Music at Elsewhere
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The Mons Whaler: Hold My Gun (digital outlets)
3 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
What's in a name? Whatever “the Mons Whaler” is, it sounds like a big and possibly menacing leviathan. And an album title like that? Clearly this four-piece from Taranaki are serious, and sure enough this album sometimes rides on the back of heavyweight blues and alt.rock. But there is much more than that going on in these 10 refined and discrete songs which range... > Read more
Linger On
Liam Gallagher, John Squire: Liam Gallagher John Squire (digital outlets)
1 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
Although never much greater than the sum of its partners, this pairing of former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is not without interest. We dispense immediately with the lyrics because most of them are lame, lazy or referential as has often been the way with Gallagher in his solo career. And we concede immediately that much of this is music aimed for... > Read more
Mars to Liverpool
Chelsea Wolfe: She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (digital outlets)
29 Feb 2024 | <1 min read
Anyone new to this industrial strength, electro-techno Californian – with reference points in Trent Reznor, Bauhaus and recent Gary Numan – might note previous albums included Pain is Beauty, Abyss and Birth of Violence. Those titles read like consumer warnings, albums only to be approached by frontline members of the armed forces. Wolfe's background speaks of longtime... > Read more
Tunnel Lights
Sean Lennon: Asterisms (Tzadik/digital outlets)
29 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
The title of this album is telling and clue to contents: it refers to constellations and shapes in the sky. Which is entirely in keeping with the five instrumentals which take an astral trip somewhere between space rock and sky-scaling prog on the opener Starwater, but later comes with a large helping of Bitches Brew/Jack Johnson-era Miles Davis. It was recorded when the musicians could... > Read more
Thinking of M
Brittany Howard: What Now (digital outlets)
26 Feb 2024 | 2 min read
Some years ago I heard a remarkable song which I immediately introduced to my uni music students: it was Don't Wanna Fight by Alabama Shakes, a band I knew nothing about at the time. But the singer, Brittany Howard, delivered the “I don't wanna fight” line over and over with a different expression, from anger to resignation and defeat. It was a remarkable performance and... > Read more
Red Flags
Paul McCartney and Wings: Band on the Run, Underdubbed (digital outlets)
19 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
Band on the Run is widely accepted as McCartney best post-Beatles album, but it was born our of adversity. The ground had been prepared by the excellent if underrated Ram (a longtime Essential Elsewhere album which has grown in stature over time) and the lesser Red Rose Speedway, but on the eve of recording his next album two band members quit just before they were due to leave for sessions... > Read more
No Words
Ravenhall: Brother (digital outlets)
17 Feb 2024 | <1 min read
The folk-rock duo of Joe Ravenhall and Chris Brebner appeared at Elsewhere previously with their Live at Breb's Bar last year. Impressive songwriters, expressive singers – we'd put them in the Don Walker/Jimmy Barnes axis but Bob Seger also comes to mind on the more assertive material – and storytellers, Ravenhall deserve more attention from mainstream radio than maybe they will... > Read more
The River
Idles: Tangk (digital outlets)
17 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
If the British five-piece Idles haven't previously crashed onto your pathway you might need a little warning: singer-writer Joe Talbot has been a troubled man so sings a troubled song. Sometimes he has roared them out as he has grappled with addiction, being a carer for his stroke-affected mother, living through Brexit and all the pressures of the 21st century which roll like a scroll of... > Read more
Grace
Future Islands: People Who Aren't There Anymore (digital outlets)
17 Feb 2024 | <1 min read
On this, their seventh album, Future Islands' frontman/writer Samuel T. Herring – also an actor – delivers every emotion as if it's on the surface of his skin as he immerses himself (and his audience) in the emotional fallout of a recent break-up. “I am waiting, I’m not breaking I lie, tell myself, 'it’s okay', when it's not quite” on The Tower;... > Read more
The Smile: Wall of Eyes (digital outlets)
12 Feb 2024 | 2 min read
Some bands are the vehicle for the songwriter: the Kinks, Jam, Pretenders, the Chills, Verlaines, Wilco, the Veils . . . A few are greater than the sum of their parts – Split Enz, Beatles, U2, Blondie, boygenius, Fat Freddy's Drop, Phoenix Foundation . . . The test of that is to see how well the members do as solo artists, like the Stones. Mick Jagger's solo albums always... > Read more
