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Amy Speace and the Tearjerkers: Songs For Bright Street (Wildflower/Elite)

Here is another album (like that by the wonderful Jimmy Norman, see tag) which has appeared long after its US release: this from singer-songwriter Speace came out mid-06. No matter, this alt.country/folk/Americana collection confirms why she has been a critics' favourite everywhere from Nashville to New York folk clubs. Speace has a classic contemporary country voice and she has obviously... more >>

Added: 20 Jan 08

John Mayall: Live From Austintx (New West/Elite)

John Mayall (whose Blues From Laurel Canyon in '68 appears as an Essential Elsewhere, see tag) was undeniably the man who founded the British blues boom in the early 60s and on his albums at the time he covered classic and often little known blues material. His bands during those years included Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (who went on to form Cream, among other things); Mick Taylor (later... more >>

Added: 20 Jan 08 1 Comment

Norman Meehan: Modigliani (Ode)

Pianist/composer Meehan may well be a scholar (he teaches jazz history and composition at the New Zealand School of Music, and is working on a biography of pianist Mike Nock) but there is nothing academic in his approach here. These angular, spacious compositions can be gutsy and deep or spry and flighty, and with bassist Nick Tipping (from Wellington pianist Charmaine Ford's award-winning... more >>

Added: 20 Jan 08

Jimmy Norman: Little Pieces (Wildflower)

Quite why and how this 2004 album has turned up only now is a mystery to me, but here it. Better late than . . . This old journeyman r'n'b singer co-wrote eight songs with Bob Marley in early '68 (a few appear on the Soul Almighty collection) and Marley recorded a number of his originals, and Norman apparently wrote some lyrics for the Irma Thomas/Rolling Stones hit Time is On My Side... more >>

Added: 12 Jan 08

Ray Davies: Working Man's Cafe (V2/Shock)

Ray Davies -- formerly of the Kinks (see tag to an Essential Elsewhere Kinks album) -- has had a busy time of it lately: in late 2003 the great English songwriter (of Englishness) was awarded an OBE, a week later he was shot in the leg in New Orleans, his Other People's Lives solo album in 2006 was much praised (it also comes with insightful liner notes on the songs), and now this new one in... more >>

Added: 12 Jan 08

Badakhshan Ensemble: Song and Dance from the Pamir Mountains (Smithsonian/Elite)

Okay, this is not for everybody ("Who is that?" said my wife, and not in a favourably curious way) but the previous collection in this Music of Central Asia series (see tag) was an impressive package of a CD, an excellent doco-DVD, and a very useful essay in the booklet. This equally handsome pack, volume five in the series, introduces music from the mountainous region around... more >>

Added: 12 Jan 08

Habib Koite and Bamada: Afriki (Cumbancha/Elite)

Music from Mali doesn't come much more mesmerising or mellow than this consistently laidback series of songs by one of that country's most inventive and musically curious griots. For this album, recorded on three continents, Koite typically drew on Mali's regional styles -- although most listeners (self included) won't be attuned to these nuances: what we hear is a collection of gentle... more >>

Added: 11 Jan 08

John Vanderslice: Emerald City (Longtime Listener)

You have to admire someone who kicks off their solo career with a hoax in which it was suggested that Microsoft (whose logo he had mimicked on his first single Bill Gates Must Die) was getting litigious. Vanderslice was obviously a smart fellow with a sense of humour. (Although that's what is says at Wikipedia, and that could be one of his hoaxes too?) Since then this highly acclaimed... more >>

Added: 10 Jan 08

Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levin: Asturiana (ECM New Series/Ode)

Although subtitled "Songs from Spain and Argentina" and Levin saying these pieces are "unabashedly flamboyant", there is little of that passionate looseness here in these viola and piano duets, rather a more stately drawing room feel is brought to these transcriptions of folk-influenced songs, seven by Manuel de Falla. This has all the feel of an especially sensitive... more >>

Added: 9 Jan 08

Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba: Segu Blue (Out Here/Elite)

The death in March 2006 of the great Mali musician Ali Farka Toure -- who reached a global audience in the mid 90s with the Talking Timbuktu album recorded with Ry Cooder -- lead to many tributes but also the question, who could possibly take his place? Well, his son Vieux Farka Toure's album -- which appeared in the Best of Elsewhere 2007 list, see tag -- certainly suggested all was not... more >>

