Music at Elsewhere

Various Artist: LPMT0003 (Loop)

1 Sep 2015 | <1 min read

And the free stuff just keeps coming from the good people at Loop. Here is another mix tape of their artists (including Yesking, Yoko Zuna, Electric Wire Hustle and Sola Rosa) and it is, like their previous mixtapes, absolutely free. Just go here for a free download. And while you are there you can download the previous two releases also. Free is a good deal! > Read more

The Phoenix Foundation: Give Up Your Dreams (Universal)

31 Aug 2015 | 1 min read

Given the implosion of individual talent the Phoenix Foundation manages to contain, it's hardly a surprise that every now and again they do something which discreetly hints at, "Hope you like our new direction". After the widescreen and sometimes epic nature of their previous double-disc Fandango followed by the more economic and rhythmic-directed EP Tom's Lunch last year you might... > Read more

Sunbed

Various Artists: Compton (Aftermath)

31 Aug 2015 | 1 min read

So just to be clear there's the NWA classic gangsta rap album Straight Outta Compton and now a bio-pic of the same name. But despite this being subtitled "A Soundtrack by Dr Dre" it isn't the soundtrack to the film, it is music inspired by the film. (As far as I can tell there is no actual soundtrack album.) So here is sort-of Dre's first album under his own name for over 15... > Read more

One Shot Kill

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

31 Aug 2015 | 2 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. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham: The Complete Duo Recordings CD/DVD (Proper/Southbound): Together or separately, Penn and Oldham (whose albums... > Read more

It Tears Me Up by Dann Penn and Spooner Oldham

The Shifting Sands: Cosmic Radio Station (Fishrider)

31 Aug 2015 | <1 min read

Three years ago the Flying Nun compilation Time To Go reminded us of the downer psych-rock out of the South Island in the Eighties with familiar names like the Clean, Chills and Puddle alongside the barely-recalled Wrecks Small Speakers and the Victor Dimisich Band. This three-piece from Port Chalmers-Adjacent – who run the local venue Chick's and here include the Clean's David... > Read more

Should Be Better

Eb & Sparrow: Sun/Son (Deadbeat/Southbound)

28 Aug 2015 | <1 min read

After three excellent EPs, an excellent self-titled debut album and opening for Pokey LaFarge, Beth Orton and others, this Wellington-based five-piece around singer-songwriter Ebony Lamb have ensured a receptive audience for this world-class follow-up. It dripps with alt.country languor (think kd lang or Chris Isaak at their most sleepy), spaghetti Western desperation-cum-twang (the... > Read more

Loaded Gun

Mem Nahadr: Femme Fractale (Commercial Free Dread)

24 Aug 2015 | 2 min read

Just as opera has changed -- or at least some of its creators like John Adams, Philip Glass and others who have kept up with contemporary politics and social change -- so has art music, as academics like to call it. It has shifted from the sometimes rare air of the recital hall into clubs and bars. Mem Nahadr -- a black albino once from Washington with a vocal range which sounds... > Read more

Gone

Ahoribuzz: Into the Sunshine (Warners)

24 Aug 2015 | 1 min read

The first time I saw Ben Harper play I turned to a pal and said "Taj Marley" and we laughed like drains then went straight to the bar. I felt the same the next time. Taj Mahal+Bob Marley can never go wrong, but can also never claim to be original. But we being Kiwis who loved both artists embraced Harper who, in my opinion, didn't make any unique statement until he... > Read more

Turnaround

Banditos: Banditos (Bloodshot/Southbound)

24 Aug 2015 | <1 min read

They might be based in Nashville but this hairy, post-punk six-piece from Alabama prove you can take bar-bands out of their natural home but they'll always be back-sliders. With electric guitars, two gutsy singers (male and female), flat-tack banjo and a sawdust floor attitude, the appropriately named Banditos put their fingers in the wall socket for most of the 12 originals on this... > Read more

Old Ways

Jackie Greene: Back to Birth (YepRoc/Southbound)

