Music at Elsewhere
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RECOMMENDED RECORD: Geordie Greep: The New Sound (digital outlets)
4 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out an album we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes as a double album in a gatefold sleeve with the all the lyrics (which are necessary, there's a lot of them!). Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Most genres of music have their identifiers: in country it can be beer, Jesus, Elvis and/or a pick-up... > Read more
Blues
Paul Turney and the Human Condition: Thoughts and Prayers (digital outlets)
30 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
A couple of weeks ago we posted a major interview with Paul Turney, not just because he was interesting but also because his life showed you how far music can take you: in his case the unexpected journey from playing with post-punk/New Wave band Flight X-7 out of Auckland to now living in lovely Cirencester, England where he has his own company cleaning up archival recordings from the Irish... > Read more
Another World
MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks (digital outlets)
30 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Sometimes you feel a weird connection with an album that you kind of adopt it, tell friends who stop listening the second you mention the unfamiliar name of an artist or just listen to in private wonder what it would take for this artist to become more than a cult act. We leave you with the names Howe Gelb, Julia Jacklin, the Unforgiven and the Shoes. And now MJ Lenderman. Outside... > Read more
She's Leaving You
Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets: Indoor Safari (digital outlets)
30 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Over the decades Elsewhere has interviewed many, many hundreds of musicians: some have been smart and funny (David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Lulu), others fascinating (Bjork, Ornette Coleman, Linton Kwesi Johnson), a few surprising in their candour (Miles Davis), some troubled (Townes Van Zandt), some political (Steve Earle, Chuck D) . . . and occasionally there's someone like Nikki Sixx or Neil Young.... > Read more
Crying Inside
JT and the Agnostics: Yes More Blues (digital outlets)
30 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
This will be quick because this Waikato band have an album release coming up (see details below). First, they are honest: the album title, the band name with reference to the opener God's Mind. The band are as follows, and there are some familiar names here enjoying themselves on these originals: John Thomson (bass, vocals), guitarist Maciek Hrybowicz, Ben Gilgen (keyboards), drummer... > Read more
Feeling for the Blues
Manu Chao: Viva Tu (digital outlets)
25 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Although he could comfortably slip onto our world music pages, French-born Manu Chao is popular in the Western world of folk and rock for his assemblages of sounds and styles as diverse as Algerian rai, the Clash, samba, Cuban music, reggae and more. His first band Mano Negra broke out of the world music sphere with their energetic shows and recordings. I caught them in Paris... > Read more
Cuarto Calles
Johnny Devlin and the Devils: Live in Christchurch 1959 (digital outlets)
23 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
Now here's something of more than just historical interest: New Zealand's first teenage sensation rock'n'roll star Johnny Devlin with his band the Devils proving that poor recording, barely functional playing and primitive rock songs can't diminish the excitement of the moment. Yes Max Merritt got there first in local rock'n'roll but Devlin toured, had the Elvis moves down and better... > Read more
Twenty Flight Rock
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