Music at Elsewhere

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These pages - with sample tracks and videos posted - introduce and review new music which may otherwise go unheard and unnoticed. Music from Elsewhere reviews new albums (and some important reissues) you'll play more than once at home or in the car, and will want to tell friends about.

If you do, pass the word: you heard it first at Elsewhere.

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Public Service Broadcasting: Inform-Educate-Entertain (Test-Card/Southbound)

When a perilous space walk barely rates a mention on this week's nightly news, PBS's remarkable album reminds us of when progress, science and discovery meant the world stood on a thrilling threshold of promise. But it doesn't do it through finger-in-ear retro-folk nostalgia. This canny British duo use relentlessly exciting electro-beats, astutely chosen samples from newsreel and... more >>

Signal 30

Added: 20 May 2013 4 Comments

Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampire of the City (XL)

Vampire Weekend are one of the cleverest American bands of the moment, and for many that won't be a compliment. They are smart and knowing, and that meant on their last album Contra they shaved of a bit of Afrobeat and Paul Simon's Graceland as they expanded their musical palette. This time out though they seem to have gne for somethng we might call "beauty" in songs which often... more >>

Diane Young

Added: 20 May 2013

Rod Stewart: Time (Warners)

At the end of his enjoyable, candid autobiography last year Stewart said he'd started serious songwriting again (after decades). Given he was once a successful and often inspired writer, that was good news. The reflection necessary for that book seem to have prompted the co-writes here where he declares love for his wife Penny (She Makes Me Happy, Beautiful Morning), respect for the... more >>

It's Over

Added: 20 May 2013

Terry Allen: Bottom of the World (Allen/Southbound)

On the basis of his excellent Lubbock on Everything of '79, you'd probably always give country singer Allen the benefit of the doubt. But this one of sometimes laboured rhymes, small ideas writ large (actually just medium-sized), the understatement of things which barely deserved even that and the occasional lyrical (and musical) cliche will only be embraced by the most hardcore of fans who... more >>

Wake of the Red Witch

Added: 14 May 2013

Salon Kingsadore: Anti-Borneo Magic (Sarang Bang)

The Auckland Observatory last year was the perfect venue for Salon Kingsadore. While planets shifted and an astral journey past the rings of Saturn played out on the Stardome above, the group improvised fluid space-jazz rock propelled by the mercurial guitar of Gianmarco Liguori and the inventive keyboards of Murray McNabb, who here again helm “instant compositions” (with... more >>

Reciprocal Sword

Added: 13 May 2013 1 Comment

The Milk Carton Kids: The Ash and Clay (Anti)

Two perspectives on this come to mind. If you are under 25 and entranced by this duo, then go see your grandparents and borrow those old Simon and Garfunkel albms they are so attached to that they never threw them out. And if you have early S&G albums this one is proof of what your Mum said: never throw anything away, it'll come back into fashion again. The two singers here are... more >>

Promised Land

Added: 13 May 2013

Iggy and the Stooges: Ready to Die (Warners)

Iggy -- after that brilliantly intuitive period which encompassed three Stooges albums and The Idiot/Lust For Life solo albums with Bowie -- was always a smart button-pusher. So here -- with surviving Stooges and others making an excellent noise we'd have to concede -- you can almost see his finger hovering: Sex and Money (tick); "i got a job and I'm sick of it" (tick, but hardly... more >>

The Departed

Added: 6 May 2013

Meat Puppets: Rat Farm (Megaforce/Southbound)

Although one of the great ignored bands of the 80s for their sun-baked but tough psychedelic-cum-country rock, Arizona's Meat Puppets only really got traction in the 90s after their appearance on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged session. But it was all over quickly, guitarist Cris Kirkwood suffered severe drug problems, his bassist brother Curt relocated to Austin and their recording career... more >>

Leave Your Head Alone

Added: 6 May 2013

Archers of Loaf: All the Nations Airports (Fire/Southbound)

British pop has certainly had the eccentric end of the market fairly well wrapped up by bands like Half Man Half Biscuit, The Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band and the Soft Boys, or people like Jona Lewie and so on. Stateside, eccentricity seems to come in smaller packages (solo acts like Jonathan Richman, damaged souls like Roky Erickson and Daniel Johnston) but it appears to be less difficult... more >>

Worst Defense

Added: 6 May 2013

Charlie Horse: I Hope I Am Not a Monster (laughingoutlaw.com.au)

Better a few months late than not at all for this gritty, pleasingly ragged and sometimes boisterous rock from an Australian band which has done the character-building work through pubs but sensibly take themselves off to a cabin the Blue Mountains where they write and have a studio. The focus of the band is on singers/writers Crystal Rose and Paul McDonald who have an ear for darkly... more >>

