Music at Elsewhere
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Anderson.Paak: Ventura (Aftermath)
14 Apr 2019 | 2 min read | 1
To click that it's the great Smokey Robinson in the backdrop of the lovely and yearning Al Green-influenced Make It Better here might seem a little strange, especially when the vocal by Anderson.Paak is about how he and his woman used make love at the drop of a hat but now things have changed. Some might consider Smokey's presence here just a bit creepy, especially given he's 80 and A.Paak... > Read more
Reachin' 2 Much (ft Lalah Hathaway)
Maggie Teachout: Maybe I'm Still Just Peter (Green Monkey)
14 Apr 2019 | 1 min read
On the small but admirably persistent Green Monkey label out of the US Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Olympia) comes this debut by 18-year old singer-songwriter Maggie Teachout who fires off a 13-song volley of rocking indie-folk and more intimate ballads where at the upbeat end of her spectrum sounds she like a one-woman Violent Femmes (Colourblind, Lemonade Day) and at the other the... > Read more
Waltz for My Daughter
Snapped Ankles: Stunning Luxury (Leaf/Southbound)
14 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
A post-punk collective from East London which dress in what they style as pagan costumes and offer a kind of Fall-lite tribal chant and tribal beats alongside synths (which they put inside logs for the whole package). They sound more interesting than they are however because this slightly grimy punk-pop with a spoonful of white funk doesn't go anywhere much, too often relies on energy... > Read more
Rechargeable
Yola: Walk Through Fire (Easy Eye Sound)
8 Apr 2019 | 1 min read
The backstory behind Bristol-raised Yolanda Quartey is worth hearing, she's the mid-Thirties singer whose debut album here announces a major talent. She'd grown up with a family which struggled, had been briefly without a place to stay in her early Twenties, sang with a country-rock band, was a backing singer with Massive Attack, Chemical Brothers, Katy Perry and others in the UK . . . but... > Read more
Shady Grove
Richard Ford: Basso Profondissimo (digital outlets)
8 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
British-born, LA-based producer/composer/bassist Richard Ford is the sum of many influences, from Bill Nelson's Red Noise band to soundtrack work, jazz to Latin-influenced music, downtown NYC in the Eighties to remixing for successful Hollywood movies. The soundtrack work perhaps best explains the evocative Dusty Theatre, a brooding and multi-layered piece with a sense of film-noir menace... > Read more
Dusty Theatre
Pumice: Worldwide Welts (Dubbed Tapes/bandcamp)
8 Apr 2019 | 1 min read
This will be brief and quick for a few reasons; some aspects of Pumice's sonic landscapes of synths, guitar, organ, violin etc will perhaps only appeal to those with an affection for Fripp/Eno, early work by David Hykes, the Eraserhead soundtrack, circular breathing drones and other similar waves of sound; and that if you want the artefact you have to be in quick because there were only 34... > Read more
Groeni: Nihx (Project.Mooncircle)
5 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
Wellington's Groeni – Mike Isaacs, Al Green and James Paul – continue their electronica explorations after three EPs with this nine track album which alights on ambient landscapes and Green's soulful vocals, sometimes involves beats with a disconcerting urgency and throughout there's an appealing contrast between the discomforts of reality and the escape into melodic and blissful... > Read more
Warborn
Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind: CollectiV (Masonic/Southbound)
4 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
Formed after the demise of the Jim Jones Revue in 2014, this British outfit implode numerous influences from raw blues and psychobilly through offshoots of Nick Cave, Exile-era Stones, Springsteen after a dose Tom Wait's Raindogs, the Gun Club and measure of Biblical rhetoric. It's a rowdy concoction and titles here include Sex Robot, Satan's Got His Heart Set On You (although the lyrics is... > Read more
Shazam
Over the Rhine: Love and Revelation (GSD/Southbound)
2 Apr 2019 | 1 min read | 1
It's a changed marketplace these days for musicians, and you know it when this husband-wife duo of Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler – who are Over the Rhine and have been together making music for three decades and catalogue of almost 20 studio albums – have crowdfunded this typically tasteful country-folk outing. With their large fan-base (their Nowhere Else Festival on... > Read more
Broken Angels
Boom! Boom! Deluxe: TeenageJuvenileDelinquentRocknRollHorrorBeachParty (Plan 9 Trash)
2 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
Well, it's much as it says on the box in that this is a shamelessly retro collection of (mostly) originals which spin off from rockabilly, rock'n'roll, doo-wop, Fifties ballads (the natty V8 Lullaby), harmonica-honkin' rhythm'n'blues and so on. It doesn't aim towards the sleazy and outrageous Cramps end of the spectrum (so no delinquency and horror really) but rather the more tame... > Read more
