Music at Elsewhere
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Pete International Airport: Safer With Wolves (A Recordings/Southbound)
15 Jan 2018 | <1 min read
The “Pete” here is singer/guitarist/bassist Peter Holmstrom, co-founder of the Dandy Warhols who takes his nom-de-disque from an old Dandy's track (on their '96 album The Dandy Warhols Come Down) and it appears on the A Recordings label out of Berlin run by Brian Jonestown Massacre's enormously prolific Anton Newcombe. Like some of Newcombe's work in recent years,... > Read more
Happens All the Time
Alex Lipinski: Alex (A Recordings/Southbound)
15 Jan 2018 | <1 min read
And also out of Anton Newcombe's Berlin studio comes this British fish of a very different colour, an acoustic throwback to folk-rockabilly, angry young Dylan and across to the darker edges of recent fellow travellers like Jake Bugg (you can hear why Bugg-fan Noel Gallagher likes Lipinski) and Pete Molinari. Recorded in just six hours apparently with Lipinski on an old acoustic... > Read more
Sophie's Song
New Telepathics: The End of War (Our Records)
15 Jan 2018 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has previously acknowledged the work ethic, diverse musical projects and sheer energy of Auckland multi-instrumentalist Darryn Harkness (who also does his own artwork, produces books and writes poetry etc). He is particularly enthusiastic about this outing from his long-running New Telepathics (more a project than a stable band) and this perhaps is in part because it is a... > Read more
Can't Fault Me
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2017: THE READERS' PICKS
18 Dec 2017 | 8 min read | 4
As editor of the one-man band Elsewhere I had my say on the best albums I wrote about this past year -- while freely conceding I did not, could not, hear everything. Doubtless you heard some music which moved you and wish to tell others about. Here was – and still is -- your chance. You could look at what Elsewhere covered in 2017 if you need some... > Read more
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2017: THE EDITOR'S PICKS
11 Dec 2017 | 10 min read | 5
As subscribers to Elsewhere's weekly newsletter know, this has been a busy year for us. There was time-consuming paying work which allows Elsewhere to continue to follow its wayward path and the tune of this one-man band/vanity project. And there was overseas travel. And there was something called “having a life”. That said, it seems we wrote about 120 or so albums, did... > Read more
Daniel Gadd: as if in a dream I drifted at sea (107/Southbound)
11 Dec 2017 | <1 min read
With a similar downbeat melancholy, emotionally focused and intense lyrics, and simple but memorable melodies picked out on acoustic guitar, Cape Town-born and London-based singer-songwriter Gadd taps into the spirit and style of the early Leonard Cohen albums. Classically trained (in composition, he's done film scores and music for contemporary dance companies), Gadd recorded this... > Read more
Siri Linn
Howe Gelb and Lonna Kelly: Further Standards (Fire)
10 Dec 2017 | 1 min read
The always interesting Howe Gelb does exactly what he wants and in recent years that has seen the man behind desert psych-rockers Giant Sand work with Spanish musicians, write albums of piano music and on his last outing Future Standards explore the idea of new original material which are in the vein of piano jazz classics. Future Standards was interesting enough (not to Giant Sand... > Read more
Ownin' It
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2017: THE YEAR IN REISSUES
9 Dec 2017 | 7 min read | 1
The past is another country, but sometimes it still sounds interesting. Half a century after the Beatles' Sgt Peppers, debut albums by Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and others . . . and a decade more back to the emergence of rock'n'roll, there have been many anniversary reissues to be repackaged, remastered and reissued . . . many of which are just credit card gouging exercises. So... > Read more
Various Artists: The Kiwi Pop Music Scene 1967 (Frenzy)
8 Dec 2017 | 1 min read
As this interesting anniversary year in rock culture draws to a close – and every year for the past decade or so seems to have been a milestone anniversary – the estimable and assiduous Kiwi music compiler Grant Gillanders pulls together a double CD of 60 songs which reflects on the music scene here half a century ago. They admirable range from those which are perhaps by... > Read more
The Principals, I'll Be Around
The Rolling Stones: On Air DeLuxe Edition (Universal)
4 Dec 2017 | 4 min read | 1
There are two glaring problems with this release of these Stones' songs recorded live for British radio from 1963-65. The first is they are unnecessarily non-chronological: a version of their first single, Chuck Berry's Come On, followed by the mature Satisfaction of two years later then it's back to Berry's crowd-pleasing Roll Over Beethoven. That's just stupid. And that... > Read more
