Absolute Elsewhere
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MARC RIBOT CONSIDERED (2015): Cosmopolitan guitarist without portfolio
25 Feb 2015 | 2 min read
If there is a distinguishing feature of American guitarist Marc Ribot's style it is that you'd be unwise to attempt to attribute a distinguishing feature or style to it. In the words of Walt Whitman, he contains multitudes. And he can go anywhere with them. Which is doubtless why Tom Waits -- making his career turn in the mid Eighties -- called on Ribot to bring his angularity... > Read more
The Cocktail Party
AUSTIN BROWN OF PARQUET COURTS INTERVIEWED (2015): Future now but old school on many fronts
23 Feb 2015 | 5 min read
Anyone who has paid even just passing attention to New York-based Parquet Courts will get the connecting points: a guitar band with a keen ear for the past which includes bands like Television, Velvet Underground, Modern Lovers, the Strokes and so on. But add in some thought-provoking lyrics and songs which slow the tempos right down and you can hear that Parquet Courts aren't just... > Read more
Stoned and Starving
FRED FRITH CONSIDERED (2015): The prince of plinkety-plunk
13 Feb 2015 | 4 min read | 1
The term “prepared piano” – where the musician places objects onto the strings to get odd and often random sounds – is well known in the classical world. But few people know Johnny Cash got into “prepared guitar” when he recorded I Walk the Line back in '56. To get that clacking rhythm he placed a dollar bill under the guitar strings and got a sound... > Read more
Heat c/w Moment
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING INTERVIEWED (2014): Space is the place
9 Feb 2015 | 13 min read | 2
I know this is very wrong, but while talking to J. Willgoose – not his real name – who is the taller half of Britain's Public Service Broadcasting, I am picturing him as like the actor/writer Stephen Merchant. He has the same dry humour and delivery. And he's tall, with glasses. Willgoose and Wrigglesworth as PSB have created some of the most interesting music-cum-film... > Read more
Fire in the Cockpit
KIM RICHEY INTERVIEWED (2015): The writer on the road, again
9 Feb 2015 | 11 min read
Kim Richey pulls the car off into a gas station somewhere in Alabama to take the call from Elsewhere. She's halfway between Birmingham and her home in Nashville and is delighted to say before she comes to New Zealand she is going to spend time seeing the country. “I can't imagine coming all the way to New Zealand and not seeing it,” she says after telling how she put a... > Read more
Breakaway Speed
CHRIS ELDRIDGE of PUNCH BROTHERS INTERVIEWED (2015): The Radiohead of bluegrass
4 Feb 2015 | 8 min read
Towards the end of a digressive and interesting conversation with Chris Eldridge, guitarist for Punch Brothers, I ask if the description “bluegrass” -- which has most commonly been applied to their music -- has any relevance anymore. After all, they have edged their music towards art rock with classical references, have thrown in covers of songs by Beyonce and the Cars... > Read more
Julep
LISA MARIE PRESLEY REMEMBERED (2015): A child of her time
2 Feb 2015 | 2 min read | 1
Mercer Ellington did it, so did two of Sinatra's kids Frank Jnr and Nancy. Two Lennon's and George Harrison's son Dhani did it too (in fact every Beatle has a kid who's done it). So did a few Marleys, Judy Garland's daughter Liza Minnelli and Steve Earle's boy Justin Townes. They all went into the family business. If we suspend our scepticism about this we'd have to concede it's... > Read more
Soften the Blows
JOHNNY DEVLIN, INTERVIEWED (2007): Just let me hear that old time rock'n'roll
31 Jan 2015 | 3 min read
Johnny Devlin was New Zealand's original rock'n'roll star. Johnny Cooper aka The Maori Cowboy might have recorded the country's first rock'n'roll song – a somewhat limp cover of Rock Around the Clock – but Cooper was a country singer and the new music of rock'n'roll was . . . Well, just too new. Cooper didn't quite get it, but Devlin – who fell in love with Elvis'... > Read more
AUCKLAND'S LANEWAY FESTIVAL CONSIDERED (2015): Out of a clear blue sky . . .
