Music at Elsewhere
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Various Artists: Wild Things (Vostok)
27 May 2018 | 3 min read
When John Baker released his first Wild Things LP collection on record back at the dawn of the Nineties (subtitled “Wyld Kiwi Garage 1966-1969”) there was not the plethora of New Zealand music compilations there is today. Certainly there had been AK79, Class of '81, Goat's Milk Soap and Art for Chart's Sake among others . . . but none of them were quite like what Baker pulled... > Read more
Social End Product, by the Bluestars
Various Artists: 1968, The Kiwi Music Scene (Frenzy)
26 May 2018 | 1 min read
By any measure, 1968 was an extraordinary year in global politics: the year began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, rolled on through the student and workers' revolution in France, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Grosvenor Square anti-Vietnam protests in London . . . In music there was radical chic as the Stones went back to their blues roots for the... > Read more
Hey Gyp, by the Underdogs
Cut Worms: Hollow Ground (Jagjaguwar)
21 May 2018 | <1 min read
An odd one, not because it's odd . . . but more because it isn't. Cut Worms is actually Midwest singer-songwriter/visual artist Max Clarke now based in Brooklyn. And what he writes are often gentle, deliberately pop-framed songs which often have the charm of, say, Gary Lewis and the Playboys' unashamed Beatlesque pop from the Sixties (on Think I Might Be in Love) and the country-edge of the... > Read more
Cash for Gold
Matthew Sweet: Tomorrow's Daughter (Honeycomb Hideout/online outlets)
21 May 2018 | 1 min read
And here's an object lesson in effortless power pop from a master. Elsewhere never apologises for loving this idiom which peels off slivers of pre-66 Beatles and Byrds, has a lineage in Big Star, Badfinger, Cheap Trick, early Petty and the Posies and comes right up to . . . Just so many good people. Matthew Sweet has had digressions off piste on three covers albums with Susanna... > Read more
Girl with Cat
Simon Hirst: Feet of God (usual online outlets)
21 May 2018 | 1 min read | 1
There is an interesting and often ignored thread of slightly dreamy, widescreen pop out there from the likes of Jules Shear, Grant-Lee Phillips (before he went more twang), Matthew Sweet and many others, and at times it gets its head well above the parapet with the likes of Crowded House and Neil Finn's crafted songs. Simon Hirst is in that lineage, although when he hits the midpoint of... > Read more
Arohanui
Thomas Bartlett and Nico Muhly: Peter Pears; Balinese Ceremonial Music (Nonesuch/Universal)
14 May 2018 | 1 min read
Cards on the table now, this I like . . . but I just don't get it.The title is the first problem: Peter Pears; if you know him at all it is as a long-dead classical singer/composer. And is this Balinese ceremonial music?Well, not a lot of it. Those of us who have been to Bali and enjoyed a healthy distance from the bars and boozy Australians in Kuta for the quiet of village life and... > Read more
Taboeh Teleo
Pieter T: Goliath (usual streaming services)
13 May 2018 | 1 min read
One of the finest Pasifika soul/r'n'b voices – and acknowledged as such by radio play – Pieter T builds a pleasing bridge between pop, r'n'b, electronica and the airy, falsetto soul much favoured by young men in the genre. And that perhaps explains why the first two singles here ROD and Moving On (with B Wise) were playlisted on Spotify's New Music Friday in Australia and New... > Read more
Used to Be
Steve Reich: Pulse/Quartet (Nonesuch/Universal)
10 May 2018 | 1 min read
As much in the vanguard of tape manipulation and phasing as he was in minimalism, Steve Reich increasingly brought a refined musicality to his larger projects like Tehillim and his opera The Cave which explored his Jewish heritage with historical resonances. In some of his work – especially the more minimalist and layered pieces – he is not that far from a kind of... > Read more
Quartet: Fast Part 3
Modern Studies: Welcome Strangers (Fire/Southbound)
7 May 2018 | <1 min read
We caught the debut album Swell to Great by this group now based in Scotland over a year after it rose without a trace in 2016 and was reissued on Fire in late 2017. That album breathed a contemporary and melancholy folk style coupled with loops, and we observed it seemed still on the surface but things ran dark and deep. We might says the same of this, except this is much more orchestrated... > Read more
Fast as Flows
Various Artists: Late Night Tales; Agnes Obel (latenighttales/Southbound)
7 May 2018 | <1 min read
The Late Night Tales series always introduces unfamiliar artists in the selections but this collection by Agnes Obel is must more eccentric and eclectic than any others in the on-going series Opening with a disconcerting piece by Henry Mancini (The Evil Theme) and closing with Obel reading a poem of her own over percussion and a throbbing melody (Poem About Death), it digresses into Eden... > Read more
