Music at Elsewhere
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The Tedeschi Trucks Band: Made Up Mind (Sony)
26 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
The slight Susan Tedeschi can belt out blues with the fervour of Janis Joplin, and with husband/guitarist Derek Trucks (who also plays in Clapton's band and the Allman Brothers) she's had interesting musical settings. This time – on co-writes with Trucks and name players like Doyle Bramhall II also from Clapton's band, John Leventhal, Jayhawk Gary Louris and others -- she's... > Read more
Misunderstood
Peter Jefferies: The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World (DeStijl//Flying In)
26 Aug 2013 | 1 min read | 1
To be honest, I had not heard -- or even heard of -- this debut solo album by Jefferies. Forgiveable perhaps given it first came out as an Xpressway cassette-only release in 1990. But its legend loomed large because after some underground critical acclaim internationally it -- plus the single Fate of the Human Carbine b/w Catapult -- was released on record and CD by Chicago's Ajax... > Read more
While I've Been Waiting
Various Artists: Hugs and Kisses; Tender to All Gender (Trikont/Yellow Eye)
26 Aug 2013 | 2 min read
Some years ago I was in the States when television person Ellen DeGeneris seemed to be in a protracted state of "coming out". The media was full of speculation about how this might affect her ratings. There were think-pieces in papers and it was a topic of conversation in bars and clubs. One night over drinks with some people, I was asked what might happen if a high-profile... > Read more
She Likes to Party
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: The Clash; Hits Back (Sony)
26 Aug 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Okay, this isn't exactly a reissue (although everything here has been readily available) and it also isn't a hits collection despite the suggestion of the title because the Clash didn't have enough hits to fill one disc let alone the two here. But what it is -- and this is why it is recommended -- is a decent, 32-song career overview (which sensibly avoids anything from their crash'n'burn... > Read more
Train in Vain
K.T. Tunstall: Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon (Virgin)
19 Aug 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Recording with the insightful Howe Gelb (Giant Sand, from which Calexico emerged) in Tucson with his Danish band (plus guests like Andrew Bird), Tunstall – who appeared in Neil Finn's Seven Worlds Collide concerts – here turns things down from the electro-beat she explored on 2010's Tiger Suit (recorded in Berlin) in favour of her folk-poetry persona, with a nod to... > Read more
Old Man Song
Cloud Control: Dream Cave (Mushroom)
19 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
This self-styled indie-rock outfit from Sydney's Blue Mountains have won two Arias and, in 2011, the Australian Music Prize which netted them a cool A$30,000. And on this, their second album, you can hear what the fuss is about when they open with a strangely compelling non-song Scream Rave then wind down in a slo-mo power-pop ballad Dojo Rising. Later they surprise with the bouncy... > Read more
Moonrabbit
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Fleetwood Mac; Then Play On (Warners)
19 Aug 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Released in 1969, this -- their third album -- was the last of the original Fleetwood Mac line-up which included guitar genius and Mac-founder Peter Green, another graduate of John Mayall's Blues Breakers and at the time spoken of with the same admiration reserved for the likes of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Also in the line-up was acclaimed guitarist Jeremy Spencer, who by this time was... > Read more
Closing My Eyes
Peter Posa: Golden Guitar; The Peter Posa Anthology (Sony)
16 Aug 2013 | 1 min read
Where the recent chart-topping White Rabbit compilation of the great guitarist Peter Posa picked up his hits and more familiar tunes, this 46-track double disc draws on the extraordinary back-catalogue of 20 albums and showcases the breadth and depth of his musical stylings. The breath-taking opener -- a thrilling reinvention of the hoary old Sweet Georgia Brown -- is such a fleet-fingered... > Read more
Blue Moon of Kentucky
One Man Bannister: Evolver (Powertool Records)
12 Aug 2013 | 2 min read | 2
The idea behind this album is hardly new. It's now a commonplace for Britain's Mojo magazine, for example, to include a cover disc on which various contemporary artists record a classic album in its entirety, most often one by the Beatles. What makes this album unique however is that it is -- as far as I'm aware -- the first time a single New Zealand artist has revisited a classic album and... > Read more
Love You To
Kingston: Black and Bloom (Aeroplane)
12 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
If you don't listen to ads you'd not know these locals with cloud-piercing shouty choruses have songs helping sell V, Pepsi, KFC and a Ford Kuga. Both those latter hook-filled heavyweights (Good Good Feeling and You Want It? respectively) are on this 14 song album which is big on “whoa-whoa” or “oh-ho-oh” hooks, forward momentum and songs which drill themselves... > Read more
