Music at Elsewhere

The Barnestormers: The Barnestormers (digital outlets)

3 Jun 2023 | 1 min read

Yes, the cynical might say he's done rock, soul and even a Christmas album . . . . so why wouldn't Jimmy Barnes do a rockabilly album? Fair point, but to hear him tell it he's been a fan of the pre-rock'n'roll style since growing up with it through his older brother John's collection, and then in Cold Chisel days listening repeatedly to a cassette of the Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio in... > Read more

Gerald Cleaver: 22/23 (Positive Elevation/577 Records/bandcamp)

3 Jun 2023 | <1 min read

New York's 577 Records has popped up at Elsewhere a few times, but so far for edgy free jazz. The label now has an interesting imprint Positive Elevation which is dedicated to electronic sounds and avant-soul. And that first category certainly suits Detroit's Gerald Cleaver who comes from the home of house music and musical innovation. On this, his third album for the Positive... > Read more

Leon Russell: Signature Songs (Dark Horse/digital outlets)

2 Jun 2023 | 1 min read

Bill Janovitz of Buffalo Tom has a fine parallel career as a music writer with his work appearing in The Observer, at esquire.com and his books on the Rolling Stones getting very favourable reviews: Rocks Off through St Martin's Press and his analysis of Exile on Main St through Bloomsbury 33 ⅓. His most recent work is the massive Leon Russell: The Master of Space and Time's Journey... > Read more

Delta Lady

Various Artists: New Zealand @ 33⅓, Volume One (Frenzy CD)

29 May 2023 | 2 min read

Just when you thought archivist Grant Gillanders couldn't find any new material to excavate from the Sixties he taps another vein of local nuggets. More on that recent discovery as it comes to hand – it's a cracker and unexpectedly raw. But meantime here's an interesting repackaging of deep cuts and obscurities: 33 tracks lifted from albums by the likes of the Merseymen,... > Read more

Dream Lover, by Dinah Lee

Rose City Band: Garden Party (Thrill Jockey/digital outlets)

27 May 2023 | <1 min read

Elsewhere almost missed the delightful 2020 album Summerlong by this band which is a vehicle for multi-instrumentalist Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips) until we heard a glorious track of a compilation. Then we jumped on it for its lazy country stylings of steel guitar, bluegrass and Byrdsian jangle (think Wasn't Born to Follow and Ballad of Easy Rider). But dammit we missed their... > Read more

Anna: Intentions (Mercury KX/digital outlets)

22 May 2023 | <1 min read

Brazilian-born Lisbon-based DJ electronica producer Anna's debut album Intentions is a gloriously warm collection of shimmering ambience which features the longtime Elsewhere favourite Laraaji on the spacious, seven minute Receiving. As with Laraaji, Anna's ethereal and layered electronica has something of a spiritual aspect, a kind of meditative situation created for transformative... > Read more

I See Miracles Everywhere

Terrible Sons: The Raft is Not the Shore (digital outlets)

21 May 2023 | 1 min read

Behind the somewhat misleading band name is a measured folk duo from Ōtautahi Christchurch whose 2018 Half Awake, Half Asleep EP sprung the unexpected hit Tears Don't Fall, clocking almost 21 million Spotify streams. Gentle, philosophical and steeped in natural imagery, this debut album is better understood by its title referencing the difference between perception and reality,... > Read more

Sunset Swimming

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Pitch Black: Ape to Angel (Dubmission/digital outlets)

20 May 2023 | 3 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a remastered double album in a gatefold sleeve (with an additional rare track), the first vinyl release of Pitch Black's 2004 breakthrough album. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . When, in 2004, Elsewhere interviewed Mike Hodgson... > Read more

Like Angels: Your Time Will Come (Failsafe/digital outlets)

17 May 2023 | 2 min read

From his longtime home in Japan, Rob Mayes oversees the extensive reissue of albums on his Failsafe label, now celebrating 40 years of independent releases. And he's not beyond new releases either: witness this beautifully packaged double CD in a gatefold cover with a booklet of brief explanatory notes and pertinent photos. Like Angels is in fact the one-man project of Robert McLean... > Read more

Year Zero

The Winebox Inquiry: Liquid Air (bandcamp)

