Music at Elsewhere

Dominic Blaazer: The Lights of Te Atatu (vinyl/streaming services)

24 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

Auckland keyboard player/singer/guitarist Dominic Blaazer is perhaps best known for the excellent bands he has been in, among them Greg Fleming's Trains, a stint in the Chills in the mid Nineties and the hipster favourites The Peter Stuyvesant Hitlist. But he was also in the power pop outfit Smoothy, was in the SJD band, has played with Don McGlashan and is currently in Ghost Town.... > Read more

Simple Love

Salon Kingsadore: Instant Compositions by Salon Kingsadore (Sarang Bang)

22 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

The Sarang Bang label helmed by Auckland guitarist/composer Gianmarco Liguori is a marvelous labour of love (my guess is it barely turns a profit) because it has released not just interesting albums but also some very important one. In the latter category would be the handsome double vinyl The Way In Is The Way Out which scooped up unreleased work by the late Auckland keyboard... > Read more

Marlon Williams: Make Way For Love (Caroline)

19 Feb 2018 | 3 min read | 4

Late last year when Marlon Williams was back in New Zealand for a short while and playing a couple of shows at the Pt Chevalier RSA in Auckland, it was my pleasure to be invited to conduct an afternoon interview and a Q&A session with him before a small group of music writers and critics. The topic, of course, would be this then-impending album which I had been supplied a copy of.... > Read more

Make Way for Love

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

19 Feb 2018 | 3 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. . The Plot in You: Dispose (Fearless) From the first few whispered yet angry minutes of this... > Read more

Belle and Sebastian: How to Solve Our Human Problems (Matador)

16 Feb 2018 | 2 min read

It's an interesting overview title on this compilation of Belle and Sebastian's most recent three Eps which were released at approximately monthly intervals from December. That's because B&S out of Scotland have often dealt with human problems: some simple, others more existential, all relatable within B&S's sharply defined pop consciousness. So here when Stuart Murdoch... > Read more

Too Many Tears

The James Hunter Six: Whatever It Takes (Daptone/Southbound)

15 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

Aside from having a terrific and authentic soul voice along the line from Sam Cooke through Jackie Wilson to Smokey Robinson – and having sprung a series of solid albums, two of which have ended up in our Best of Elsewhere annual look back at the year – a few years ago James Hunter also rearranged the Beatles' pop hit It Won't Be Long into a piece of pure Stax soul. It was... > Read more

Don't Let Pride Take You For a Ride

Hex: The Hill Temple (digital platforms)

12 Feb 2018 | <1 min read

Wellington trio Hex sidestep the outright gloom'n'doom of much Goth by virtue of the powerful melodic thrust and reach of their female voices, and styles which range widely from almost domestic grunge-pop (the quiet-loud dynamics of Billboard, the forward momentum on the Page of Pentacles) through the ethereal and declamatory (the punishing space-filling shoegaze guitar landscape on Sight... > Read more

The Wild Kindness: Happy Now (all main digital outlets)

12 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

When singer-guitarist Mike Alexis from the four-piece San Francisco band The Wild Kindness got in touch about this, his band's debut album, he freely acknowledged that Sneaky Feelings and other bands associated with the “Dunedin Sound” were a profound influence . . . and through a search of those names he'd come across Elsewhere. Perhaps if he hadn't mentioned those... > Read more

Trace Yr Veins

Liminanas: Shadow People (Because/Southbound)

5 Feb 2018 | <1 min read | 1

This duo from Perpignan in Southern France near the Spanish border impressed with their previous Malamore in 2016 and now, on their fifth album, they again bring a kind of French ennui-cum-menace in songs midwifed by Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe in his Berlin studio. Which means in places there are shivers of his neo-psychedelic style in the archetypal and distinctive... > Read more

Le premier jour

The Price of Fish: The Price of Fish (ohorecordings.com)

5 Feb 2018 | 1 min read | 1

The hub of this group are Rob Sinclair and David Bowater who appeared at Elsewhere previously when Bowater's label www.ohorecordings.com reissued the 3 Voices album from the early Eighties, like this an album featuring the two of them and a roll call of accomplished, sympathetic guests. If 3 Voices – one of many avant-garde and innovative albums of the era, most of which have... > Read more

Keeper of Your Heart

Charcoal Burners: Charcoal Burners (Charcoal Records)

