Favourite Five Recent Releases
Five of the best albums from the recent postings at Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you're looking for a quick fix.
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Jazmine Mary: I Want to Rock And Roll (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Auckland's Jazmine Mary (Australian-born Jazmine Phillips, identifying as they/them) has confounded and impressed over her previous two albums: her downbeat The Licking of a Tangerine picked up Best Independent Debut at the 2022 Taite Prize and their recommended follow-up DOG appeared in many best-of lists in 2023. Their music is along the axis of noir-folk, kinda gloomy but... > Read more
Memphis
Autocamper: What Do You Do All Day? (digital outlets)
6 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Some days, overcome by the stress of living in the troubled first quarter of the 21st century, you just want an album to play a bit too loud and which isn't therapeutic for the artist whose troubles gets dumped on you. Welcome then to your computer, car or turntable Manchester's Autocamper who like the idea of jangly guitars and alt.rock with slightly melancholy pop inclinations. And... > Read more
Map Like a Leaf
JULIAN REID: SOUNDS AND VISION (2025): The album as travelogue
1 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Expat songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Julian Reid has lived in Britain for more than two decades but in the past five years his work has taken him to through Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Pakistan and India, Canada and the United States. And elsewhere for holiday downtime. He has become a well-known photographer but he has always written music. We have featured one self-titled... > Read more
Raised
MID-YEAR REPORT: THE TOP 25 OF '25 (2025): Lend me your ears . . .
30 Jun 2025 | 5 min read | 1
It's the middle of the year and progress cards are being sent out. Here Elsewhere singles out excellence from the many dozens of albums we have written about so far this year. But note, these are only chosen from what we have actually reviewed: we heard more but didn't write about them. And we also didn't hear albums which are doubtless your favourites from the past six months.... > Read more
Van Morrison: Remembering Now (digital outlets)
16 Jun 2025 | 2 min read | 1
It's likely that the vast majority of people who were there for Van Morrison in his first couple of decades have long since parted company: too many album, quite a number a bit indifferent then in recent times his unpopular political statements about Covid mandates, government oppression . . . At least he had new targets because his constant complains about record companies (which dated... > Read more