Music at Elsewhere

ONE WE MISSED: Rose City Band, Summerlong (Thrill Jockey/digital outlets)

16 Dec 2020 | <1 min read | 1

Quite how this delightful, gently psychedelic country-rock album went past us in the middle of the year is a mystery, especially when the man helming it is Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo. But right from the opener Only Lonely – which stands at the midpoint of the Byrds' Wasn't Born to Follow/Ballad of Easy Rider and Neil Halstead's Sleeping on Roads album -- this... > Read more

Anna Coddington: Beams (Loop/digital outlets)

12 Dec 2020 | 1 min read

Five years ago, when asked what artist she would most like to share a stage with, singer-songwriter Anna Coddington replied emphatically, “LIPS”. On her tour at that time she had LIPS (2012 Apra Silver Scroll winners Steph Brown and Fen Ikner) as part of the double-bill. Four years on from her previous album, the largely self-produced Luck/Time, and... > Read more

Half Japanese: Crazy Hearts (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)

4 Dec 2020 | 1 min read

And still it comes, this left-field, marginal project of avant-guitarist and noise-maker Jad Fair and his now established fellow travelers (John Sluggett, Giles Vincent Reader, Mick Hobbs and Jason Willett). This is the 19thalbum under Fair's Half Japanese name and if you are expecting him to change direction you haven't been paying attention for the past 40 years. Fair's... > Read more

Chris Stapleton: Starting Over (Universal/digital outlets)

4 Dec 2020 | 1 min read

If you didn't know what he looked like, how might you picture songwriter Chris Stapleton from knowing his songs had been covered by Adele and he's co-written with Ed Sheeran, Peter Frampton and Sheryl Crow? You might see Stapleton as some bookish-looking writer in an office in London, New York or LA. But add in a swag of country music awards for his songs and his own albums, the... > Read more

Lontalius: Side One (digital outlets)

4 Dec 2020 | 2 min read

Earlier this year Hayley Williams, frontwoman and writer for the US rock band Paramore released her debut album Petals for Armor. However within the 15-song album, the first 10 had been already released as two separate EPs. And all five in the second had appeared as singles. In the world of streaming, the definition of singles, EPs and albums has become flexible, if not... > Read more

Ennio Morricone: Morricone Segreto (Decca/digital outlets)

30 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

The late Ennio Morricone's work was so diverse – orchestral scores to oddball sonic vignettes – that listeners almost invariably default to their favourite style: the quirky spaghetti Western soundtracks, the more heroic and expansive works like the music for The Mission and so on. Elsewhere's favourite spaghetti Western soundtrack is that for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (an... > Read more

Tristan Perich: Drift Multiply (Nonesuch/digital outlets)

30 Nov 2020 | <1 min read

Although hailed in the New York Classical Review as “establishing a new language and a new future path for music”, many who have heard a fair swag of early Philip Glass (North Star and 1000 Airplanes on the Roof come to mind), Steve Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings & Keyboards ('79) or even the Fripp/Eno collaborations in the mid Seventies, may feel that is something of an... > Read more

Scalper: The Beast and the Beauty (Like Water/digital outlets)

25 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

Those old Romans had a phrase which is very useful: sui generis. It means singular, unique, in a genre/category of its own. The music of Auckland-based producer/poet/rapper and former Fun-Da-Mental member Nadeem Shafi aka Scalper is definitely sui generis. His voice and spoken-word lyrics are dark, full of foreboding, touch on the mythic and are sometimes -- often actually --... > Read more

Songhoy Blues: Optimisme (Transgressive/digital outlets)

23 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

When we first encountered this four-piece from Mali in 2015 with their debut album Music in Exile we were impressed. So much so that it ended up in our Best of the Year picks. We heard but didn't review their follow-up Resistance – which had an appearance by Iggy Pop – but one of our number chose that in the reader's best of for 2017. Neither album perhaps prepares you for the... > Read more

Joni Mitchell: Archives Vol.1: The Early Years. 1963-1967 (Universal/digital outlets)

21 Nov 2020 | 3 min read

A decade ago in a rare interview, Joni Mitchell railed against Bob Dylan saying he was inauthentic, a plagiarist and “his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception”. Three years later when accusing the interviewer of misconstruing her words – they seemed pretty clear – she admitted liking some of Dylan's songs, but “musically he’s not... > Read more

