player and harpist Sinephro with an impressive but very contained cast which includes saxophonists Nubya Garcia and... > Read more
Continuum 4
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God (digital outlets)
16 Sep 2024 | 2 min read
About 10 years ago I was invited to introduce Nick Cave to an audience which had turned up to see his film 20,000 Days on Earth – a fiction which looks like a doco about a few days talking and recording – and then engage in a Q&A session. He was delightful: business-like, undemanding, witty, accommodating and generous. He and I chatted a little beforehand – I wrote... > Read more
Final Rescue Attempt
Tami Neilson: Neilson Sings Nelson (digital outlets)
16 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Tami Neilson has had an unfortunate run of bad luck recently. In January 2020 the influential Nashville magazine No Depression confidently announced “Just call 2020 'The Year of Tami' and said her forthcoming album Chickaboom was “the first great album of the year”. She was geared up for a tour on the back of Chickaboom which ticked all the boxes for the US audience, and... > Read more
I Never Cared for You
David Gilmour: Luck and Strange (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Many decades ago there was a New Zealand whisky called 45 South. My father used to say it was a perfectly fine drink . . . as long as you didn't think of it as a whisky. I mentioned this the other night to a friend when the topic of the new David Gilmour album came up. Neither of us had rated his solo albums outside Pink Floyd as being up to much and then I said I actually didn't mind... > Read more
The Piper's Call
Mystery Waitress: Bright Black Night (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
In a recent conversation with a fellow music writer, the conversation turned to the problem of giving early acclaim to local artists on the basis of very little: maybe just a single or two. My friend said it could give the artist an artificially inflated idea of self-worth and raised unreasonable expectations. It's a fair point, but then I mentioned a band which kick-started it's career... > Read more
Mountain
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: Woodland (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
When we interviewed Gillian Welch 20 years ago it was still relatively early in her career, but she and her partner David Rawlings were already being acclaimed – on the basis of the albums Hell Among the Yearlings and Time (The Revelator) – as being in the vanguard of a deeply rooted Americana. Their debut – although credited solely to Welch – was the Grammy-winning... > Read more
The Day the Mississippi Died
Pitch Black: Echoes of the Night; The Adrian Sherwood Remixes (digital outlets)
6 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Elsewhere at Elsewhere Mike Hodgson – one half of Pitch Black alongside Paddy Free – explains how these four remixes of their material came into being. Have a look here. So here let's just acknowledge how very different the results are from the source material on their 2007 Rude Mechanicals album. The haunting opener Transient Transmission is twist of a twist: remixer... > Read more
Transient Transmission
Peel Dream Magazine: Rose Main Reading Room (digital outlets)
6 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
Across 15 seductive songs this LA-based trio offer what sounds like lush miniatures which blend languid vocals, warm synth washes, minimalist repetition and understated melodies. The sort of music you could imagine playing quietly in a reading room. They aren't averse to glistening pop (I Wasn't Made For War) and we might guess the band's songwriter Joe Stevens had an affection for... > Read more
Machine Repeating
Troy Kingi and the Cactus Handshake: Leatherman and the Mojave Green (digital outlets)
2 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Troy Kingi can at last see the finish line of his 10/10/10 project: 10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years. He's knocked off classic soul, reggae, cosmic rock, folk . . . This impressive double album – which debuted at the top of the New Zealand charts – is number eight in the projected series and in the TVNZ+ documentary series Troy Kingi's Desert Hīkoi about its creation, Kingi... > Read more
Mezcal Eye Drop
Peter Skandera & Dave Maybee : blue grit & rhyme (digital outlets)
31 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Last heard on record together in 1994 (the album Acoustic Spirit), Raglan's harmonica player Skandera and guitarist Maybee here bring their considerable skills and years to a collection of funky blues, country blues, old folk and gospel (Jesus on the Mainline) from the likes of Johnny Cash, Little Walter (his Juke a showcase for the exceptional playing of Skandera), JJ Cale, Mark Knopfler,... > Read more
First Acquaintance
Mike Hall: Nothing Stands Still (digital outlets)
26 Aug 2024 | 2 min read
To paraphrase Milton: They also serve who only stand and play bass? Although Johnny Rotten once glibly dismissed the bass as just a big booming noise in the background (he was talking about his friend, the unschooled Sid), we at Elsewhere don't diminish the important role of bass players. Because from Bill Black through Paul McCartney to Jaco Pastorius, Jah Wobble, Bill Laswell, Tina... > Read more
Stop Dragging Me Around
Al Park: Monkey (digital outlets)
25 Aug 2024 | 1 min read
Five years ago a CD turned up in Elsewhere's letterbox and we didn't know what to make of it. It was Better Already and was the songs of someone named Al Park – not known to us – presented by the likes of Delaney Davidson, Anita Clark (aka Motte), Jordan Luck, Marlon Williams, Barry Saunders and others. The album moved from the stereo to a shelf, then to another more distant... > Read more
Careless Love
Chaii: Safar (digital outlets)
23 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Born in Iran, raised in this country and already with appearances in Australia, London, New York and at SXSW in Austin, Chaii (Mona Sanei) has had a rapid rise based on strong singles, colourfully exotic videos and ambition. Her songs have been licensed for Netflix films and advertisements. The album's title – which means journey in Farsi – is appropriate for this impressive... > Read more
Safar
ONE WE MISSED: Silk Cut: Silk Cut (digital outlets)
19 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Released a few weeks ago when we were otherwise engaged, this second album by the tight and seasoned Auckland four-piece should have leapt to attention, given how much we enjoyed their debut. But we get to it now and delight in its old school, power pop familiarity (The Transfer, the Beatlesque Turning the Whole World On, the lyrically pointed Punches), surging energy (Anywhere We Can... > Read more
The Transfer
Bilders: Dustbin of Empathy/Nictate (digital outlets)
11 Aug 2024 | 3 min read
It would be a brave or foolhardy soul who attempted to write the biography of Bill Direen. Even just a discography would be a Sisyphean task: no sooner had you made the last entry than overnight he has recorded another album which arrives, perhaps even with a book of poems. Or in the case of this new collection, a 15-song album Dustbin of Empathy (digital and on limited edition 300... > Read more
The Weevil, from Dustbin of Empathy
Jack White: No Name (digital outlets)
5 Aug 2024 | 1 min read
In the 13 years since the end of the White Stripes it was possible to lose touch with Jack White as he moved through the Raconteurs and Dead Weather, made various appearances, and ran a parallel solo career. Oh, and he started his own Third Man label and shops. But here we are again, acknowledging this searing, garageband blues rock collection which has reference points in Led Zeppelin,... > Read more