Music at Elsewhere

Cowboy Junkies: Songs of the Recollection (Proper Records, digital outlets)

1 May 2022 | <1 min read | 2

When Canada’s Cowboy Junkies broke through with The Trinity Sessions in 1987, they whispered their way to attention as grunge was making its noisy way into ears. The album, recorded quietly in a church, included their cover of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane and in the decades since they’ve continued to pepper in covers. Prior to The Trinity Sessions, their abrasive... > Read more

Various Artists: We've Got You Covered (Frenzy)

30 Apr 2022 | 2 min read

One result of an increasingly inward-looking society – exacerbated by Covid isolationism – is a belief in national exceptionalism which elevates its own above all others. New Zealand music has fallen for some of that. But not every album ever released is a lost classic or every artist could’ve been a contender. However the reissue of the self-titled Ragnarok... > Read more

Lydia Pense: I'll Forgive You and Forget You

James Heather: Invisible Forces (digital outlets, Ninja Tune)

30 Apr 2022 | 1 min read

Categories in music have become more arbitrary, flexible and even irrelevant over the past few decades. As we've noted, someone like Leonard Cohen was in rock culture but not of it, and artists like Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk are listened to by the same people who would play Bowie's blackstar, Thom Yorke soundtracks and Lorde. British pianist James Heather might have a background... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD; Aldous Harding: Warm Chris (Flying Nun)

25 Apr 2022 | 4 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with the lyrics and a gatefold sleeve. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . One of the most defining if divisive moments in Aldous Harding’s international career came when she appeared on Jools Holland’s British music... > Read more

Clara Engel: Their Invisible Hands (bandcamp)

18 Apr 2022 | 1 min read

Clara Engel from Toronto – whose preferred reference is to they/them – is Elsewhere's kind of artist: they are prolific and self-starting, and very polite in e-mails. The latter goes a long way. Far enough to make us check out this new album which delivers wonderfully crafted songs along the haunting, ethereal drone-cum-alt.folk line. They say... > Read more

I Drink the Rain

Various Artists: See You on the Horizon (Sunreturn)

7 Apr 2022 | 1 min read

There’s been a long and illustrious history of local compilations, from the Loxene Golden Disc collections in the late 60s and early 70s through seminal post-punk albums such as AK 79, Class of ’81, Flying Nun’s “Dunedin double”, Goat’s Milk Soap and others. Compilations from a single label have the dual effect... > Read more

Yumi Zouma: Present Tense

7 Apr 2022 | 1 min read

While very few artists circumvented the vicissitudes of Covid and theconsequent lockdowns, not many were as unlucky as Yumi Zouma. The day before the release of their Truth or Consequences album in early 2020, they were in Washington D.C. to start their first sold-out US tour. Covid hit, their tour consisted of just that one show. Understandably shattered, they went their... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Joy Division: Still

4 Apr 2022 | <1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Although somewhat dismissed by audiophiles for the uneven sound across the unreleased studio recordings, previously available tracks and live recordings (some very lo-fi), this Joy Division collection released after singer Ian... > Read more

The Weather Station: How Is It I Should Look at the Stars

31 Mar 2022 | <1 min read

Last year’s Ignorance by The Weather Station (aka Canadian Tamara Lindeman) appeared on many “best of” lists, including Elsewhere's. While writing for Ignorance she created a vast body of songs, many which didn’t fit with the strings, keyboards and flute-embellished material that made the final cut, or even on the later expanded edition.... > Read more

Mousey: My Friends

30 Mar 2022 | 1 min read

Despite her unpromising name (AKA Serena Close) lifted from the lyric of Bowie's Life on Mars and the introspective folk of the opening title track, Mousey can whirl up a storm of guitar-driven indie-rock. My Friends – the title reflecting the over-arching theme of the album mostly conceived during lockdown – follows her excellent debut Lemon Law of 2019... > Read more