Noah Aire: Ekundayo (digital outlets)

19 Nov 2020 | <1 min read

Now this is a little different, but also a little bit as you might expect. Noah Aire is Nigerian singer/songwriter and DJ . . . and this is where Elsewhere's information runs out. You can of course check him out on the usual online places but let's throw the spotlight on this new eight-song, danceable collection which brings together African percussion in crisscross... > Read more

Faten Kanaan: A Mythology of Circles (Fire/Southbound)

16 Nov 2020 | <1 min read

Locating herself somewhere between a mystical and mildly depressed Mike Oldfield, Popol Vuh's soundtracks for Werner Herzog and a more chipper Johann Johannsson, the electronica sound artist Faten Kanaan from New York continues her post-Eno ambient-cum-internal soundtrack releases with this journey where acoustic instruments played live co-exist with electronics, choral samples (on the two... > Read more

AC/DC: PWR UP (Sony, digital outlets)

16 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

Okay, let's get the old joke out of the way first: How can you tell one AC/DC album from another? Answer: You can't. Not true of course, but – like Status Quo and the Ramones – there is a patented AC/DC sound and if you expect that on this, their 17thstudio album, they were going to announce a new direction then you'd be fooling yourself. So no, there's no acoustic... > Read more

The Bats: Foothills (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

15 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

This is a very welcome album from the Bats, one of this country's longest-running and most consistent bands. While many hold affection for their earliest and formative albums on Flying Nun like Daddy's Highway ('87) and The Law of Things ('90), for this writer's money their three most recent albums The Guilty Office ('08), Free All the Monsters ('11, in our best of the year list) and the... > Read more

Superturtle: Wait For It (Sarang Bang/digital outlets)

13 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

There's always something appealingly quirky and almost quaint about Auckland's Superturtle helmed by Darren McShane. As with their previous albums, Wait For It comes on vinyl with a striking front cover and a back cover layout like an album from the Sixties. (There is the download option, see below.) It makes for a classy-looking product, but its what's in the grooves which have always... > Read more

Elvis Costello: Hey Clockface (Concord/digital outlets)

12 Nov 2020 | 1 min read | 1

So how does Elvis Costello, now umpteen albums into his career – which has embraced phlegmatic New Wave post-punk, country music, folk-rock, work with the Brodsky Quartet, Allen Toussaint and Burt Bacharach, the Wise Up Ghost revisions with the Roots and more – keep himself, and just as importantly us, interested? By opening this 31ststudio album with a mournful Middle Eastern... > Read more

Wax Chattels: Clot (Flying Nun)

8 Nov 2020 | <1 min read

Can you be a fan of a band you've only ever seen twice, and there had been a gap of maybe more than a year between the encounters? The furious but focused energy and sonic intensity here from just vocals,bass (Amanda Cheng), keyboard (Peter Ruddell) and a stripped-down drum kit (Tom Leggett) confirms Wax Chattels credentials as one of this country's most interesting and important... > Read more

Oneohtrix Point Never: Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (Warp/Border)

7 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

New York-based producer/musician Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) uses sounds as a collage artist might put together postcards, newspaper strips, found objects and snapshots. His musical breadth over his previous 10 albums has run from lush orchestrated work to blip'n'glitch electronica, weaves of evocative soundtracks, soundbites of voices and so much... > Read more

Ian Morris: a and b the c of d

6 Nov 2020 | 3 min read

Despite lockdown limbo when one day was much like another, time steadily implodes as months, years and decades telescope in the memory. Last month, had he not been murdered, John Lennon would have been 80. In December he'll have been dead for as long as he was alive. And it has been a decade since the much respected, talented Ian Morris – best known as one of Th'Dudes, in Dave... > Read more

Larry's Rebels: The Complete Singles A's and B's (Frenzy)

5 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

Larry's Rebels – being inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame this year – were only around for five years in the Sixties (Larry Morris into a solo career, the band enjoying a hit My Son John under their own name before breaking up) but they released a fine album, A Study in Black. They were however a cracking singles band and although Frenzy's Grant Gillanders... > Read more