Music at Elsewhere
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French for Rabbits: The Weight of Melted Snow (Home Again/Southbound)
13 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
The 2014 debut album Spirits by this central duo of Brooke Singer and John Fitzgerald (here with multi-instrumentalist Ben Lent of Trinity Roots, drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa and Penelope Esplin, and guests) was a sheer delight and we described it as “not so much shoegaze as folksy skygaze” for its dreamy folkadelic sound. It is well worth finding even now, and... > Read more
Feathers and Dreams
Citrus Clouds: Imagination (bandcamp)
7 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
Recently Elsewhere has happily noted the resurgence of shoegaze . . . but this band which formed in Phoenix about five years ago has their own variant on that description. Their imprimatur on bandcamp – presumably written by themselves – is “desertgaze”. That'll do these ears . . . because this trio has that wide sonic vista we'd associated with... > Read more
The Sun is in My Eyes
The Courtneys: II (Secretly Canadian/Flying Nun)
6 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
The enjoyably reductive guitar pop of the Courtneys out of Vancouver found favour here for their self-titled debut album with its widescreen strum'n'sing, deliberately breezy teenage-whine sound and what seemed a schooling in early Flying Nun. When the template is that secure (and referenced) there's probably no need to mess with it. And so they don't (much) for this follow-up which... > Read more
Country Song
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
6 Mar 2017 | 3 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. DJ T-Rock:The Sounds in Their Heads (Why) DJ T-Rock appeared at Elsewhere previously with the thoroughly enjoyable Getting... > Read more
Various Artists: Molly; Do Yourself a Favour (Liberation)
6 Mar 2017 | <1 min read
Where the double CD Great Australian Songbook was a handsome package with cover art by Rolf Harris and soaking up big Ocker songs (from Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport through Midnight Oil, the Church, Easybeats and Paul Kelly to Kylie, Delta Goodrem and Wolfmother), this triple set has a broader reach but a narrower focus. These 60 songs across three discs aim squarely at the period when... > Read more
You Just Like Me Cos I'm Good in Bed, by Skyhooks
Lydia Cole: The Lay of the Land (lydiacole.com)
3 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
Elsewhere was more than just ho-hum about Lydia Cole's debut Me and Moon of 2012, we were almost casually dismissive because it sounded like she'd thought no further than her own bedroom where she'd holed up after a relationship breakup. But a couple of advance tracks for this belated follow-up suggested something had happened to her in five years; Call it maturity, a more... > Read more
Time is a Healer
Brian Jonestown Massacre: Don't Get Lost (Southbound)
27 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Many years ago in writing about the new BJM album Revelation, Elsewhere mentioned the well-known doco DIG! In which BJM mainman Anton Newcombe infamously seemed to be losing the plot, if he ever knew there was one. Not long afterwards he wrote, politely, asking why that needed to be mentioned. The explanation was simple: it was notorious, a ready reference point for readers and added... > Read more
Groove is in the Heart
The Bats: The Deep Set (Secretly Canadian/Flying Out)
24 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has long been of the opinion – considered and/or humble, if you will – that for the past couple of decades the Bats have taken incremental steps into a more focused, discreetly diversifying style from their signature sound of the Eighties. Certainly their gentle chiming guitars and slightly droning but melodic vocals remain in place (both given presence in the... > Read more
Walking Man
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: Flying Microtonal Banana (Heavenly)
24 Feb 2017 | 1 min read | 1
One of the most useful and enjoyable books on Elsewhere's shelves is quite dated but always a pleasure to pick up. It is Ian McFarlane's Encyclopaedia of Australian Rock and Pop which dates from the late Nineties. The fun to be had is in some of the band names, Australians seem to have a penchant for the odd: Ku Klux Frankenstein, Scary Mother, Kiss My Poodles Donkey, Sadistik... > Read more
Doom City
Ghost Town: Sky is Falling (Ghost/Southbound)
22 Feb 2017 | 3 min read
Perhaps because he moved on fast, offered seriously disturbing music and performances with often terrifying visual effects and then left New Zealand, Jed Town never really got the recognition he deserved in the punk and post-punk era. As a key member of the Features (City Scenes) he might have transitioned from punk rock into more mainstream rock, but the band didn't last much beyond... > Read more