5 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

Charcoal Burners out of Dunedin are at core singers/multi-instrumentalists Andrew Spittle and Shane Gilchrist (both of whom have prior form) plus guests like pedal steel guitarist John Eugenes on the tension-release folk-rock of Chance, violin player Flora Knight (of The Eastern), drummer Steve Cournane (on the final piece Mid-Flight Man) and backing singer Molly Devine. But the nub of... > Read more

Elevator Shaft

Jas Josland: See What You Did There (bandcamp/iTunes etc)

1 Feb 2018 | 1 min read

The opening bracket of songs here by newcomer and world traveller Josland are very much in the frame of buzzing and catchy indie guitar-driven pop-rock. This debut album was recorded in Lyttelton by the estimable Ben Edwards and early up harks back to a point between the Breeders, shoegaze and elevating, hook-filled power-pop of the Eighties. If you haven't heard of her... > Read more

Money

Arran Fagan: Weight of Time (soundcloud)

29 Jan 2018 | 1 min read

Portland remains the home of an acoustic, often downbeat singer-songwriter tradition some 15 years after the death of Elliott Smith who made his name and reputation there before moving into a larger and more damaging world. Singer-guitarist Arran Fagan, here three albums into a career, offers deeply personal observations in songs of depth – and sometimes an elegant simplicity... > Read more

The Well

Circuit Des Yeux: Reaching for Indigo (Drag City)

27 Jan 2018 | 1 min read

If we were brutally honest we'd say that most albums don't break new ground. They simply conform to genre tropes, be they in alt.country, hard rock, trip-hop, r'n'b or whatever. Artists seldom step beyond the genre or style they are identified with – so few you can almost list them: Bowie, Bjork, for a while U2, Radiohead, Kate Bush etc – and it is an even more rare album... > Read more

Falling Blonde

Various Artists: How is the Air Up There? (Frenzy/RPM)

26 Jan 2018 | 3 min read

Given how assiduously Grant Gillanders has been compiling New Zealand pop and rock from the Sixties – at least a dozen, probably closer to two, CDs – you'd think the well would be running dry. But this superbly packaged three CD set subtitled “80 Mod, Soul, R'N'B & Freakbeat Nuggets From Down Under” manages to include a couple of dozen tracks which haven't... > Read more

No More Now by the Smoke

Khruangbin: Con Todo El Mundo (Night Time Stories/Southbound)

26 Jan 2018 | <1 min read

In very late 2015 Elsewhere shone the spotlight on the hypnotic, summery and almost wistfully psychedelic debut album – which rejoiced under the title The Universe Smiles Upon You – by this trio originally out of Texas. Something in those wide open spaces combined with the ambience of a beach in Thailand and gentle wafts of soul-funk made for a delightful opening... > Read more

August 10

Salad Boys: This is Glue (Trouble in Mind/Southbound)

26 Jan 2018 | <1 min read

When Elsewhere reviewed the debut album Metalmania by this Christchurch band helmed by Joe Sampson we felt obliged to reference early Flying Nun bands like the Clean, because they certainly did. This time out however things turn blacker and harder in places, and they get away a terrific power pop-cum-hard rock droning opener Blown Up which immediately hooks you in. Later Psyche... > Read more

Right Time

Tune-Yards: I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (4AD/Rhythmethod)

22 Jan 2018 | 1 min read

At some indiscernible moment in time (possibly in the early Seventies when the antennae were high) someone posited the notion that “the personal is political”. And a generation prepared to believe any slogan embraced it. And its converse position. The political is personal? Yep. Because that seems more true in the US at this moment than in era since . . . Well,... > Read more

Heart Attack

Gun Outfit: Out of Range (Paradise of Bachelors/Southbound)

20 Jan 2018 | <1 min read

The bleached image of Monument Valley on the cover of this fifth album by a now LA-based five-piece gives you the physical and metaphorical reference for their spacious, slightlydelic desert rock of jangle'n'slide guitars, dusty vocals from Dylan Sharp and the keening folk sound of Carrie Keith, the deep mythology of literature considered on peyote perhaps . . . There is something of... > Read more

Sally Rose

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

19 Jan 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. . The Selecter: Daylight (DMF/Southbound) One of the great bands of the 2-Tone era and with... > Read more