I Killed My Mind

Added: 6 May 2013

Wayne Hancock: Ride (Bloodshot/Southbound)

Wayne "The Train" Hancock is best described as a truck-stop rocker. He's the guy you'd love to see at some juke-joint or country bar with his band as they take rockabilly, Hank Williams country, blues, honky tonk and some serious swinging'n'twangin' guitar to a crowd ready to dance, drink or dig into their crawfish or grits. He's got lowdown blues songs, road songs (with pedal... more >>

Deal Gone Down

Added: 6 May 2013

Suede: Bloodsports (Warner)

The timing of this first Suede album couldn't be better: David Bowie's got a new album out and his Alladin Sane celebrates an anniversary reissue. And for a band whose singer Brett Anderson owed a clear debt to aspects of Bowie in the Seventies this synergy for Suede should be useful. Quite what should we expect from a reunion album is however another question. Graham Parker and the... more >>

Hit Me

Added: 29 Apr 2013

Billy Bragg: Tooth and Nail (Cooking Vinyl)

The self-described Big Nose From Barking has always dealt a lovely line in romantic but clear-eyed sentiment alongside his more obvious political songs. And sometimes the politics has been personal and vice-versa. This album -- with a excellent small band, recorded by Joe Henry and following the death of Bragg's mother -- finds him in a mostly turned-down and reflective mood. The opener... more >>

Swallow My Pride

Added: 29 Apr 2013 1 Comment

Ethan Johns: If Not Now Then When? (Three Crows/Southbound)

Good title and cover shot for the debut album from someone whose name usually follows the words "Produced by" on albums from Crowded House, Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Rufus Wainwright, Ray LaMontagne and other luminaries. He's also the son of Glyn whose name followed "Produced by" on records by the Stones, Clapton, Led Zepp and the Who . . . and who is still active... more >>

Willow

Added: 29 Apr 2013

British Sea Power: Machineries of Joy (Rough Trade)

IN the current roll call of great bands out of Blighty, the fascinating and heroically named British Sea Power seem to have gone woefully overlooked. Their intelligence and musical curiosity has manifested itself in two soundtracks, the one for Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran film from 1934 being a particular Elsewhere favourite for its sympathetic understanding of the stark images. Their... more >>

K Hole

Added: 22 Apr 2013 3 Comments

Steve Earle: The Low Highway (New West/Southbound)

The final track on this -- Earle's 15th studio album -- is Remember Me, a moving message to his child who might never see him when grown. Earle, now 58 and with a three-year old, knows this possibility and such honest emotion (sometimes fueled by political anger) has been a hallmark of a career which looked finished in the mid Nineties when he was jailed for drug and weapon possession.... more >>

Remember Me

Added: 22 Apr 2013 1 Comment

Superturtle: Beat Manifesto (Sarang Bang)

This is how all vinyl purchases should come, with a CD. If you'r going to shell out for a record -- and there's a limited edition of this one -- then you should of course get a free CD or download link. Good on local label Sarang Bang for doing that. Superturtle -- who launch this at Auckland's Hard Luck Cafe on Saturday -- here throw you back to the mid Eighties for a dozen... more >>

You're Gonna Get There Too

Added: 15 Apr 2013 1 Comment

Karl Bartos: Off the Record (Bureau B)

One glance at the cover photo and two bars of the first track and you know Bartos has some serious Kraftwerk origins. In fact he was in the group for 15 years from 1975 and then -- if we believe the slightly disco-pop ballad Without a Trace of Emotion here -- quit with little love lost to pursue a solo career with "the world at my feet". If that were entirely true however you'd... more >>

Without a Trace of Emotion

Added: 15 Apr 2013

Wooden Wand: Blood Oath of the New Blues (Fire/Southbound)

In the real world “a songwriter's songwriter” usually translates into “respected, but no commercial potential”. Wooden Wand – aka James Jackson Toth – has been been described as having “that picaresque quality Dylan had in his heyday” by Swans' Michael Gira, and some have cited Neil Young, Springsteen and Cohen in reviews. Hard to make... more >>

Southern Colorado Song

Added: 8 Apr 2013

Stornoway: Tales from Terra Firma (4AD)

The Anglofolk 2012 debut album Beachcomber's Windowsill by this Oxford group (named for a small town in the windblown Outer Hebrides) didn't quite cut it with its folksy pop and songs about bird watching, or people preferring to watch television rather than roaming free. Just seemed a bit twee and earnest. However here they paint with bigger brushes and aim for spiritually-imbued... more >>

The Bigger Picture