Music at Elsewhere

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Robert Wyatt: His Greatest Misses (Ryko/EMI)

The story of this lifelong Marxist, musician, essayist and British intellectual is perhaps too complex too go into here, but here is the short-hand. Drummer in the innovative jazz-rock outfit Soft Machine in the late Sixties; formed the short-lived Matching Mole in the early Seventies; fell from a window in '73 and has been in a wheelcahir since; musical allies include Pink Floyd, Brian Eno,... more >>

Robert Wyatt: Sea Songs

Added: 14 Jun 2010 1 Comment

The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt: I Love You I Love You (Luaka Bop)

This folk-punk'n'kitchen sink outfit from New York play fast'n'furious with raging acoustic guitars, hammering drums and splatters of sax which is undeniably party-friendly but by golly do they like to repeat a phrase repeat a phrase repeat a phrase repeat a phrase repeat a phrase repeat a phrase . . . Then they'll change it a little but then repeat a... more >>

Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt: Fast Forward Regrets

Added: 14 Jun 2010

The Album Leaf: A Chorus of Storytellers (SubPop)

This quiet, mostly instrumental and discreetly seductive album by a band with a very confusing name has been slipping back into the player quite a lot recently -- and I suspect it came out a few months ago, but I've only belatedly discovered it. The Album Leaf has been the on-going project of the San Diego-based songwriter Jimmy LaValle whose music conjures up dream states, ambient... more >>

The Album Leaf: Falling From the Sun

Added: 14 Jun 2010

Various Artists: Roll Your Moneymaker, I Smell a Rat (Trikont/Yellow Eye)

Subtitled “Early Black Rock'n'Roll” these two parallel volumes (Roll is 1948-58, Rat is 1949-59) pick up some classic, dirty, thrilling rock'n'roll from the time before and through the Elvis Presley years, but often sound much more scandalising and sexualised than even The King. So across these two discs – and you need both – are the great Ike Turner (You've Got... more >>

Ruth Brown: Please Don't Freeze

Added: 14 Jun 2010

Crowded House: Intriguer (Universal)

Many years ago, when I interviewed Neil Finn about his solo career (here) post-Crowded House I reminded him that he'd once told me he felt bands had a natural lifespabn. He said at that time he felt CH didn't have quite as long as he wanted . . . which may explain their second coming. This time out, with the same band as for Time on Earth three years ago, CH seem a little more taut and... more >>

Crowded House: Either Side of the World

Added: 14 Jun 2010

Various Artists: Got No Chains; The Songs of the Walkabouts (Glitterhouse/Yellow Eye)

The Walkabouts have -- for 25 years -- been the vehicle for songwriter Chris Eckman (see here) and Carla Torgerson who have been mainstays in a band with a revloving door membership. Some might push the Walkabouts into the broader indie-rock or alt.country category, but as this tribute illustrates, their songs are so malleable that they can be remade by very diverse artists. This... more >>

Hugo Race: Cold Eye

Added: 14 Jun 2010

Stornoway: Beachcomber's Windowsill (4AD)

Named for a small town in the Outer Hebrides and affecting a kind of folksy pop, Stornoway from Oxford pull light and slightly satirical styles (We Are The Battery Humans with its references to people born to be free-range but preferring to watch television) together with Anglofolk of the Amazing Blondel-to-Fleet Foxes continuum and literary lyrics sung with a direct earnestness which calls to... more >>

Stornoway: Here Comes the Blackout

Added: 8 Jun 2010

Turin Brakes: Outbursts (Cooking Vinyl)

The British duo of Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian -- aka Turin Brakes -- don't seem given to "outburst" as this album title suggests: they were originally an acoustic-driven outfit whose sound got bigger by musical embellishment, but always seemed considered, thoughtful and prone to restraint. They were, for a while anyway, the more interesting Coldplay or Starsailor without... more >>

Turin Brakes: The Invitation

Added: 8 Jun 2010

Eli Paperboy Reed: Come and Get It (Capitol)

The previous album by this white boy singin' soul music -- Roll With You -- was considered a Best of Elsewhere 2008 release but didn't quite make it into mainstream media or thinking. This time around, for a slightly lesser album, he's been picking up big press . . . and again he certainly deserves it. He may have come from Boston but he sounds steeped in the spirits of Memphis, Motown... more >>

Eli Paperboy Reed: Name Calling

Added: 7 Jun 2010

Karen Elson: The Ghost Who Walks (XL)

As you may already know, Karen Elson from England comes with a number of black marks against her on this debut album: she was a model (and no one takes them seriously, huh?) and her husband is Jack White (Stripes). Still, Carla Bruni made better albums than most would like to give her credit for -- and we shouldn't hold her marriage against her. In fact in this case White's cedibility is so... more >>

Karen Elson: Lunasa

Added: 7 Jun 2010

The Cinematic Orchestra: Late Night Tales (LNT/Southbound)