Added: 3 Jan 08

Jake Shimabukuro: Gently Weeps (Hitchhike)

Shimabukuro is a young Hawaiian ukulele player who is wowing people across the globe with his dexterity and style. The New Yorker called him "a phenomenon", the San Diego Union-Tribute said his live show was "dazzling" and the All Music Guide said he was that rarity, someone who "re-imagines the possibilities of given instrument". For this album he takes a... more >>

Added: 2 Jan 08

Grinderman: Grinderman (EMI) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007

In which Nick Cave takes a break from his dark and Biblical stuff and just gets down and dirty with a raw, edgy band to make music which seems to come with machine oil on its hands and blown through with thick diesel smoke. Cave is also obviously having fun with his persona, but that doesn't stop some of the raucous, simple and often aggressive songs here sounding like he's gone back to the... more >>

Added: 6 Dec 07

Timothy Blackman: Modern Sprawl (Home Alone)

This lo-fi singer-songwriter recorded the six songs on this impressive EP at his Auckland flat, so as a result he sounds like he's singing in your own home. Very much in the folk-rock tradition (you can imagine the title track being pumped out by band), Blackman comes of as a melancholy soul on a first hearing, yet there are flickers of optimism and the result is a highly promising... more >>

Added: 2 Dec 07

Danny McCrum Band: Awake and Restless (McCrum)

Here's a guess, this smart pop-rock album from an Auckland singer-songwriter and his tight, crackling band won't get much attention. The reason? There's not been much sympathy or space for well-crafted adult pop-rock in New Zealand, the Finns and Dave Dobbyn aside. Critics generally prefer something with a little more quirkiness and edge, and straight-ahead bands like this one don't... more >>

Added: 2 Dec 07

Kevin Drew, Spirit If . . . (Shiny/Rhythmethod)

It must be galling for certain Flying Nun bands (notably the Verlaines and Sneaky Feelings in this instance) to hear some of what they did appropriated by British or North American bands and, through clout and better press coverage, take it to the wider world. There are elements of classic Nun (and Beatles, Pavement etc) scattered throughout this alleged solo album by Drew who founded the... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07

Jon Balke: Book of Velocities (ECM/Ode)

From the school of "so spare it's barely there" comes this delightful, melodic and restful debut solo album by the Norwegian pianist Balke, here improvising through 19 short pieces (the longest short of five minutes, most between two and four minutes). They are not miniatures as such, more like fully realised ideas that need be extended no further. In places Balke -- who also... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07

Ned Collette: Future Suture (Inertia/The Label)

With a flattened and laconic delivery, chiming acoustic folk-styled guitars and some melodic minimalism, this downbeat but widescreen album by Australian singer-songwriter Collette seems to hark back to earlier periods, sometimes sounding like a gentle collision between Nick Drake and Velvet Underground, at others slipping out of a very early Eno vocal album but embellished by horns. But... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07

Various: Music of Central Asia Vol 4, Bardic Divas (Smithsonian/Elite)

This beautifully packaged collection -- informative booklet, DVD with doco footage and interactive instrument section -- is not only a handsome set, but contains the remarkable voices of women singers from Central Asia, the region between Iran and the Steppes. Politics and ethnic separations over the past half century have lead to a diaspora of cultural voices (for example Jews from... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07

Various: Secret Love 4 (Sonar Kollektiv/Rhythmethod)

I'm guessing by the title that this is part of a series, the three previous volumes of which have gone right past me -- as I imagine they have with most people. Only a pre-release copy of this, a lazy Sunday and it being close to hand got me to it -- and I'm very glad of that. With the likes of Andrew Bird and Findlay Brown represented (see tags) alongside the hoarse-but-easy Lawries,... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07

Jude: Redemption (Naive/Elite)

There are those of us old enough/smart enough/obsessed enough to know that Paul McCartney's Ram album of '71 -- his first fully-fledged album after being in His Previous Band -- was among the three best albums of his very long post-Beatles career. (see tag) So maybe only we few might fully appreciate this album by a man called Jude. Okay, even in his darkest days Macca never wrote an... more >>

Added: 1 Dec 07