27 Jan 2015 | 8 min read | 3
Auckland has had a patchy track record with outdoor festivals. At the lower end of the scale you could go back to the embarrassment of the day put on for the young Princess Anne and Prince Charles in the Sixties (Bunny Walters' zipper coming down), the Robin Gibb concert in '70 where someone threw a tomato at him, the disastrous Neon Picnic and the second Sweetwaters . . .... > Read more
SHAKEY GRAVES INTERVIEWED (2015): Taking it to the top
26 Jan 2015 | 8 min read
In a little over three years, Alejandro Rose-Garcia – better known as Shakey Graves – has carved out the almost perfect and throughly contemporary career arc. Setting aside his occasional acting jobs where his boyish good looks got him small parts on the big screen, and a four-week role as the life-guard/love interest in the television series Friday Night Lights, the... > Read more
Dearly Departed (w Esme Patterson)
ELVIS COSTELLO + WENDY JAMES (2015): That year's model
26 Jan 2015 | 3 min read
Transvision Vamp were one of those British bands who got through the door in the post-punk/New Wave era, but didn't quite know what to do on the other side. After some mostly unsuccessful singles they hit paydirt with their '88 album Pop Art and then Velveteen nine months later took them to top of the UK charts. Although neither album appeared on the US charts (in fact only Australians and... > Read more
Puppet Girl
THERE'S GOOD ROCKIN' TONIGHT (2014): The music that reshaped the world
19 Jan 2015 | 4 min read
Because Fifties rock'n'roll music is rarely heard these days -- and on the rare occasions it is, the music is utterly decontextualised – it's hard to imagine what a revolution it was for people at the time. Here was a popular music which was aimed directly at teenagers (the first musical movement to do so) and addressed their concerns in terms of parties, dating, rebelliousness... > Read more
Red River Rock
THE AUCKLAND LANEWAY FESTIVAL (2015): In high anticipation for . . .
7 Jan 2015 | 6 min read | 1
This year's St Jerome's Laneway Festival at Auckland's Silo Park (Monday January 26, Auckland's anniversary weekend) looks to have the most consistently strong line-up of any so far. Especially if you look back at the albums and artists many critics and civilians chose as their “best of 2014”. A considerable number of the Laneway acts – international and... > Read more
IAN ANDERSON INTERVIEWED (2014): The view from the top
16 Dec 2014 | 13 min read | 2
It was over 20 years ago that I spoke to Ian Anderson, the founder of Jethro Tull and the sole constant in that remarkably durable prog-rock band, and I have never forgotten the experience. That man could talk and talk and talk . . . Without a word of lie I can say this, as he went on and on about how fans demanded all the reissues and whatever, I got up... > Read more
Doggerland
STONEY AND THE JAGGED EDGE, UNEARTHED (2014): The Sixties sound of psychedelic garageband Detroit
9 Dec 2014 | 2 min read
Just when you think the library of the past has been fully illuminated, someone comes along and points to a low door in the wall which opens into a secret, dark room. And in there your torch picks out . . . Stoney and the Jagged Edge. Not to be confused with other bands called Jagged Edge, this group from Detroit in late Sixties had a strong local following, opened for the Doors... > Read more
The Dues Song
SYLVIE SIMMONS INTERVIEWED (2014): Leonard Cohen, music journalism, a debut album at 60 and the ukulele
8 Dec 2014 | 19 min read | 2
When Sylvie Simmons speaks it is in a quiet, bemused and droll English accent, full of whimsical asides. You'd be forgiven if you thought she was a slightly mischievous author of children's books. But Simmons is one of the great music writers of our time who grew up “Beatle-damaged” in London of the Sixties, moved to America in the late Seventies where she wrote on metal... > Read more
My Lips Still Taste of You
WILCO AT 20, CONSIDERED (2014): Roger Wilco Over . . . and onward
8 Dec 2014 | 2 min read
The story of Wilco is full of ironies, wrong turns and barely credible shifts of direction and personnel. The band that formed out of Uncle Tupelo which was in the vanguard of alt.country in the early 90s made intricate and experimental indie.pop-rock on Summerteeth 99, then slewed further left with their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002 . . . which their record company refused to... > Read more
NICK CAVE ENCOUNTERED (2014): The man, the myth and the movie
7 Dec 2014 | 9 min read | 1
The backstage room at Auckland's SkyTower Theatre where Nick Cave waits is tiny, but doubtless he's seen much worse. He's arrived with no fanfare, greets my wife Megan and me warmly in the nearby green room . . . and in 15 minutes will walk out onto the nearby stage and field questions about the sort-of-documentary film 20,000 Days on Earth which is just coming to an end before a... > Read more
NATHAN HAINES INTERVIEWED (2014): A son for the return home
17 Nov 2014 | 10 min read | 1
Nathan Haines sits on the deck at the back of The Long Room on Auckland's Ponsonby Rd and seems very relaxed over a beer. These are good days for multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer Haines. He's back in New Zealand from London for a few months over summer, he has an excellent new album 5 A Day to talk about, he's getting plenty of work in London where he lives with his DJ wife... > Read more
PAUL McCARTNEY, THE TRIBUTE ALBUM: Pop's greatest craftsman gets Big Name thumbs aloft
17 Nov 2014 | 8 min read
It's probably possible to count the number of songs Paul McCartney has written -- you can bet his publishing people and royalty-collecting accountants have -- but here's a guess: do the maths on all the solo albums and Beatle-era stuff, plus soundtrack work right back to The Family Way in '67 when he was still in the Beatles, songs he gifted to others, stuff like The Fireman which many don't... > Read more