Music at Elsewhere
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The Lemon Twigs: A Dream Is All We Know (digital outlets)
5 May 2024 | 1 min read
When the brothers Michael and Brian D'Addario emerged with their band Lemon Twigs with their album Do Hollywood in 2016 they were, in some circles, given the same kind of enthusiastic reception the Strokes had enjoyed. What critics heard was a terrific tick-list of influences from the Beatles and Beach Boys to British acid pop. We said for the D'Addario brothers, “it is forever... > Read more
My Golden Years
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Fuemana: New Urban Polynesian (Urban Pacifica/digital outlets)
4 May 2024 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this album released for the first time on vinyl but now appears with an insert essay/overview by Martin Pepperrell. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . Deep in our archives there is an interesting interview with Phil Fuemana and Sisters Underground which... > Read more
Beat Rhythm Fashion: Critical Mass (Failsafe/digital outlets)
4 May 2024 | 2 min read
Beat Rhythm Fashion would be very familiar to anyone going to gigs in Wellington around 1980 but for many they were more spoken of than heard, despite some excellent singles. However their story was far from over after they disbanded in 1982 . . . although there was a fairly lengthy hiatus. About 36 years of hiatus in fact, until singer/writer/guitarist Nino Birch and drummer Caroline... > Read more
What We've Become
The Church: Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars (digital outlets)
27 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
Since Elsewhere's interview with the Church's Steve Kilbey in 2018 – now the sole remaining member of the original line-up after the departure of Marty Willson-Piper in 2013 and Peter Koppes in 2019 – he has nudged the band into areas which appeal to him. In our interview a great deal of the conversation was about myth and magic, esoteric books and art, Lewis Carroll and... > Read more
Amanita
Black Keys: Ohio Players (digital outlets)
26 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
Because Black Keys have appeared so often at Elsewhere, we feel we know them well. Although to give credit where it's due, the duo haven't settle on a style for long. When we first saw them a couple of decades ago in a gig at Auckland's now-closed Kings Arms, Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and drummer Patrick Carney were a ragged, blues-rock garage band but – like the early White... > Read more
Beautiful People (Stay High)
THE VERLAINES' WAY OUT WHERE, REISSUED (2024): So many choices out there
24 Apr 2024 | 3 min read
In a recent interview Graeme Downes of the Verlaines – for these past four years retired from music and academic life while recovering from a cancer operation – spoke proudly of their 1993 album Way Out Where. He'd written all 12 songs while under considerable pressures: a deadline from the American label Slash, while completing his master's thesis, and knowing this was going to... > Read more
Blanket Over the Sky
Ha The Unclear: A Kingdom in a Cul-de-sac (Think Zik!/digital outlets)
23 Apr 2024 | <1 min read
For a band with a surreal name, this indie.rock outfit from Dunedin (the vehicle for songwriter-singer Michael Cathro MSc), have appeared a few times at Elsewhere in the past decade, including with a video compilation. This latest release on the boutique French label Think Zik! is a kind of compilation-cum-new album which opens with a couple of their early and catchy singles (Growing Mould,... > Read more
Fish
Aro: He Rākau, He Ngārara (digital outlets)
19 Apr 2024 | <1 min read
The Aro duo of husband and wife Charles and Emily Looker here present an immediately and immensely likable album which celebrates native plants and insects in te reo Māori and English language songs which sometimes sound like classic tunes from the Fifties (the lovely Tōtara with sweeping strings and Kaikōmako), beautiful folk (Pukatea) and contemporary pop (Namupoto, Wētā).... > Read more
Tōtara
Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future (digital outlets)
19 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
Outside of the experimental alt.folk group Big Thief, writer-singer Adrianne Lenker has run a parallel career which is dinstictive and engrossing in its own right. This album is, at least on paper, her sixth (her previous, the simultaneously released Songs and Instrumentals album turned up in many best of 2020 albums) and has a typically interesting backstory: it was recorded in a backwoods... > Read more
Khruangbin: A La Sala (Dead Oceans/digital outlets)
15 Apr 2024 | <1 min read
One of the problems which comes with an artist having a distinctive and unique sound is that unless they move it around a bit, that signature becomes so familiar that casual listeners think, “Oh, more of the same”. That hasn't been too much of a problem for this trio out of Texas whose debut The Universe Smiles Upon You established their lovely brand of gently psychedelic... > Read more
