Music at Elsewhere

Masaaki Hirao and His All Stars Wagon: Nippon Rock'n'Roll (Big Beat/Border)

21 Jul 2013 | 1 min read

How global was Fifties rock'n'roll? In New Zealand we had Johnny Devlin, "the Wanganui Elvis" and within four months of Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up, Kazuya Kosaka and the Wagon Masters in Japan had covered them. Rock'n'roll went global very quickly. Kosaka wasn't alone in Japan either. Or in his use of a band name with "wagon" in it. This 23... > Read more

Jailhouse Rock

Bannerman: Clawhammer (bannerman.com)

15 Jul 2013 | 1 min read | 1

As in most countries, New Zealand musicians can usually be placed in a genre or style. Not so Richard Setford who is Bannerman. His two previous albums (considered "outstanding" at Elsewhere) were so musically diverse you would be unwise to attempt any kind of labelling. And in places they sounded nothing like his EPs. It is an impressive back-catalogue and now Bannerman... > Read more

Echoes

Rose Windows: The Sun Dogs (Sub Pop)

15 Jul 2013 | <1 min read

Credit where it's due. Few bands simultaneously conjure up broody Black Sabbath, prog-pomp King Crimson, desperate Siouxsie Banshee and the hippie-vibe of the Incredible String Band . . . and expect to get away with it. Especially not if they add – to pile-driving metal guitars and the Middle Eastern exoticism of their singer Rabia Shabeen Qazi – wide swathes of... > Read more

Native Dreams

Tom Odell: Long Way Down (Sony)

15 Jul 2013 | <1 min read

In Britain this critically favoured, chart-topping 22-year old pianist/singer has made no secret of his admiration for Elton John and that's hardly surprising: the opening piano passages in the sentimental Grow Old With Me are pure Elton, later he includes the line “I sat on the rooftop” (he watched birds, didn't kick off the moss) and occasionally gets within a whisper of... > Read more

Can't Pretend

Chris Priestley: Unsung Heroes (Ode)

12 Jul 2013 | 2 min read

The firmly held belief here at Elsewhere -- which is a quorum of one, and I have the deciding vote -- is that New Zealand folk music has never been cool or interesting for most of the Sixties Generation And Beyond People because this musical tradition became uncoupled from popular music (ie. pop music) at about the time we were slightly embarassed about our origins and were looking to engage... > Read more

Captain Lorraine

These New Puritans: Fields of Reeds (Infectious)

11 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 1

Start as you mean to go on, they say. And TNP's Jack Barnett certainly leads you into this project gently with an opening track where the slow piano and horns are in the foreground and somewhere down a long corridor a woman seems to be singing her way through something akin to Bacharach-David's This Guy's in Love With You. This isn't a collar-grabbing start but one which immediately makes... > Read more

Dream

Gray Bartlett: The Sixties Collection (Frenzy/Ode)

10 Jul 2013 | 1 min read

Although Gray (Graeme) Bartlett is best known today by that lovely old catch-all word "entrepreneur" -- he promotes concerts, discovers talent, tours national and international acts etc -- he was and remains a very fine guitarist, which was how he got his start in "show business". At the end of the Eighties I accompanied him and his small band on a brief tour into... > Read more

Surf Rider

Eric Lichter: ELKS in Paris (Diamond Market)

9 Jul 2013 | 1 min read

Any New Zealander hearing the downbeat chorus-cum-hook of the opener on this album -- "how could a plan so beautiful go so pitifully bad" -- might think they have tuned in to a Greg Johnson album. It's all there in the seemingly effort marriage of words and melody, the balance of sentiment between yin and yang, the worn-out but tuneful delivery . . . And then the rhythm picks... > Read more

I Still Insist

The Map Room: All You'll Ever Find (Rhythmethod)

8 Jul 2013 | 1 min read | 1

The Auckland duo of recording engineers/producers and sound mixers Simon Gooding and Brendon Morrow (York St, television and film work etc) craft the most unfashionable music. And it's some distance from what their professional careers might suggest. Far from deploying all the technology available to them, here they offer up 10 atmospheric, frequently weightless and often delicate songs... > Read more

Memory

Mark Mulcahy: Dear Mark J Mulcahy I Love You (Fire)

8 Jul 2013 | <1 min read

Neither Mulcahy's previous band, the US indie.rock outfit Miracle Legion, nor his solo albums created a ripple here, but this new direction might just get traction. Following the death of his wife five years ago he took time out and has reappeared as an abrasive streetwise singer-songwriter who even references the Velvet's I'm Waiting for the Man in the acerbic opener I Taketh Away.... > Read more

