Music at Elsewhere
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Wire: Document and Eyewitness (Pink Flag/Southbound)
20 Aug 2014 | 1 min read
Post-punk arty-smarties Wire have delivered some excellent albums in recent years, notably Red Barked Tree in 2011 and more recently last year's Change Becomes Us for which they went back to tapes from the period covered here as the starting point for new configurations and ideas. Most people perhaps remember them from this formative period at the end of the Seventies and those three... > Read more
Eastern Standard
Various Artists: XL Recordings, Pay Close Attention (XL)
19 Aug 2014 | 1 min read
Elsewhere rarely ventures towards compilations from record labels but this double CD (available on four album vinyl here) is so outstanding we think we should draw it you attention as both a sampler and a standalone collection of great songs from important artists in the 25 year history of this London-based indie labe. It's quite some journey from the Prodigy's Firestarter and Peaches' Fuck... > Read more
Sea Within a Sea
Benjamin Booker: Benjamin Booker (Rough Trade)
18 Aug 2014 | <1 min read
Although he had some considerable advance hype, this New Orleans-based punk-edged rocker lives up to the claims being made on this debut album, simply by delivering gutsy rock'n'roll with a tight band and songs with titles like Violent Shiver, Wicked Waters, Spoon Out My Eyeballs and I Thought I Heard You Screaming. But those titles don't really tell the story because far from being some... > Read more
Old Hearts
Kimbra: The Golden Echo (Warners)
18 Aug 2014 | 2 min read
When Kimbra appeared at this year's Womad in Taranaki I observed at the time it allowed her to roadtest new material away from the prying eyes of the international -- and even local -- music media. She wasn't quite the unusual choice that many thought for a world music festival (other mainstream pop acts have been on previous bills) and she delivered a vigorously enthusiastic set full of... > Read more
Miracle
Eric Clapton and Friends: The Breeze; An Appreciation of J.J. Cale (Universal)
18 Aug 2014 | <1 min read | 1
Eric Clapton frequently speaks of himself as a messenger, originally passing on the blues then in the Seventies discovering the music of Bob Marley and J.J. Cale whose songs he covered to great success. Although not a close friend of the late Tulsa-based Cale until they collaborated on the Grammy-winning Road to Escondido in 2006, Clapton felt strongly enough about the man and his... > Read more
The Old Man and Me
Mike Cooper: Trout Steel (Paradise of Bachelors/Southbound)
15 Aug 2014 | 1 min read
A few weeks ago when Elsewhere reviewed the predominantly guitar instrumental/experimental album Cantos de Lisboa by Steve Gunn and Mike Cooper, we confessed to knowing little about Cooper who counted among his folk and blues peers and admirers the likes of Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. This album -- its title lifted from stoner-favourite Richard Brautigan's famous book Trout Fishing in... > Read more
Sitting Here Watching
Glen Moffatt: Superheroes and Scary Things (SDL)
13 Aug 2014 | 1 min read
Further proof that we export real talent. A little over a decade ago country-rock singer-songwriter Glen Moffatt quit New Zealand to base himself in Queensland, leaving behind three fine albums and a nomination in the songwriter of the year category. He immediately picked up good notices and awards in Queensland, but we haven't heard much from him in recent years. This album however --... > Read more
She's Not a Honky Tonk Woman
Fu Manchu: Gigantoid (At the Dojo/Southbound)
11 Aug 2014 | <1 min read
Because Brant Bjork played with them and they're part of the Kyuss/Clutch/Monster Magnet cabal, this Southern California hard rock-stoner band has often been mentioned in dispatches but rarely made an impact here. That's surprising, given they should appeal to graybeards who loved the feedback rock of Sixties legends Blue Cheer and Australia's Tumbleweed as much as recent QTSA and... > Read more
The Last Question
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent releases
11 Aug 2014 | 2 min read | 2
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be short . . . Richard Thompson; Acoustic Classics (Proper/Southbound): The great British singer-songwriter Thompson has made frequent appearances at Elsewhere by way... > Read more
Dimming of the Day
Murray McNabb Group: Every Day is a Beautiful Day (Sarang Bang)
5 Aug 2014 | 2 min read
In the final days of his life -- which ended in early 2013 -- the New Zealand composer and keyboard player Murray McNabb was still working, despite being on morphine for pain relief from the cancer which would kill him. Towards the end it was my privilege to interview him about his long career, and I was struck by his philosophical approach to the inevitable as much as I had been by the... > Read more