Glemmer Du, by Agnes Obel
Sandy Mill: A Piece of Me (She's Boss)
4 May 2018 | 2 min read
It has probably been said by everyone writing about this album but it bears repeating: Sandy Mill is the singer whose voice you've often heard (with SJD, Neil Finn, Dave Dobbyn, Don McGlashan and many, many more) but whose name may still be unfamiliar. This five-track EP -- which actually plays like an album in its breadth and I believe qualifies as such these days – is not just a... > Read more
Giftbox
Jamie McDell: Extraordinary Girl (usual streaming/download outlets)
3 May 2018 | 1 min read
Out here at Elsewhere we consider one of the healthiest signs of the state of our music industry in this particular New Zealand Music Month isn't the international profiles of artists like Nadia Reid, Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams, Delaney Davidson and so on or even the conspicuous successes of local artists, but the sheer diversity of talented artist out there who are working, recording and... > Read more
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Gurrumul: Djarimirri/Child of the Rainbow (Skinny Fish/Southbound)
29 Apr 2018 | 2 min read
About three years ago when I was regular guest on Karyn Hay's now defunct Radio Live nighttime show I would play new (and obscure old) music for an hour every fortnight. Much of it was challenging or different, and e-mails would come in asking for more . . . or no more. The music ran the gamut from rock and hip-hop to quasi-classical minimalism and old blues, something to annoy everyone you... > Read more
Gopuru/Tuna Swimming
Delaney Davidson: Shining Day (Rough Diamond/Southbound)
27 Apr 2018 | 1 min read
Although most would, perhaps quite rightly, associate Delaney Davidson with dark Waitsean sounds, raw loops and frequently menacing songs at the midpoint of Hank Williams and Nick Cave, there has often been a very strong pop component in his work, catching the chords and structures of classic Fifties and early Sixties sounds. Just check Tell It To You on Lucky Guy (2015), or Old Boy... > Read more
Such a Loser
Bernie Griffen and the Thin Men: Doors Wide Open (usual streaming/download services)
27 Apr 2018 | 1 min read
From the Latin shuffle of the opener here on the self-lacerating My Brain Exploded (“I just can't focus, I argue with myself”) it is clear this journeyman songwriter and late bloomer (when it came to recording) is stretching into new areas, something very personal. By his own admission, Griffen is in ill-health – much of it self-inflicted – and here are intimations... > Read more
I Fell Out of the Sky
Kimbra: Primal Heart (Warners)
23 Apr 2018 | 1 min read
Further proof of the benefits of leaving the comfort of home and a loyal local following to try your hand in the wider world. Kimbra out of Hamilton made that leap early in her career when she started to feature on Australian electronica singles (most notably on the Gotye single Somebody That I Used to Know), became as big across the Tasman – where she had relocated – as she was... > Read more
Past Love
Death and the Maiden: Wisteria (Fishrider)
23 Apr 2018 | 2 min read
While it was only right, proper and long overdue that the Apra Silver Scroll award night should be held in Dunedin in 2017 you'd have to say it made for bloody awful television. Many of those there on the night – but by no means all from the naysaying this writer heard privately – attested to what a great night it was and -- with lashings of booze, old friends and a sense of... > Read more
River Underground
Emily Fairlight: Mother of Gloom (usual streaming outlets)
23 Apr 2018 | 1 min read
Taking its title from a line by Martha Wainwright and with song titles like Body Below, Drag The Night In, Private Apocalypse, Sinking Ship and Loneliest Race you'd expect a fairly dark ride on the second album by this Wellington-based alt.folk singer/songwriter recorded in Austin. But with her powerfully quivering voice – at time she calls to mind Buffy Sainte-Marie and a more... > Read more
Private Apocalypse
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
23 Apr 2018 | 2 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists and Yasmin does with EPs. Comments will be brief. . Richard X Bennett: Away From The Many (usual download and streaming... > Read more
Tom Cunliffe: Template For Love (usual digital outlets, CD)
18 Apr 2018 | 1 min read
Anyone expecting this second album by folk-rocker (and then some) Tom Cunliffe to be more focused than its predecessor will be disappointed . . . but also perhaps pleased by the increased diversity here. If that debut Howl & Whisper seemed to have its roots in pubs (the Pogues were a reference point for a few songs) this steps sideways, right from the power-pop of the exciting and... > Read more