Make It
Bing and Ruth: No Home of the Mind (4AD)
20 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
In the late Sixties the most interesting and influential composer in New York – whose students and colleagues included Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Cale – was a guy called LaMonte Young. And even today you'd be forgiven for not having heard of him. He might have been the godfather of the avant-garde/minimalism movement but he was overtaken by his... > Read more
To All It
Sampha: Process (Young Turks)
20 Feb 2017 | <1 min read
This mostly impressive but slightly unfocused debut announces the arrival of another post-rap soul singer from Britain – think a less wimpy James Blake crossed with the musicality of Michael Kiwanuka – who mixes electronica, Marvin Gaye, innercity blues (the fear-filled Blood On Me about “grey hoodies, they cover their eyes”) and some outer space consciousness.... > Read more
Timmy's Prayer
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: John Cale; Fragments of a Rainy Season, expanded edition
16 Feb 2017 | 2 min read
Last year a great wedge of Lou Reed's solo albums from the Seventies and Eighties were reissued, 17 CDs in a box set between his self-titled outing from early '72 through to Mistrial in mid '86. You'd think this would have been an opportunity for a reconsideration of his work and to elevate it. But most critics were scratching for something to say about these albums which slewed from... > Read more
Chinese Envoy
Neil Watson: Studies in Tubular (neilwatson.co.nz/Southbound)
16 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Guitarist Neil Watson is a man with an impeccable track record of appearances on albums by Mel Parsons, the Finn Brothers, Caitlin Smith and more than a dozen others. He's a man who can sit in, and comfortably fit in, with visiting jazz artists (Mike Nock, Michael Brecker) or people at the mainstream centre of spectrum he commands, and his day job at the University of Auckland in the... > Read more
Kerala
Jesca Hoop: Memories Are Now (SubPop)
13 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Now half a dozen albums into a career (one with Sam Beam aka Iron and Wine) this transplanted American -- who lived in Manchester for a while then returned to the US -- is almost emblematic of the world we live in, where musical information from diverse sources (plus static, the surface noise of life etc) can all collide equally in our subconscious. Hoop's gift is in her ability... > Read more
Animal Kingdom Chaotic
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
13 Feb 2017 | 3 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. Strand of Oaks: Hard Love (Dead Oceans) Further proof never to judge an album by its cover; the tattooed biker and jagged lettering... > Read more
The Nudge: Dark Arts (Keen for a Nudge/Rhythmethod)
13 Feb 2017 | 2 min read | 1
When Wellington's Nudge first appeared at Elsewhere it was an alarmingly long five and half years ago. They arrived with their bluesy, psychedelic Big Nudge Pie which we hailed for their unique take – in this country anyway – on their evident influences. Given the time lag until this outing, we might conclude the Nudge are “an occasional band” because... > Read more
Dark Arts
Tattletale Saints: Tattletale Saints (tattletalesaints.com/Aeroplane)
10 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Now based in Nashville – which would seem their natural home given their country-flavoured folk-rock and storytelling songs – the excellent duo of Cy Winstanley and Vanessa McGowan here deliver the second album under their own name (also there is an album as Her Make Believe Band and McGowan did a solo album). Recorded in Nashville with the multi-instrumentalists joined by... > Read more
I Don't Sing So Much No More
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Bert Jansch; Living in the Shadows (Earth/Southbound)
9 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
Elsewhere concedes immediately that this four disc set might be of limited interest to the general reader, but for Jansch fans -- and they seem to be growing in number every year -- these three reissues and an extra disc of more recent home recordings contain real nuggets to be chivvied out. The three studio albums are The Ornament Tree (1990), When the Circus Comes to Town ('93) and Toy... > Read more
Toy Balloon
Garth Brooks: Gunslinger (Sony)
9 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
When Garth Brooks emerged in the Nineties and professed as much love for rock bands like Kansas and Kiss as the country legends he invited immediate derision from critics who looked for something they called authenticity. And this marketing graduate wasn't it. Well, Brooks was simply being an honest product of his generation and it wasn't the music of those Middle American rock bands... > Read more