Lotto
Aoife O'Donovan: Fossils (Yep Roc/Southbound)
12 Aug 2013 | <1 min read | 1
This American singer-songwriter will only be recognised if you read fine print. She wrote Lay My Burden Down – the opener here – which Alison Krauss recorded a few years back, although she was 10 years in a folk-bluegrass band Crooked Still, and appears on the Goat Radio Sessions alongside classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma. She's classically trained herself, but on this, her... > Read more
Beekeeper
Tom Russell/Norwegian Wind Ensemble: Aztec Jazz (Proper/Southbound)
5 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
Even within the alt.country/Americana world, the bittersweet storyteller Tom Russell remains a marginal figure, despite almost 30 albums (and books) steeped in what poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti called “the wounded heart of America”. His songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Joe Ely, Nanci Griffith and others, but it is his own emotion-filled voice on albums like Hurricane... > Read more
Nina Simone
Transcendental Learning Collective: Shift (Powertool Records)
5 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
Given the pedigree of players on this debut album released a couple of months back – produced by Mike Hodgson from Pitch Black and Tinnitus, it is DJN (meulti-media artist Dan Newnham) of Drone, guitarist Sean O'Reilly of King Loser and others – it's a surprise it has gone woefully un-reviewed and largely undiscovered. Perhaps the recent Sheen of Gold doco on the Skeptics... > Read more
Robo
Various Artists: A Road Leading Home; Songs by Dan Penn (Ace/Border)
5 Aug 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Those drawn to the more senior end of the Americana practioners -- who tend to deal less with death ballads and that ol' time religion which seems weirdly attractive to young secular artists -- found their band in the Hacienda Brothers. Their self-titled debut of 2005 and What's Wrong With Right the following year brought a mature ease, and both were produced by the great songwriter... > Read more
One More Time With Feeling
Luke Haines: Rock and Roll Animals (Cherry Red/Southbound)
5 Aug 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Formerly of Brit-pop band the Auteurs, Luke Haines has pursued film music, writing and interesting conceptual albums, and been the subject of a novel, a comic book and a doco. For this album he's being selective about his audience, we might say. It's a story whose characters are Jimmy Pursey (from punkers Sham 69) as a fox, a badger named Nick Lowe and rock'n'roll era Gene Vincent... > Read more
A Badger Called Nick Lowe
The Prophet Hens: Popular People Do Popular People (Fishrider)
5 Aug 2013 | <1 min read
Although the promo sheet says this four-piece from Dunedin “is marinated in the melodic sounds of that mostly fictional 'Dunedin Sound' – think the Chills, The Bats . . .” you'd have say on this debut album they conclusively prove it was no fiction at all. They jangle like a new generation out of the Flying Nun school and frequently don't move too far from the templates... > Read more
All Over the World
Low Speed Bus Chase: Breathe (lowspeedbuschase.com)
30 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
Singer Jack Parker here is a graduate of Graeme Downes' excellent popular music course at Otago University but this band -- which formed in Dunedin -- is now based in Melbourne . . . and one listen to their edgy, sometimes aggressive music will tell you that is perhaps a better place for them. They make the kind of tough mainstream rock which plays well in Aussie pubs and clubs (and gets on... > Read more
Ballad of JD
Jonathan Bree: The Primrose Path (Lil' Chief)
29 Jul 2013 | 2 min read
If we think of "album" in the more traditonal sense of the word -- a collection of photos, memorabilia etc - then this quiet and remarkably honest album by Jonathan Bree (formerly one half of the Brunettes with Heather Mansfield) certainly qualitfies. This is not just the post-breakup record with all the self-centredness and slightly misanthropic tone which often comes with that,... > Read more
Seven
Jon Hopkins: Immunity (Warners)
29 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
British electronica artist Hopkins' discreetly understated third album Insides four years ago deservedly won followers in cinema, downbeat, trip-tronica and chill-out rock. It was less an album than something which just “was”. Consequently Hopkins is now on film scores, alongside Brian Eno in the credible ambient-cum-atmospheric world, favoured at UK arts festivals,... > Read more
Breathe This Air
Sugarbug: Flutterbye (Powertool Records)
29 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 1
As I understand it, this quietly fascinating collection by a Wellington four-piece is a reissue of songs previously unissued. To backtrack then: Some of these 10 songs topped the capital's Radio Active charts in the 90s and others did well on bNet stations. Hardly surprising as they mine that profitable post-Flying Nun ethos (they do the Clean's Do Your Thing as an eloquent soundswell... > Read more