Against the Law (ft Glen Matlock)
Steady Garden: Steady Garden (digital outlets)
1 Apr 2019 | <1 min read
The name behind – and who is – Steady Garden is expat Kiwi singer-songwriter Tim Guy who has previously delivered some fine light pop settings for his crafted songs, many of which erred to the gentle and/or whimsical, as on the damn fine but probably overlooked Big World in 2010. It was a sound he carried into his last album Dreaming of a Night Mango in 2014, about which we... > Read more
Need Somebody
Brendan and Alison Turner: Ghost of a Friend (vinyl/digital outlets)
29 Mar 2019 | 3 min read
This simply recorded debut album by a duo from rural Northland could almost have come from the early Seventies when this kind of unadorned, honestly-realised acoustic country-folk – in similar gatefold cover with lyrics – were a commonplace. And in their promo sheet they acknowledge as much: “There is something timeless about those late 60s and 70s albums . . . the sound... > Read more
Various Artists: Songs of Our Native Daughters (Smithsonian Folkways/Southbound)
25 Mar 2019 | 2 min read
Elsewhere has written about Native American artists and music (traditional, contemporary, in pop and jazz) and of course a considerable number of black American artists. Rhiannon Giddens (vocals/banjo) who appears here was recently seen in the doco Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (which also screened on Maori Television) and was one of many drew the link Native American and black... > Read more
You're Not Alone
Strand of Oaks: Eraserland (Dead Oceans/Rhythmethod)
25 Mar 2019 | 1 min read
Tim Showalter who is Strand of Oaks (that's also the band name) is very Old School when it comes to rock: he likes the dramatic chorus, the ascending guitar line, cannoning drums, the melodrama of life, the idea that this music can be personally cathartic and a shared experience . . . He's post-Seeger, post-Springsteen, post-Nirvana, post-most things. You can hear early Teardrop Explodes... > Read more
Keys
Spiral Stairs: We Wanna Be Hyp-No-Tized (Coolin' By Sound/digital outlets)
25 Mar 2019 | 1 min read
Spiral Stairs – co-founder of Pavement Scott Kannberg (with Stephen Malkmus) and also his band's name – play in Australia in April but so far haven't scheduled a New Zealand date. Maybe too soon after their late 2017 gig here? That's disappointing because this new album is as strong a collection of fist-tight classic rock as you are likely to hear. That's if your... > Read more
The Fool
Insert Name Here: The Line Between Ocean and Land (Stinkbuzz/digital outlets)
22 Mar 2019 | <1 min read
The nom-de-disque for Wellington's Craig Houghton, Insert Name Here kicks off this fourth collection (accrued over five years) with short slice of Robert Fripp/Eno-esque guitar effect of Exordium before dark psyche-folk over a buzz'n'fuzz of slo-mo shoegaze guitar on Losing It and then – after a brief burst of children's laughter – we are into the lo-fi but widescreen guitar... > Read more
Where Do You Stay?
The Cactus Blossoms: Easy Way (Walkie Talkie/Southbound)
22 Mar 2019 | <1 min read
If you don't whisper “Everly Brothers” within 10 seconds of the opening track Desperado (an original) on this album by a duo out of Minneapolis then your music history is woefully lacking. If it isn't, by the fourth track Gotta Lotta Love (another original with a ringingly familiar title) you'll be shouting those words at the stereo. Page Burkum and Jack Torrey pull out... > Read more
I am the Road
Finn Andrews: One Piece at a Time (Nettwerk)
19 Mar 2019 | 1 min read
As the mainman for his band the Veils, singer-songwriter Finn Andrews has turned in a more-than-respectable decade-plus collection of original songs and has rightly been hailed, right from when he was barely out of his teens, as an accomplished and mature songwriter. But any fold-back through his writing would discern some obvious influences, from Morrissey's yearning melancholy in the... > Read more
Love, What Can I Do?
JM Kelcher: Actual Disorganiser (Thokei Tapes)
18 Mar 2019 | 2 min read
John Kelcher was the bassist in the key iterations of Sneaky Feelings (from about '83 to their break-up in '89), left to live in Germany then returned home and currently works at the Nga Taonga sound archive, but most crucially was on the re-formed Sneaky Feelings album Progress Junction in 2017, a wonderful and unexpected return to prior form. But in '91 when back in the country he... > Read more
Sinker
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Zero 7: Simple Things, Special Edition (New State/Southbound)
18 Mar 2019 | 1 min read
This debut album by the British electronica/production outfit of Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns saw the duo nominated as best newcomer at 2002's Brit Awards (Blue won) and the album nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2001 (it lost to Polly Harvey's Stories from the City/Sea). With its orchestrated cinematic sweeps – real James Bond music stuff or downtempo mood pieces – it opened... > Read more