Melati ESP: adaptations (digital outlets)
5 Feb 2024 | <1 min read
Well, you don't come to Elsewhere for Beyonce and J-Lo, do you? So here's something closer to our mandate: a series of remixes of tracks from the Indonesian-born, New York-based electronica experimentalist Melati Malay's debut album of last year, hipernatural. She was part of the Asa Tone trio but her debut album (all in Indonesian) launched her as a solo artist. She's collaborated with... > Read more
Kupu Kupu Electronik (Kasimyn remix)
Sleater-Kinney: Little Rope (digital outlets)
5 Feb 2024 | 2 min read
Sleater-Kinney's album titles have always been interesting: 2019's The Center Won't Hold came from Yeats' The Second Coming and – given the album's background – the “little rope” here may refer to a rope of rescue, the gallows' rope, the rope that binds, constrains and tethers, or the one you might be at the end of? The one given to hang yourself? Since their... > Read more
Don't Feel Right
J Mascis: What Do We Do Now (digital outlets)
4 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
In 2002, J Mascis – of Dinosaur Jr – played an unforgettable solo show at Auckland's Galatos. Looking like “a slacker physics graduate” (our words in the review) he began with his melodic alt.pop and then suddenly hit a foot-pedal to unleash a howling gale of guitar squall in the manner of Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Young has been a key touchstone for Mascis'... > Read more
Set Me Down
Folly Group: Down There! (digital outlets)
4 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
As we noted many years ago when discussing in great detail The Strokes when they emerged -- and being rather cynical in the face of seeming unanimous acclaim -- sometimes we need to be cautious about why we fall for certain artists. As we observed, we suspected it was because the Strokes played right into the familiar for many older rock writers (rock'n'roll attitude, New York,... > Read more
Big Ground
Rosina and the Weavers: Hitching the Starlight Highway (digital outlets)
4 Feb 2024 | 1 min read
Out of Pukekohe, this five-piece might nominally be a rock band but with Rosina's flexible and often soulful vocals they have considerable reach and range beyond the genre, showcased on the slow opening title track. It's a decent enough song, but as an opening statement for a debut album it lacks lapel-grabbing attention on a collection which has more immediately compelling material later,... > Read more
Walking Song
Admiral Drowsy: Industrial Consistency (Melted Ice Cream/digital outlets)
26 Jan 2024 | 2 min read
With this second album following the much recommended The Gutter Boy Speculates of 2021, the project of Admiral Drowsy – Luke Scott with assistance from co-producer, drummer, bassist Ryan Chin – becomes even more clear. And it is rather special in a very unprepossessing way. First let's note that within what we call “rock” there are many artists and genres who... > Read more
Pinnacle
Shed Seven: A Matter of Time (digital outlets)
19 Jan 2024 | 2 min read | 1
It's been almost 30 years since Shed Seven arrived in the mainframe of Britpop with their energetic debut album Change Giver. Although it was their 1996 follow-up A Maximum High which was their most successful and accomplished outing, better capturing the zeitgeist and them as spiritual followers of both widescreen, uplifting Oasis and a powered-up Smiths. As we've mentioned previously,... > Read more
Throwaway ft Pete Doherty
The Afro-Semitic Experience: Our Feet Began to Pray (digital outlets)
19 Jan 2024 | 1 min read
Released to coincide with the birthday of Dr Martin Luther King, January 15, this musical project of unity began in the Nineties when pianist Warren Byrd and bassist David Chevan hooked up to play in each other's bands. And from that the idea of exploring Jewish and African American traditions grew. Hence the Afro-Semitic Experience and a series of albums since which bring together soul,... > Read more
Eretz Zavat Chalav
Sundae Painters, Sundae Painters (digital outlets)
17 Jan 2024 | 2 min read
It's possible that in 2023 we reached peak Flying Nun & Associates. Flying Nun never really went away: witness Roger Shepherd's memoir In Love With These Times and the many young acts citing the Clean, Chills, Bats and so on as influences. But Matthew Goody's excellent Needles and Plastic's detailed look at Nun records from 1981-1989 (the bands, characters and the scene by... > Read more
Serious Eye
Betsy and the Reckless: Salty (digital outlets)
12 Jan 2024 | <1 min read
They may not live up the rock'n'roll/rockabilly suggestion of their name but Taranaki's Betsy Knox and her band do a very appealing line in originals on this debut album which draws on soul, nightclub cabaret, not too much default reggae and a little jazzy swing. Released late last year and therefore lost in that “best of the year” mopping up period, Salty is damn fine calling... > Read more