15 May 2023 | <1 min read

You'd have to concede this about Wellington's William Daymond: he moves on and can't be put in any convenient box. In the late 2000s he was drummer in the indie-rock band Terror of the Deep and as he admitted in 2014, “We like to keep things fun and interesting. We just play what we want. We started kind of poppy, then went psych, now we’re doing prog and almost garage... > Read more

Downpour

Maxine Funke: River Said (Disciples/digital outlets)

14 May 2023 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a lyric sheet and a digital download. Makes sense to get it on vinyl given it is, as you may read, an album of two distinct sides. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Esoteric, sepia-toned and skeletal folk goes back to before the recently... > Read more

Willow White

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Jonathan Bree: Pre-Code Hollywood (digital outlets)

14 May 2023 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a classy package of white vinyl inside a shiny silver insert sleeve and with a lyric sheet. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte's 1928 painting Two Lovers had the kissing couple's heads swathed in... > Read more

Ingrid and the Ministers: Boofhead (digital outlets)

14 May 2023 | <1 min read

Enthusiasm at recent shows for the briefly re-formed D4, reductively absurd Guitar Wolf and the Schizophonics confirmed raucous, guitar-injected punkish rock'n'roll still provides ear-scouring retro-pleasure for a broad demographic. On this second album – collecting six previous singles – the capital's Ingrid and the Ministers marry T. Rex and Joan Jett to wheel-spinning ZZ Top... > Read more

The Lemon Twigs: Everything Harmony (Captured Tracks/digital outlets)

12 May 2023 | 1 min read

To be frank, on the basis of two of their three previous albums we have heard, we've been seriously underwhelmed by the fashionable and hip Lemon Twigs, two gifted New York brothers who do have a unique ability to tap into pop's rich history. But they certainly captured the attention of influential critics who – like us – enjoyed train-spotting their way through their songs (oh... > Read more

Nabihah Iqbal: Dreamer (Ninja Tune/digital outlets)

11 May 2023 | <1 min read

Very much an artist's artist – she was commissioned to compose music for the Turner Prize, an exhibition at the Tate Modern and a Basquiat retrospective – this London-born child of Pakistani parents has also worked as a broadcaster, lecturer and in the field of human rights. This belated second album following her acclaimed 2017 debut Weighing of the Heart was conceived during... > Read more

The Church: The Hypnogogue (digital outlets)

8 May 2023 | 1 min read

Among the many hundreds of albums Elsewhere lost in the January 2023 floods were a few much loved Australian albums, among them two terrific double albums by the Easybeats taking them from chart-toppers to the decline into psychedelic music and a compilation of the early Church which carried them through their Paisley Underground years. These were albums which were the domain of obsessive... > Read more

No Other You

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Natalie Merchant: Keep Your Courage (Nonesuch/digital outlets)

7 May 2023 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes in a gatefold sleeve as a double album with an all-important lyric sheet, extensive liner notes (including a piece about the Jeanne d'Arc cover) and four extra songs from earlier albums not previously available on vinyl and unavailable on the CD or streaming versions. Check out... > Read more

Come On, Aphrodite

Rickie Lee Jones: Pieces of Treasure (BMG/digital outlets)

7 May 2023 | 1 min read

There's a photograph of Frank Sinatra in 1948 at a studio piano learning a song from a long haired, bearded guy. Had it appeared 20 years later we'd identify the guy – eden ahbez, who favoured the lower case – as a hippie. But ahbez was man ahead, and out, of his time. Sandal-wearing, vegetarian, mostly living outdoors and studying esoteric literature, ahbez wrote the song... > Read more

Just in Time

Immaterial Possession: Mercy of the Crane Folk (Fire/digital outlets)

5 May 2023 | 1 min read

Elsewhere has always had a thing for left-field psychedelic folk which we can trace back to a teenage infatuation with very early Pink Floyd, the Incredible String Band and Donovan as he moved out of the folk period with Season of the Witch, Sunshine Superman, Three Kingfishers and so on. Artists like Shawn Phillips also passed our radar and of course those who went to the more... > Read more

Cypress Receiver

SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases

1 May 2023 | 2 min read

New Zealand Music Month invariably sees a landslide of releases, all competing with each other as well as international releases. It's hard to catch up let alone keep up so we here offer potted acknowledgements of four local releases. . Terrible Sons: The Raft is Not the Shore Ignore the band name which seems out of punk London in 1977 but take the poetic,... > Read more