Crackin' Up (1964)
Neil Young and Promise of the Real: The Visitor (Warners)
4 Dec 2017 | 2 min read
You have to go a long way back to find a truly great and new – not just a “pretty good” – Neil Young studio album. As Elsewhere has noted, much of his best stuff has been – like the recent Hitchhiker – pulled from his vaults, a never-ending process it seems. This one of new material – with the excellent Promise of the Real who bridge... > Read more
Almost Always
L.A.B.: L.A.B. (Loop)
1 Dec 2017 | 1 min read
Opening like a classic and spiritually inclined Santana album or one of David Gilmour's refined moments in Pink Floyd with guitar by Joel Shadbolt (Batucada Sound Machine), then morphing into a slinky reggae groove, the seven minute-plus She's Gone is as ambitious as it accomplished . . . and sets the tone for what is something of local supergroup. LAB are drummer Brad and Stu Kora on... > Read more
Jimmy Boy
Rob Ruha and the Witch Dr: Survivance (Border)
1 Dec 2017 | 1 min read
One of Elsewhere favourite artists is one we've never actually written about, the great Garland Jeffreys who is one those interesting mixed-race New Yorkers (African American/Puerto Rican) who effortlessly synthesised folk, reggae, soul, r'n'b and rock (and more) into something unique . . . and he had something to say. We lost touch with him until this year's 14 Steps to Harlem (his... > Read more
Black Letters
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo
1 Dec 2017 | 1 min read
Although not the first country rock album – Gee, even Britain's r'n'b rockers the Downliners Sect had done a country album three years previous – this '68 album by former folk-rockers the Byrds (now with a much changed line-up from their classic early period) certainly made the case for the emerging genre. Although it's fair to observe that this was more country than... > Read more
One Hundred Years From Now
Troy Kingi: Shake That Skinny Ass All the Way to Zygertron (AAA)
30 Nov 2017 | 1 min read | 1
Elsewhere was quick out of the gate to acclaim last year's enjoyable and diverse double album by singer/guitarist (and actor) Troy Kingi. With his Electric Haka Boogie band on Guitar Party at Uncle's Bach, Kingi delivered what was almost a compilation album of styles, none of which outstayed their welcome and provided the perfect summertime listening (but with important messages woven... > Read more
Aquarii B
Various Artists: Heed the Call (Vostok)
27 Nov 2017 | 2 min read
I'm sure this has been mentioned previously at Elsewhere, but some years ago the conversation turned to prog-rock and I sagely said there hadn't been much made in New Zealand. My wiser friend disagreed and not long after a double CD compilation of Kiwi prog-rock he'd put together – entitled Taniwha from Topographic Oceans – turned up and I was suitably chastened. I... > Read more
SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases
27 Nov 2017 | 3 min read
Facing down an avalanche of releases, requests for coverage, the occasional demand that we be interested in their new album (sometimes with that absurd comment "but don't write about it if you don't like it") and so on, Elsewhere will every now and again do a quick sweep like this, in the same way it does IN BRIEFabout international releases and Yasmin Brown does for EPs.... > Read more
Shed Seven: Instant Pleasures (Universal)
27 Nov 2017 | 1 min read
To be in the UK during the Britpop years – even just, as I was, in and out a few times for a few weeks at a time – was exciting. There were bands everywhere and you felt you were encountering some of them at a peak – Oasis in Leicester a week after their Earl's Court shows, the exceptional Ocean Colour Scene and Jesus Jones in Birmingham (years apart) – and... > Read more
It's Not Easy
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Sharon O'Neill: Words, The Best of Sharon O'Neill (Sony)
24 Nov 2017 | <1 min read
With Sharon O'Neill's 2017 induction into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, this 20-song collection from 2014 gets deserved re-presentation. But it also serves as useful reminder of just how gifted she was with a pop-rock song (Words, Baby Don't Fight, Danced in the Fire etc), ballads (Asian Paradise), mature truth-telling (Luck's On Your Table Tonight, Maxine, Physical Favours,... > Read more
Baby Don't Fight
Midge Marsden: The Midge Marsden Collection (SDL)
24 Nov 2017 | 2 min read
It's all too easy to misrepresent Midge Marsden, one of the long distance runners in New Zealand music. It's a quick and easy description to call him a “bluesman” or a “blues musician”. But as he would be equally quick – if incredibly frustrated – to respond, in his long career (and this double CD reflects on 50 years) he never actually... > Read more