Music at Elsewhere
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Rats on Rafts/De Kift: Last Day on De Zon (Fire)
16 Oct 2016 | <1 min read
Yes, it's true we probably don't hear enough homegrown Dutch post-punk here. But despite the name of our country . . . why would we? Here from the country which houses the province of Old Zeeland – which actually just down the road from Rotterdam – comes what we at a distance might consider a Rotter-supergroup. Because longtime local noise-punk-pop-rockers RoRafts team... > Read more
Voorbij
Princess Chelsea: Aftertouch (Lil' Chief)
14 Oct 2016 | 1 min read
The longtime joke about rock bands was they had three years to write their first album and three months to write their second (which would have some new songs and the left-overs from the first). The third album – usually required by the demanding record company – was either a bunch of songs about hotel rooms/the road (because that had become their life) . . . or the live... > Read more
Can't Help Falling In Love With You
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
14 Oct 2016 | 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. Comments will be brief. Beth Hart: Fire on the Floor (Provogue) On the back of her excellent, largely autobiographical album Better Than Home played an... > Read more
Van Morrison: Keep Me Singing (Caroline/Universal)
10 Oct 2016 | 2 min read
Although the past decade has been a little wobbly for the former Celtic soul genius that is Van Morrison, it is Elsewhere's contention that your man really has undergone a late career resurrection. It started with Keep It Simple of 2008, some four decades on from his self-directed purple patch with the still-engrossing Astral Weeks. Back in the collective memory of that Sixties... > Read more
Let It Rhyme
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
10 Oct 2016 | 4 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. Comments will be brief. Bon Iver: 22, A Million (Jagjaguwar) For hipster beardies, young and sensitive retro-cardie women and old guard greyhair folkies who... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Howe Gelb; Sno Angel Like You (Fire/Southbound)
10 Oct 2016 | 1 min read
The astonishingly prolific Howe Gelb (Giant Sand, the Band of Blacky Ranchette, numerous albums under his own name) has yet another new one coming in late November. But meantime there is the 10th anniversary reissue of this album which seems to come in various formats including a double gatefold LP as Sno Angel Like You/Sno Angel Winging It. We here just have the original 16-song... > Read more
Love Knows No Borders
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
26 Sep 2016 | 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. Comments will be brief. The Green Pajamas: To The End of The Sea (Green Monkey) The mainman of Seattle's Green Pajamas, Jeff Kelly, has long had connection... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: The Bilders; Beatin Hearts (Grapefruit Record Club)
24 Sep 2016 | <1 min read
Not often we get to use the word “polymath” . . . but it describes multi-lingual poet, writer, publisher, dramatist, musician-without-portfolio Bill Direen whose reputation kicked in seriously with this debut album (after a series of singles and EPs) in '83. Released on Flying Nun, it includes a version of Denis Glover's poem The Magpies alongside Direen's... > Read more
Jack White: Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016 (XL)
19 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Right from the start, Jack White was a shapeshifter, sometimes a garageband rocker, at others a raw blues player or a guitarist conspiring with his inner Jimmy Page to give Led Zeppelin a run for their money. He could sing what sounded like a tossed off children's song (the delightful We're Going to Be Friends) or dig in deep as an inspired rock star for whom the spotlight of fame... > Read more
City Lights (previously unreleased)
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Led Zeppelin: The Complete BBC Sessions (Warners)
19 Sep 2016 | 1 min read | 1
Although JImmy Page's recent remastering programme of all the Led Zeppelin studio albums made them sound sharper and stronger, the additional tracks included were rarely added value. Many were remixes of varyng degrees of interest (some none at all, see here and here and here), but ironically it was their final mish-mash release Coda which came out best. Despite us calling the... > Read more
Communication Breakdown (live, 1969)
Angel Olsen: My Woman (Jagjaguwar)
19 Sep 2016 | <1 min read
