Music at Elsewhere

Jake Shimabukuro: Trio (Music Theories/digital)

17 Feb 2020 | 1 min read | 1

It has been 12 years since I picked up the album Gently Weeps album by the Hawaiian ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro, largely to see what he did with the George Harrison title track. You can make up your own mind on that here, but for me that was all the impetus I needed when this album (with bassist Nolan Verner and guitarist Dave Preston) turned up. Let's just say... > Read more

When the Masks Come Down

Marcus King: El Dorado (Universal)

10 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

Produced by Dan Auerbach (Black Keys), South Carolina's Marcus King is here on his debut solo album (after three with the Marcus King Band) given some gentle soul settings for his slightly burned vocals which have already had many reaching for the Young Rod comparison. And certainly at times you can hear Stewart, more the slow side of his Atlantic Crossing than the earlier and more raw Old... > Read more

Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets: Walkabout (Yep Roc/Southbound)

10 Feb 2020 | 2 min read

On paper this is somewhat absurd: White-haired, 69-year old Nick Lowe who has been one of the most stylish Americana-soul writers and singers of the past two decades teaming up with a guitar band who have their roots in the Ventures and surf-rock guitar bands . . . and wear Mexican wrestler masks. Lowe – once the cheeky chappy of British post-punk and New Wave – had a life... > Read more

Heart Breaker

The Prefects: Going Through the Motions (Fire/Southbound)

8 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

In any local list of “never-heard-of-ya” UK post-punk bands Birmingham's Prefects would rate fairly high. They toured with the cream of the period (Clash, Fall, Damned, Slits) and did Peel Sessions but broke up in '79 before they released anything. So if you didn't see them live, hear their sole posthumous single or catch one of their two Peel Sessions then . . . This... > Read more

Things in General

The Leonard Simpson Duo: LSD (Jakarta)

7 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

Well, this . . . . interesting. The duo here are Detroit MC Guilty Simpson and acclaimed New Zealand producer Jeremy Toy (here as Leonard Charles) and although the album's title is an acronym of their band name it also refers to woozy feel of these laidback beats and grooves, and the sonic textures which are malleable, drifting and sometimes languid. MC Simpson has a stentorian... > Read more

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Various Artists: AK 79 (Flying Nun)

5 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

In the Eighties and Nineties, EPs or appearing on compilation albums were the key currency for most young post-punk bands. Hard to know where we'd be without collections like the student radio cassettes and albums, Hits and Myths (Enz, Schtung, Th'Dudes to Toy Love, Swingers and Whizz Kids), Class of '81 (Blam Blam Blam, Screaming MeeMees, Newmatics), Goats Milk Soap (Mockers, Swingers... > Read more

Scavengers: True Love

Terry Allen and The Panhandle Mystery Band: Just Like Moby Dick (POB/Southbound)

3 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

It always seems a little strange that John Prine should be (rightly) hailed and his peers like the wonderful Terry Allen and Elsewhere's particular favourite Tom Russell should not enjoy similar acclaim for their keen-eyed story telling and strong songs. Terry Allen – now 76 – has been recording since the mid Seventies and in the past we have shone the spotlight on his debut... > Read more

Bad Kiss

Tattletale Saints: Dancing Under the Dogwoods (Old Oak Music)

2 Feb 2020 | 1 min read

Recorded with supportive friends at the same Nashville studio as their debut How Red is the Blood (winner of Folk Album of The Year in 2014), this new album by former partners Cy Winstanley and bassist/singer Vanessa McGowan comes five years after they relocated to Nashville where they are making their separate ways as “side players but still performing as Tattletale Saints. With... > Read more

Tsyphur Zalan: Oceanic Day (digital outlets)

31 Jan 2020 | <1 min read

American composer Tsyphur Zalan – not his real name, it's Christopher Bono – here offers the second part of his Oceanic Trilogy which began with Oceanic Dawn (on Spotify here) and will conclude with Oceanic Dusk (which he promises will be "darker and moodier"). Essentially there is an ambient quality to these albums where synths and a disembodied, distant voice take... > Read more

Butterflies

Wire: Mind Hive (Pink Flag/Southbound)

25 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

Although Britain's Wire delivered three seminal post-punk albums in the late Seventies, they never let that define them nor that minimalist style become an easy template. In fact, in the past decade they have been prolific and consistently delivering challenging, musically interesting and taut albums. As the title of their 2013 album had it, Change Becomes Us. That said, those who... > Read more