24 Aug 2015 | <1 min read | 1

Here produced by longtime friend Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, this former frontman/guitarist for Phil (Grateful Dead) Lesh's touring band, member of the Black Crowes (for two years before their disillusion a few months ago) and credible country-rock/roots player here delivers his seventh album which has some comfortably familiar reference points (the Band, Tom Petty, Allmans, Crowes of... > Read more

Where the Downhearted Go

Gurrumul: The Gospel Album (Skinnyfish/Southbound)

17 Aug 2015 | 1 min read

There is something just so right about this retiring, blind Aboriginal singer taking his rare gift to gospel songs, just as there's something equally right in Nick Cave exploring the antithesis. Both have the voice for their subjects. Brought up in the local church on Elcho Island off the top of Australia, Gurrumul has appeared at Elsewhere for his previous albums where the... > Read more

Amazing Grace

SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases

13 Aug 2015 | 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 BRIEF about international releases. Comments will be brief. Greg... > Read more

Mary Mary by Illegal Green (from Hamiltune)

Ryley Walker: Primrose Green (Dead Oceans)

10 Aug 2015 | <1 min read | 1

In a cover which evokes the soft-focus pastoralism of Van Morrison's classic 60s albums His Band and Street Choir and, more specifically, Astral Weeks, this American singer-guitarist flies his influences high. And they are mostly Irish or British, especially folk-blues guitar improvisers such as Davy Graham, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch and others from that same period as those Morrison... > Read more

Sweet Satisfaction

Mike Cooper: Fratello Mare (Room40)

10 Aug 2015 | <1 min read

The more you listen to breadth and depth of expat British guitarist Mike Cooper's work, the more your respect his innovation . . . all the while acknowledging he is perhaps the least known of all the least known innovative players. He has crossed the Elsewhere path last year with some reissues (see here and here), but even as recently as then we conceded he had been off our radar.... > Read more

A Cinnamon Peeler

The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience: I Like Rain (Fire/Flying Nun)

5 Aug 2015 | 2 min read | 1

Some months ago when Elsewhere added this Christchurch band's Bleeding Star (1993) to our Essential Elsewhere albums list, we conceded immediately that others had nominated their Love Songs ('87) as a better album, or would opt for their self-titled debut EP ('86) as superior. Each to their own, but it does say something about JPSE that so much of their work should be considered so... > Read more

Flex

Tame Impala: Currents (Universal)

3 Aug 2015 | <1 min read | 1

Kevin Parker from West Australia might just be the most tuned-in, turned-on and influence-dropping musician on the planet right now. His vehicle Tame Impala (in which he does just about everything) has always been impressively future-retro but with this third album -- a polished gem of soulful, psychedelic rock-cum-dance music with a rare palette of musical colours and dreamscapes --... > Read more

Past Life

Jason Isbell: Something More Than Free (Spunk)

3 Aug 2015 | <1 min read | 1

When he left country-rockers Drive-By Truckers in 07, songwriter Isbell was damaged by alcohol and a painful separation, but since then has steadily built a platform as a literate, heartfelt songwriter whose albums have penetrating narratives alongside nakedly soul-baring lyrics and aching songs about hard truths like cancer, abuse, family or a friend killed in Iraq. Like some... > Read more

Children of Children

Led Zeppelin: Coda, Deluxe Edition (Warners)

3 Aug 2015 | 1 min read

Even the most ardent Led Zeppelin fans are prepared to concede -- when they are claer-headed -- that the final studio albums Presence ('76), In Through the Out Door ('79) and Coda ('82, released a couple of years after they had broken up) are patchy . . . at best. Which may explain why the Jimmy Page remastered editions of all three of these have now appeared simultaneously, although... > Read more

Bring It On Home (rough mix)

Daughn Gibson: Carnations (SubPop)

27 Jul 2015 | <1 min read | 1

Gibson from Pennsylvania has been getting some stick internationally for this, his third album. But presuming few if any here heard his previous soulfully dark-voiced outings we come to this fresh and it's an odd but interesting one, sometimes like widescreen Bowie around Station to Station, at others finding its feet in post-New Wave goth-pop or Depeche Mode. It could be accused... > Read more

Back With the Family