Strictly speaking this should be credited to "Various Artists" because this 19-track collection is yet another in the Late Night Tales mix-tape series where an artist or group is invited to compile a disc of material which suits those lower-light moods. The Cinematic Orchestra here bring together such diverse spirits as Nick Drake and Steve Reich, Burt Bacharach and Shuggie Otis,... more >>

Nick Drake: Three Hours

Added: 7 Jun 2010

Superturtle: About the Sun (Ode)

Mainman behind Superturtle Darren McShane certainly has prior form, among other things he formed Chainsaw Masochist (on Flying Nun, for those old enough to remember) and more recently he was in Figure 60 as well as having been a sound engineer -- which is how he met some of the fellow travelers here (bassist Ben Furniss from the Broken Heartbreakers and White Swan Black Swan, and vocalist Jude... more >>

Superturtle: Valley Town

Added: 7 Jun 2010

The Cure: Disintegration, DeLuxe Edition (Universal)

Many of us preferred The Cure when they were gloomy and gothic, carving out odd little masterpieces on albums like Seventeen Seconds (1980) and Pornography ('82). Basically when frontman Robert Smith was more than a little glum. Disintegration (telling title, Bob) comes from '89 when something snapped in his psyche and plummeted him to another depth . . . only to emerge with dramatically... more >>

The Cure: Pictures of You

Added: 7 Jun 2010

Bettye LaVette: Interpretations; The British Rock Songbook (Anti)

Soul singer and Muscle Shoals veteran LaVette has enjoyed a revival recently: her 05 album I've Got My Own Hell to Raise put her back to the foreground; the excellent 07 Scene of the Crime teamed her with US alt.country rockers Drive-By Truckers; and last year she was at Barack Obama's inauguration and with the remaining Beatles at New York's Radio City Music Hall for a fundraiser. A... more >>

Bettye LaVette: Salt of the Earth

Added: 1 Jun 2010

Joe South: A Look Inside/So The Seeds Are Growing (Raven/EMI)

Joe South wrote some classic songs which others took to great heights: Hush (Deep Purple); I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (Lynn Anderson); Down in the Boon Docks (Billy Joe Royal) and others. Of his own career he is best known for the terrific Games People Play which was also much covered (in New Zealand by Allison Durban) and the weary Don't It Make You Wanna Go Home Lord. He had a... more >>

Joe South: Oprah Cried (2009)

Added: 31 May 2010

Solomon Burke: Nothing's Impossible (Shock)

The extraordinary Solomon Burke has enjoyed that rarity in popular music, not just a second coming but a sustained one. Music history is full of acts who come back after their first seminal period but few of them -- Dylan a notable exception, the Searchers' story the more common -- have a sustained run of artistic as well as commercial success. Commercial success is a relative term in... more >>

Solomon Burke: I'm Leaving

Added: 31 May 2010

Nightchoir: 24 Hours of Night (1157 Records)

Every May, being New Zealand Music Month, many dozens of albums arrive almost simultaneously -- over 40 in four weeks last year, which is kinda ridiculous -- so Elsewhere sifts judiciously (as best it can with that volume) and points to those which might fly beneath the radar. Let's hope this one doesn't. Nightchoir play what could loosely be described as indie rock, but this debut... more >>

Nightchoir: Glass Tiger

Added: 31 May 2010 1 Comment

Plan B: The Defamation of Strickland Banks (Atlantic)

East London 'ard-man rapper Ben Drew -- aka Plan B -- can deliver some bruising rap about utterly nasty characters (and in an uncompromising manner which suggests you shouldn't mess with him). But he also showcases another side on this, his second studio album. That of an aching falsetto-Smokey Robinson/Motown-styled soul singer. He goes from grime and the ghetto to Hitsville and Stax-Volt,... more >>

Plan B: Hard Times

Added: 24 May 2010

Villagers: Becoming a Jackal (Domino)

Engrossing though the clear, strong voice of Conor J O'Brien out of Dublin is -- the chief feature of this quietly gripping album -- it is the insistent, poetic first-person, image-carving narratives which become irritating at times. O'Brien frequently writes songs from that perspective of what I call The Knowledgeable One and he will "show you the backroom where I saw the dead"... more >>

Villagers: Home

Added: 24 May 2010

Jack Rose: Two Originals of Red Horse, White Music and Opium Musick (VHF)

Quite why this 2004 instrumental album -- actually guitarist Rose's two even earlier albums on a single disc, appparently -- has turned up now is a bit of a mystery, but those with a taste for Anglo-folk blues, Davey Graham, John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Bert Jansch, Doug Cox and others will find a lot to enjoy in this six and 12-string finger-picking. As with Graham and then Jimmy Page, Rose --... more >>

Jack Rose: Linden Avenue Stomp