Music at Elsewhere
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Richmond Fontaine: The High Country (Shock)
27 Feb 2012 | 1 min read | 2
If anyone can write a concept album it's Willy Vlautin of the alt.country Oregon band Richmond Fontaine whose first novel The Motel Life was as dark and violent as anything by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road) or Elmore Leonard. Previous Richmond Fontaine albums have had themes too: The Fitzgerald was based on Waitsean, marginal characters around a seedy casino where... > Read more
The Chainsaw Sea
Lydia Cole: Me and Moon (lydiacole.com)
21 Feb 2012 | 1 min read | 3
Lydia Cole has had some interesting and, I think, generous reviews for this quiet, intimate and at times very engaging album. But . . . And we'll get to that "but" in a minute. It seems these 11 songs were born of a heartbreak and, according to her promo sheet, "Cole spent the last 18 months in hibernation where she turned to her allies -- music, art and time -- for... > Read more
Undone
Wendy Rene: After Laughter Comes Tears (Light in the Attic)
20 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
The career of raw-edged pop-soul singer Wendy Rene is remarkably brief as the subtitle of this 22 song collection attests: it is The Complete Stax and Volt Singles and Rarities 1964 -65. By '67 she had quit music to concentrate on raising her children, doubtless prompted when she declined to fly with Otis Redding and his band on what was their final flight. It was also to be her final... > Read more
He Hasn't Failed Me Yet (previously unreleased)
Various artists: George Yearbook 2011 (Frequency)
20 Feb 2012 | <1 min read
Although I was once corrected in print by a programmer when I said radio was about music (he, astonishingly, said in a letter to the newspaper that I was wrong, radio was about advertising!) it is encouraging to know some stations still put music before cheap promotional stunts. What is always surprising is that not more music stations put out compilation albums, such as this from the folk... > Read more
Gabriel
Various artists: Apple compilation (EMI)
20 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
This double disc through JB Hi-Fi stores was previously only available in the enormously expensive 17 CD collection of artists signed to the Beatles' Apple Records (Badfinger, James Taylor, classical composer John Tavener, Mary Hopkins, Billy Preston, Modern Jazz Quartet, Doris Troy, Jackie Lomax and the Radha Krsna Temple). The first disc here is 20 tracks by the ill-fated Badfinger (their... > Read more
Suitcase (early version)
Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Shock)
20 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
Quick rule of thumb? Avoid songs which have the word "destiny" in them, they are usually worthy, pretentious, over emotional and . . . frankly, they are usually awful. Now we might add "quotidian" as a caution (it appears here on this truly over-wrought album) and indeed any songs which have as titles Malefic Dowery, Ye Renew the Plaintiff, Excorsismic Breeding... > Read more
We Will Commit Wolf Murder
Various artists: Womad, The World's Festival 2012 (Cartell)
20 Feb 2012 | <1 min read
With the annual Womad festival about to descend on New Plymouth's beautiful Bowl of Brooklands site once again -- over the weekend of March 16-18 -- this 16 song collection wil serve as a primer and a memento for many. Of course there is no subtitute for seeing some of these acts (some are very visual) or enjoying deep immersion in whole albums, but here are single-track tasters of Staff... > Read more
Nawwar
Ringo Starr: Ringo 2012 (Hip-O/Universal)
20 Feb 2012 | 1 min read | 1
It's a shame the most interesting Beatles at the time of their 1970 break-up – Lennon and Harrison – are no longer with us, because the post-Beatles legacy is carried into the second decade of the 21st century by McCartney and Starr's simultaneously released albums . . . which confirm their irrelevance in contemporary music, McCartney's Kisses on the Bottom especially. But... > Read more
Samba
First Aid Kit: The Lion's Roar (Liberator)
15 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
For this, their international debut, the Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Soderberg who are up front of First Aid Kit, have had considerable assistance and acclaim. Recorded by Mike Mogis in Omaha (who has done similar work for Bright Eyes, and BE himself, Conor Oberst, guests on the final track King of the World), The Lion's Roar would seem to confirm them being tipped as a new big thing... > Read more
In the Hearts of Men
Spartacus R: The View (Loop)
13 Feb 2012 | 2 min read
Halfway through this weirdly psychedelic and constantly surprising album -- inconveniently released at the end of last year when people were buying greatest hits for Christmas and rock writers were compiling their "best of the year" lists -- is the oddball piece Golden Sands. Musically it opens with astral-flight synth and then establishes a subtle, repeated groove -- first... > Read more