Unrepentant

Black Lips: Sing in a World That's Falling Apart (Fire/Southbound)

25 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

While no artist – as we have said previously – should be held to their press release, someone with a functioning frontal cortex in Black Lips' team might have called a halt to the absurd hype about this band's reductive pop . . . . a band which had apparently gone where “no garage punk band had done before”. Uh-uh. And –... > Read more

Holding Me Holding You

Harry Styles: Fine Line (Sony)

24 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

When Harry Styles – formerly of One Direction – released his self-titled debut album in 2017 we here at Elsewhere were not just surprised by it but actually very impressed. While noting that artists of his generation – we mentioned Lorde, Taylor Swift (once she and Harry were a couple) and Justin Bieber in the context – don't make music for people of my... > Read more

Pinegrove: Marigold (Rough Trade/Rhythmethod/digital outlets)

20 Jan 2020 | <1 min read

New to Elsewhere, this New Jersey outfit here deliver a strangely enticing fourth album of downbeat material which sometimes errs towards worn-down narrative pop-poetry delivered over elemental, almost alt.country settings (Dotted Line, the arresting Alarmist) or gently urgent power-pop (Moment about an unexpected incident on the road). Spiral is a 75 second, wry injunction... > Read more

Moment

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Pale Saints: The Comforts of Madness (4AD 30thAnniversary Edition)

19 Jan 2020 | 2 min read

Although not exclusively the “shoegaze” band they have been tagged as, Britain's alt.rockers Pale Saints could hopefully get some traction for this expanded, 30thanniversary reissue of their debut album, because it seems shoegaze is currently enjoying a resurgence. Maybe this terrific compilation of shoegaze from a few years ago has lead to the renewed interest, and it contained... > Read more

Sight of You

Algiers: There is No Year (Matador/digital outlets)

17 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

The previous two albums by this sometimes incendiary, political, four-piece soul rock-cum-punk experimentalists out of Georgia made Elsewhere sit up and listen for the powerful sonic punch coupled with direct social and historic comment. Of their self-titled debut we simply concluded “extraordinary” and of The Underside of Power we said “although they are not an easy... > Read more

Selena Gomez: Rare (Interscope/digital outlets)

15 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

While Elsewhere always takes considerable amusement in how many writers and producers it takes to shape a mainstream pop album these days (see the screenshot below!), we also believe that if that's what it takes to make a great album then that's what it takes. Is this a great album by onetime Disney child star Gomez . . . who is now 27? Well, actually that gets a very slightly... > Read more

Trentemoller: Obverse (In My Room/Southbound/digital outlets)

10 Jan 2020 | <1 min read

Over time spent with the considerable catalogue of the Danish electronica experimenter Anders Trentemoller, you might conclude it is easier to like what he likes than what he does. By that we mean we would refer (again) to his engrossing Late Night Tales compilation of some years back rather than perhaps direct listeners to his often darkly, monochromatic soundscapes . . . of which this is... > Read more

Sleeper

Marina Bloom: Back Where We Started (digital outlets)

8 Jan 2020 | 1 min read

Very few artists bother to release an album at this time of year because there's just nobody around, the country is on holiday. That said, it is also counter-intuitive to deliver your album in this dead-air time because there is so little competition for attention. So let's tip the hat to Marina Bloom (who previously appeared at Elsewhere here) and this new 12 song album where her... > Read more

Harry Nilsson: Losst and Founnd (Omnivore/digital outlets)

21 Dec 2019 | 1 min read

Even Harry Nilsson's biggest fans – Elsewhere counts itself among their number – reluctantly concede that he never made a truly satisfying album. Nilsson Schmilsson came very close, close enough for it to have been a longtime Essential Elsewhere album. His was a flawed genius where lapses of taste, poor song choices and lesser material were propped up by... > Read more

ONE WE MISSED: A Winged Victory for the Sullen: The Undivided Five (Ninja Tune)

15 Dec 2019 | <1 min read

Amusingly, we previously said of this ambient-cum-soundtrack-cum-classical duo who were on the fascinating Erased Tapes label that their work ensured anything on that label would grab our immediate attention. They are now on Ninja Tune. This stately and sometimes funereal music opens with Our Lord Debussy where sweeping slo-mo strings and dark piano chords set the tone for pieces... > Read more