Pon Pon
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Giant Sand: Chore of Enchantment (Fire/digital outlets)
12 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
One of the most interesting interviews Elsewhere has ever done – and remember, we've done literally many-many hundreds, and then some – was with Howe Gelb. Gelb'sbest known for his band Giant Sand – which has clocked up nearly 30 albums – although he also has nearly that many under his own name. Back in 2011 we interviewed him at length – one of our longest... > Read more
No Reply
Laetitia Sadier: Rooting for Love (digital outlets)
12 Apr 2024 | <1 min read
Mostly known for her central role in Britain's wide-reaching, alternative band Stereolab, French-born singer and multi-instrumentalist Sadier has enjoyed a diverse solo career and interesting collaborations with the likes of San Francisco's Deerhoof and the Brazilian band Mombojó (as Modern Cosmology). For this fifth solo album she embraces nuanced art-pop (Protéïformunité), borrowings... > Read more
Don't Forget You're Mine
Sin City: Another Round (digital outlets)
8 Apr 2024 | <1 min read
Sometimes the cover or album title tells you exactly what you need to know. And so it is with ramshackle rockers Sin City whose Delaney Davidson-produced debut Welcome to Sin City of two years ago we described as offering “loose-limbed swagger, braggadocio, ramshackle country rock'n'roll, barroom ballads and country cliches mined for knowing humour”. This follow-up –... > Read more
I'm Your Man
Ride: Interplay (digital outlets)
7 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
Once the bright hope of shoegaze in the Britpop era, Oxford's Ride lost momentum with Carnival of Light after two fine albums and broke up. Their sound had been a template which – while it borrowed from Jesus and Mary Chain a little and the Manchester sound – was highly appealing. The band also had two excellent songwriters in Mark Gardener (who enjoyed a very decent solo... > Read more
Midnight Rider
Norah Jones: Visions (Blue Note/digital outlets)
6 Apr 2024 | 1 min read | 1
It's a fair observation to say that those who wail and rail against Yoko Ono's music have barely heard a note of it. Okay, some of her music could be challenging, but not all of it. However that's something the naysayers don't know because cheap cynicism and prejudice usually means you don't have to make much of an effort, if any. That infects some fairly mainstream artists too however:... > Read more
Queen of the Sea
Matt Hay: Dog and Pony Show (digital outlets)
5 Apr 2024 | 1 min read
Recorded live in the studio (Darren Watson's Lamington Recording aka his lounge in Pōneke Wellington), this collection of crafted songs with their feet and heart in country-folk and Americana comes with a lived-in intimacy. And behind singer-songwriter Matt Hay are slide guitar (Watson), accordion (Craig Denham), double bass (Steve Moodie) and percussion (Delia Shanly).... > Read more
Holy Smoke
Yin Yin, Mount Matsu (Glitterbeat/digital outlets)
30 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
Although we occasionally link to Spotify that is just for readers' convenience if a bandcamp link isn't available. (You can hear and buy at bandcamp so we prefer that.) We sometimes use Spotify but haven't ever let it dictate our taste or direction. Until now. We were listening to the new single by Mdou Moctar and through inattention let the Spotify algorithm run us on into another... > Read more
The Perseverance of Sano
Various Artists: Moving Away From the Pulsebeat (Cherry Red/digital outlets)
29 Mar 2024 | 7 min read | 1
A week or so ago I heard a well-known host on National Radio say he knew nothing about punk and was a soft rock guy. He asked what punk was. Perhaps someone could take a few minutes and explain it in its weird diversity: British punk in the late Seventies embedded the ideas of DIY (posters, tapes, gigs, clothes etc) , opened the door to the untutored, the importance of inclusiveness,... > Read more
Everyone's on Revolver Tonight, by O-Level
Fuzzy Robes: Midday Prayers (Winegum Records/digital outlets)
28 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
As with Banksy, the Residents and Daft Punk, let's allow a cloud of enigma and mystique to remain settled over the Ōtautahi Christchurch band Fuzzy Robes whose previous album Night Prayers in 2021 was a elevating mix of liturgical and gently psychedelic music. Although it's probably as easy to identify their members as the aforementioned – there are photos for a start --... > Read more
Collect for Midday
Les Big Byrd: Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain (digital outlets)
25 Mar 2024 | <1 min read
It has been almost a decade since we stumbled over Sweden's psychedelic rockers Les Big Byrd, probably through their association with Anton (Brian Jonestown Massacre) Newcombe's A Recordings label. This fourth studio album – recorded in small-town Visby on the island of Gotland in the Baltic – finds them focused on elevating, spacious astral rock in a space between Sky Cries... > Read more