Rapata
Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (4AD)
13 Feb 2012 | 1 min read | 1
As with Nick Cave, Mark Langean knows the idiom that suits his mood and voice best . . . and it is a similarly dark place, as the title of this deeply impressive album suggets. But Lanegan -- who has appeared in these pages on albums by the Queens of the Stone Age, Gutter Twins, Soulsavers and others (see here) -- knows how to mix up the misery and gothic imagery in music which has a... > Read more
Haborview Hospital
Vintage Trouble: The Bomb Shelter Sessions (Shock)
13 Feb 2012 | <1 min read
Although they were somewhat obvious -- hot young black soul-blues singer with James Brown moves fronting a white blues-rock band -- this four piece from San Francisco certainly impressed in a Jools Holland showing (see clip) last year. This is the belated local release of their 2010 debut which garnered them considerable attention for its tough minded economy and rock edge. Ty Taylor... > Read more
Jezzebella
Various Artists: Chimes of Freedom; The Songs of Bob Dylan (Fontana)
13 Feb 2012 | 4 min read | 1
The Word magazine out of Britain recently had a very funny article about this four CD set of previously unreleased songs by artists covering Bob Dylan, profits from which go to Amnesty International. What the Word did, working on the premise that the set might be a clever way of also getting the bard to a young audience, was to ask kids who hadn't heard of Bob Dylan what they thought of the... > Read more
With God on Our Side
Steven Graves: Matter of Time (stevengravesmusic.com)
12 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
American journeyman musician Steven Graves gets some good comments in the US for his socially aware music, and its rootsy Americana parameters which are broad enough to encompass Neil Young and Bob Dylan as well as Bob Marley and the Grateful Dead. His heart is in the right place -- 100 per cent of the proceeds from the digital download of the single White Buffalo off this, his third album,... > Read more
Love is Real
Arcades: Who's Most Lost? (Rattle)
9 Feb 2012 | 1 min read
Now this album on Rattle has a very interesting pedigree. Mainman behind it is Dugal McKinnon (who wrote the lyrics, and did some of the music and programming with vocalist David Prior, and played some guitar) is the director of the Lilburn Electroacoustic Music Studio in Wellington . . . and is Dr McKinnon to boot. So what we have is an art-pop electronic outing (not... > Read more
Deep Space
Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Sony)
8 Feb 2012 | 2 min read
Because he is now 77 and has weighed words heavily all his life, we should look at the amusing ambiguities in this album's title. Songs about aging and darkness, failed love, apologising to women in his past, angels scratching at the door to come in, non-specific religious imagery . . . For anyone who has followed Cohen's career, especially the albums of the past 25 years (and how few... > Read more
Darkness
Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (MPL/Universal)
8 Feb 2012 | 2 min read
The distance of time allows us an even more objective view of the Beatles' remarkable and singular career, and the diversity of their songwriting. It is hard to imagine a pop band (She Loves You) would go on to write some of the most self-contained psychedelic pop (Strawberry Fields Forever), let alone a band which would write serious music (Eleanor Rigby) would also do children's songs... > Read more
My Valentine
Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Interscope)
8 Feb 2012 | 2 min read | 1
Anyone who takes popular culture seriously enough to know you can't take it too seriously is doubtless amused by the controversy over this 25-year old American singer. Some internet blatherers have turned up the fact she was born Elizabeth Grant and under that name recorded an album, seems to have some "work" done and -- perhaps worst of all -- she comes from a wealthy family.... > Read more
Summertime Sadness
Moana and the Tribe: The Best of Moana and the Tribe (Black Pearl/Ode)
7 Feb 2012 | 4 min read
For many years I had thought the best and most powerful music of Moana Maniapoto -- stretched over four albums -- was deserving of a compilation which would remind people what a singular contribution she has made to New Zealand music, even if it went largely overlooked and most unplayed by New Zealand radio. In late 2011 Moana told me that not only was it happening, but that she would like... > Read more
Ancestors
Doris Troy: I'll Do Anything, The Doris Troy Anthology 1960-1996 (Kent/Border)
31 Jan 2012 | 2 min read | 1
When Doris Troy died in Las Vegas in 2004 at age 67, her obituaries seemed like a who's who namecheck of her era. No obit for this New York daughter of a preacher was complete without mentioning Solomon Burke and Chuck Jackson, the Hollies, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, James Brown, George Harrison, Billy Preston, Stephen Stills, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Chaka Khan . . . The list goes... > Read more