When Elsewhere discovered this woman's previous album, her second, Burn Your Fire For No Witness in early 2014 we were mightily impressed by her ability to roam across genres from alt.country-influenced material to gritty rock, mainstream pop to acoustic ballads. What was also a thread was the classic pop structures and influences from the late Fifties/early Sixties . . . and on this... > Read more
Shut Up Kiss Me
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree (Kobalt)
14 Sep 2016 | 1 min read | 1
Although Nick Cave has often sung about death from various perspectives – Biblical, murder ballads, the Devil and so on – this sombre, slow and sometimes uncomfortable collection has greater and more personal resonance. His 15-year old son Arthur died in a tragic accident during the period when he was just starting on songs for a new album, and we might guess from the tone... > Read more
Distant Sky
De La Soul: And the Anonymous Nobody (Kobalt)
12 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Although this opens with considerable throat-clearing by Jill Scott in a speech of empowerment which sounds beamed in from some African-American politico-Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, once thing settle thereafter the genius of the hip-hop innovators De La Soul is evident all over again. Cinematic in its reach, peppered with short passages (the 90 second CBGBs and similarly lengthed Sexy... > Read more
Royal Capes
The Beatles; Live at the Hollywood Bowl (Capitol/Universal)
12 Sep 2016 | 2 min read | 1
You'd think there was nothing left to exploit in the Beatles' catalogue (other than the film Let It Be and an album of their final rooftop concert). But this is the first reissue of the live album released in '77 from concerts recorded at the Hollywood Bowl in '64 and '65, plus four previously unreleased tracks and a 24-page booklet with an essay by the ubiquitous David Fricke. It... > Read more
Long Tall Sally
Elvis Presley: Way Down in the Jungle Room (RCA)
12 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Golly gosh, the Beatles and Elvis Presley reviewed in the same week? Makes you wnder what century we are in. But the reissue of the Beatles album Live at the Hollywood Bowl (now equally billed as Eight Days a Week to link with the doco of that title) is the only official live album we have of them from their touring years . . . and this Elvis double CD are his final recordings, done at home... > Read more
Hurt (take three)
Morgan Delt: Phase Zero (Sub Pop)
11 Sep 2016 | <1 min read
Quick question: How many young male singers who don't have a strong or distinctive voice use a light falsetto as their default setting then multi-track and/or wrap their vocals in clouds of synths, orchestration etc. Answer? I don't know an actual figure . . . but I can tell you that this Californian is another one of them. Soaked in psychedelic sunshine and dreamy drone-pop with... > Read more
Escape Capsule
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
9 Sep 2016 | 4 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. Comments will be brief. Randy Newman: The Randy Newman Songbook (Nonesuch/Warners) It's always a great disappointment when the opportunity for a phone... > Read more
Pitch Black: Filtered Senses (pitchblack.co.nz)
2 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Longtime electronica artists Pitch Black out of Auckland were always in the vanguard of son et lumiere shows which could deliver punishing heart-hitting beats or drop the moods towards stateless, sonic landscapes of the mind. And also effortlessly bring in influences from dub and dancefloor. It has been some while since their last album – nine years during which the duo of... > Read more
Dub Smoke
The Veils: Total Depravity (Nettwerk)
29 Aug 2016 | 1 min read
Anyone with a passing interest in this band fronted by Finn Andrews already knows the tone of this one: In interviews Andrews has referenced David Lynch's rebooted Twin Peaks, there is darkness and menace as a pervading ethos (British reviews have said “unsettling” and “gloriously sad eyed rock that preaches to the perverted”) and so on. From the title inward,... > Read more
House of Spirits
Eva Prowse: Humid Nights (evaprowse.co.nz/Aeroplane)
29 Aug 2016 | 1 min read
Wellington singer-songwriter Prowse's debut album I Can't Keep Secrets made Elsewhere's best of the year list in 2010 and at that time we noted her performances with Fly My Pretties, her appearance on her father's excellent Trouble on the Waterfront album and so on. Since then however she fetched up in London where she turned her attention to electro-pop (as H & EVA with expat... > Read more