Jamie McDell: Jamie McDell

27 Mar 2022 | 1 min read

When Jamie McDell appeared a decade ago as a fully-formed 19-year old singer-songwriter, she was one parents of young teens could happily accept: McDell was outgoing, free of guile, eco-conscious and her image was of the girl on the beach with a guitar singing to friends around a sunset bonfire of driftwood. Her fine debut album Six Strings and a Sailboat in 2012, which won best pop... > Read more

Ragnarok: Ragnarok (Frenzy)

27 Mar 2022 | 2 min read | 2

Bo Nerbe, who has run his tiny record shop Got To Hurry since 1983 in Stockholm’s old town, takes a step back in alarm when I mention the band Ragnarok. The only Ragnarok he knows are the aggressive Norwegian black metallers of that name who are into satanism, death cults, Norse mythology and extreme volume. Their new bassist is Hellcommander... > Read more

Fenris

Pictish Trail: Island Family (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)

21 Mar 2022 | 1 min read

Some years ago Johnny Lynch (who is Pictish Trail) said he wasn't much drawn to Nature and found it boring, this despite living on Scotland's remote Isle-of-Eigg (pop 100) which lies south of Skye off Scotland's wild North Atlantic-battered west coast. He was there for more than a decade where he started his own label (Lost Map), recorded, founded a music festival and toured beyond the shores.... > Read more

Melody Something

Pitch Black: Mixes + Mavericks (Dubmission/bandcamp)

14 Mar 2022 | <1 min read

Although lockdown and distance (Paddy Free in this country, Mike Hodgson in London) would seem to impede the career of the electronica duo that is Pitch Black, they were always studio boffins so . . . Hodgson has kept an interesting steady flow of remixes (alongside his own Misled Convoy persona) and this is another, following the Rarities and Remixes and the vinyl reissue of their... > Read more

Praise Her, The Fire Keeper (PB remix)

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Diamond Field: Diamond Field (Sofa King/digital outlets)

5 Mar 2022 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Hey Andrew, the Eighties just called and said, “Job well done”. This shamelessly enjoyable album helmed by expat Kiwi, longtime NYC-based Andrew B White (musician, producer, album cover designer) pretends to be nothing... > Read more

David Long: Ash and Bone (Rattle/bandcamp)

5 Mar 2022 | 1 min read

The career of award-winning multi-instrumentalist David Long began before he was in the jazz-improv outfits Primitive Art Group, Six Volts, Rabbitlock and Jungle Suite on Wellington's Braille label in the late Eighties. He began as the guitarist in the jerky, short-lived New Wave electro-pop Tin Syndrome and later was in the Mutton Birds. Sound pop-rock credentials. However he has... > Read more

You Want to Fight Everything

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Gramsci: The Hinterlands (MAC/digital outlets)

25 Feb 2022 | 2 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with the lyrics on the inner sleeve.Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . When the original Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green died in 2020, Auckland musician Paul McLaney recorded a moving tribute-cum-homage The Tree of Life which... > Read more

Legend

Rewind Fields: Rewind Fields (bandcamp)

21 Feb 2022 | 1 min read

A decade ago Emily Rice was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter at the University of Auckland and was, two years in a row, a finalist in the annual songwriting competition. So she knows a good song when she hears one. She now seems to be in publicity and contacted Elsewhere about this album by Rewind Fields (Callum Lee, also a songwriting finalist the same years as Rice) which she was... > Read more

Yard Act: The Overload (digital outlets)

21 Feb 2022 | <1 min read

From the droll post-punk poetry of John Cooper Clarke and declamatory rants of the Fall's Mark E. Smith, through Blur's mannered Park Life and Country House, The Street's tenement block rap, Sleaford Mods and last year's Dry Cleaning, there's a lineage of British spoken word-cum-indie rock. Yard Act from Leeds are a spiky, enjoyably potty-mouthed socialist four-piece who broadcast... > Read more

Modern Studies: We Are There (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)