He's a Magnet

Fat Freddy's Drop: Blackbird (The Drop)

8 Jul 2013 | 1 min read

Given this album debuted at #1 on the New Zealand charts -- and deservedly so, it sounds extraordinary -- it hardly needs any comment at Elsewhere. But . . . And there is a "but". Because despite the fact it will be warmly embraced by longtime fans, that these long and loping songs (the opener 9.30, only one of the nine coming in under five minutes) will doubtless get the... > Read more

Bones

John Murry: The Graceless Age (Universal)

1 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 2

With all the high-profile, well-marketed albums around it's inevitable small players from darker corners go overlooked, but this extraordinary debut of original material by a Tupelo-born survivor deserves serious attention if damaged singer-songwriters have any appeal. Somewhere between backroads alt.country, early Leonard Cohen and the storytelling of James McMurtry, The Graceless... > Read more

John Murry

Various Artists: Sing Me the Songs; Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle (Nonesuch/Warners)

1 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 7

Kate McGarrigle (of the McGarrigle Sisters, with sister Anna) who died in January 2010 not only wrote a remarkable body of songs and sang them beautifully (and sometimes with saltiness) but – with her then-husband Loudon Wainwright III – gave us Rufus and Martha Wainwright. Joe Boyd (who'd produced the sister's first albums and their live McGarrigle Hour with family and... > Read more

Southern Boys

Larry's Rebels/The Rebels; A Study in Black/Madrigal (Frenzy)

30 Jun 2013 | 2 min read

Among the many interesting and unreleased things I have at home is a CD burn a friend made of the original versions of songs which Kiwi acts turned into homegrown hits. And the remarkable thing is -- and I will safely say this without pulling some reflexive bullshit Kiwi/nationalistic stroke -- the local versions waaaay oustripped the originals. Frankly, you don't want or need to hear the... > Read more

Painter Man

Mavis Staples: One True Vine (Anti)

28 Jun 2013 | 1 min read | 3

The great Mavis Staples – now 74 – has been immersed deep in the spiritual waters, and therefore has more to draw on, than most singers. She was a child of the church and well before her teens was singing in the Staple Singers lead by her father Pops. They sang of spiritual redemption, the civil rights struggle for equality and dignity, recorded material by contemporary... > Read more

Every Step

Boards of Canada: Tomorrow's Harvest (Warp/Border)

24 Jun 2013 | 3 min read | 2

In that crowded spectrum between major record companies, bandcamp and obscure indie releases, it is getting harder and harder for bands -- even established ones -- to get attention. Critics are forever wanting to discover "the next new thing" in some obscure corner of webworld to enhance their own cachet as much as that of the artist (you sometimes think the art runs a distant... > Read more

Come to Dust

Miracle Mile: In Cassidy's Care (MeMe Records)

24 Jun 2013 | 1 min read

It has been quite a few years since we've had an album from the previously productive Miracle Mile, a band once acclaimed as one of Britain's best kept secrets. In the past five years or so founder member Trevor Jones appeared to be out on his own (Hopeland of 2009, Keepers in 2010, both under the name Jones) yet, curiously, they sounded very much like MM projects, especially since his... > Read more

Primrose Hill

Bruce Soord/Jonas Renkse: Wisdom of Crowds (Kscope/Southbound)

24 Jun 2013 | <1 min read

The return of progressive rock has been stealthy in the past decade with British bands like Muse, Anathema, Porcupine Tree (lead by Steven Wilson) and The Pineapple Thief (founder Bruce Soord) staking out a wide sweep of territory which touches on dark metal as much as employing often pretentiously portentous lyrics. Here Soord hooks up with Renkse, formerly of the Swedish metal bands... > Read more

The Centre of Gravity

Sigur Ros: Kveikur/Candlewick (XL)

24 Jun 2013 | <1 min read

After this Icelandic post-rock group's singer Jonsi did his more pop-rock album Go in 2010 during the band's hiatus, it might have been expected some of that filter into their glacial if sometimes dramatic sound, but their excellent Valtari of last year mostly continued along their singular path. And despite them promising this one would be more aggressive there's only occasional... > Read more

Stormur

Various Artists: Sweet Dreams; Where Country Meets Soul Vol 2 (Kent/Border)

23 Jun 2013 | <1 min read

As the second volume to the excellent Behind Closed Doors collection, this one of black artists digging deep into country-soul should find favour easily. Many of these artists bring a sad gravitas to the lyrics about cheatin' and heartache (Facts of Life on Sometimes, Ralph Lamar tearing himself apart on Don't Let Me Cross Over) although there is just as much MOR here (the great William Bell... > Read more