Standing Babas
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Hypnotic Eye (Warners)
4 Aug 2014 | 1 min read | 2
Most rock fans agree TP and his cracking Heartbreakers had a decade-long dream run after their self-titled debut in 76. Their taut Beatles/Byrds pop-rock welded to a nuggety rock'n'roll attitude and Petty's economic songs made their albums sound like collections of snappy singles. And when this Florida-native expanded into “Southern accents” (the title of their impressive... > Read more
Shadow People
Hans Chew: Life and Love (Proper/Southbound)
4 Aug 2014 | <1 min read
This is interesting, odd and unexpected. On the inside cover Chew -- shaven head, bearded -- looks pretty hardcore . . . but he plays grand piano. And he doesn't play the classical repertoire but rocks out in a Southern boogie style with a tough little band (which includes Dave Cavallo on guitars, including slide). The result is an enjoyable meltdown of blues, country, soul and rock... > Read more
Strange Love
Death Vessel: Island Intervals (Sub Pop)
4 Aug 2014 | 1 min read
It does seem odd that the label which brought us Nirvana should now be so attached to alt.folk (and sometime mope.folk) with Luluc and Death Vessel. DV is in fact singer Joel Thibodeau (born in Germany, raised in the States) and any number of fellow travelers for the past decade, although for this album -- his third as Death Vessel -- he has honed it down to mostly just three or four pals.... > Read more
We Agreed
Fink: Hardbeliever (Ninja Tunes)
31 Jul 2014 | 1 min read
The first and only time Fink (known as Fin Greenall to his family) has appeared at Elsewhere was with his debut album Biscuits for Breakfast and although his career gone extremely well for this Britsh DJ, singer-songwriter and producer, he still sounds glum'n'moody. Which is no bad thing as he brings an intensity that is convincing, and he can back it all up with memorable melodies.... > Read more
Truth Begins
The Unsemble: The Unsemble (Ipecac/Southbound)
30 Jul 2014 | <1 min read
If supergroups still exist this might not be one, but perhaps in the world of alt.rock and out-there readers of The Wire they could qualify. Here are drummer Brian Kotzur who has "worked with" Silver Jews, guitarist/keyboard player Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk) and bassist/electronics player Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten, Crime and the City Solution). These... > Read more
Voices
The Antlers: Familiars (Inertia)
28 Jul 2014 | <1 min read
Peter Silberman, the mainman behind and up-front of New York's Antlers, has been making steady and stealthy moves towards greater acclaim with a series of lovely and sometimes pained albums which have increasingly become more musically complex. They've also managed to retain a sense of the hurting heart within the orchestration. Their 2010 album Hospice was a 10-song cycle about... > Read more
Hotel
Jungle: Jungle (XL)
28 Jul 2014 | <1 min read
It's sometimes said that every music that ever existed is still being played somewhere in the world today. It's certainly true that Jungle -- an unusually secretive London duo heading a collective -- have taken Seventies disco and cool funk to their hearts and here on their debut album offer up a post-electronica version of these styles which is snappy, clever, groove-orientated and just... > Read more
Son of a Gun
Luluc: Passerby (SubPop)
28 Jul 2014 | <1 min read
The early Seventies genre “sensitive singer-songwriter” was enjoyed by similarly attuned souls or ridiculed by those for whom moping around just seemed weak and pointless. The genre is back in other hands, as an offshoot of alt.folk, and we couldn't count the number of duos – like Australians Zoe Randell and Steve Hassett who are Luluc – which explore that... > Read more
Winter is Passing
Morrissey: World Peace is None of Your Business (Universal)
21 Jul 2014 | 1 min read
Although no longer considered the monarch of misery he once was, Morrissey doesn't stray too far from the musical parameters he created for himself on this, the 10th studio album under his own name. For that he leaves it over to his brittle band to add grit and texture behind his familiarly melodic vocal style. That's when he isn't setting that effortless singing style against strings or... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa: Live in Amsterdam (Southbound)
21 Jul 2014 | 1 min read
In a recent doco about Muddy Waters, American guitarist Joe Bonamassa was talking about the blues and said, "The British blues for me was more immediate and more exciting. It was louder, a Les Paul guitar in a Marshall amp, it was more rock". While there's no doubt Bonamassa can play the blues, he is at heart a rock guy and that's why his longtime paring with singer Beth Hart --... > Read more