Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
The Bads: Travel Light (Warners)
18 Mar 2013 | 1 min read
In an interview some years ago Graham Brazier said that in the rush to embrace younger artists, New Zealand had created what he called "adult contempt". If you were over 28 you were ignored, he said. In the years since -- with the Heritage Artist and Hall of Fame awards -- some of those older musicians (among them Herbs, Ray Columbus and the Invaders, and Brazier's band Hello... > Read more
Fire in a Caravan
Inc: No World (4AD)
18 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
If this low lights, gentle, breathy and soul-infused r'n'b album weren't all done by this US duo of Andrew and Daniel Aged you'd imagine it could be an especially horizontal Back to MIne/Late Night Tales collection . . . and you suspect any number of these tracks might end up on in years to come. There were brief moments in the Bee Gees career when -- pre-Night Fever, sans falsetto, then... > Read more
Desert Rose
Robyn Hitchcock: Love From London (Yep Roc)
18 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
A quintessentially British songwriter in the same company as Ray Davies, the young Damon Albarn and Paul Weller, Hitchcock also possesses an English eccentricity. Few could pull off a song entitled I Want To Be An Anglepoise Lamp as he did for his first band the Soft Boys. Now just turned 60 and still ignored by mainstream attention, he pares things back to crisply simple melodies... > Read more
Stupified
Badd Energy: Underwater Pyramid (Flying Nun)
18 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
Existing where irony meets earnestness, Badd Energy offer cheap drum machines, reductive guitar riffs, melodic ennui, and clunky or occasionally borrowed aphoristic rap, as with “you can't take the heat, you're never in the kitchen” on the lukewarm call to arms of the B-grade New Wave pop-rap Riot which includes “I want peace where we have lots of fun, I don't want peace... > Read more
Riot
Popstrangers: Antipodes (Unspk)
11 Mar 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Because international writers can often take a more dispassionate view of New Zealand culture -- witness the difference between local and overseas reviews of The Hobbit; ours mostly loved it, theirs went hmmm, yawn -- it is often salutory to look at what the rest of the world is saying about our stuff. If our default position is to be a little more generous then the yawn of indifference... > Read more
Jane
David Bowie: The Next Day (Sony)
11 Mar 2013 | 2 min read
Further proof Bowie's a smart post-modern artist. And not just self-aware, but aware of how the modern world works post-Bowie. Not only does he record his first album in a decade in secret in this gossip-driven Tweetworld, but the no-tour/no-interviews policy guarantees attention turns to the art and not the artist . . . . while listeners scan for clues to both. And he's already... > Read more
If You Can See Me
Various Artists: Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2 (Soul Jazz/Southbound)
11 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
Following a previous, generously inclusive double CD collection of Seventies/Eighties German electronic music comes this compilation in an equally unimaginative and horrible cover. It ticks off many main players (Can, Brian Eno with Moebius and Roedelius, the great Popol Vuh who did evocative soundtracks for Herzog, Amon Duul II with weaving guitar, and Faust). But again we get... > Read more
Sundance Chant
Pete Galub:Candy Tears (petegalub.com)
9 Mar 2013 | 1 min read
In a world where music is manicured to perfection, it's a pleasure for Elsewhere to introduce someone who didn't come into the game because they wanted to be on an Idol/X-Factor show . . . but because he saw the ramshackle Replacements when he was 14. A more profound rock'n'roll influence it is hard to imagine. Pete Galub is a New Yorker who has achieved some inner-city profile through... > Read more
300 Days in July
Golden Curtain: English Tuning (bandcamp)
7 Mar 2013 | 1 min read
Given the pedigree of the players here -- guitarist Andrew McKenzie of Grand Prix, drummer Andrew Gladstone of Garageland and non-andrew bassist Matt Baker -- it's no surprise the opener is a big hearted, big chord and incredibly catchy indie-rocker Everything's Fine (it's not) which just makes you want to turn it up and fling the windows open. Big pop melodies seem to come remarkably easy... > Read more
Tumbleweed
Various Artists: Son of Rogue's Gallery (Anti)
4 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
This double disc of sea shanties and pirate songs is as star-packed as its Rogue's Gallery predecessor (here are Shane MacGowan, Marianne Faithfull, Beth Orton, Broken Social Scene, Courtney Love and Michael Stipe in thier first recorded outing together, Dr John and a dozen others). But local interest alights on Mr Stormalong by Ivan Neville. It sounds like Randy Newman . . . but with... > Read more
Rio Grande
Jimi Hendrix: People, Hell and Angels (Sony)
4 Mar 2013 | 2 min read
In an interview with Elsewhere, longtime Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer -- who has been behind a number of the most credible Hendrix posthumous albums -- said this collection of previously unreleased material would be the final studio album from the Experience Hendrix group. Live albums from now on, he said in this interview. And given that a couple of the pieces here are fairly scant... > Read more
Let Me Move You
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell: Old Yellow Moon (Warners)
4 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
Two-part question to Emmylou and Rodney: What took you so long (they've been musical pals for almost four decades) and why songs – albeit good ones – mostly from back-catalogues? Longtime fans of Harris – who rightly applauded her exceptional concert here last year – will embrace this and forgive her that throat-catch breathy vocal inflection (which becomes... > Read more
Open Season on My Heart
Palma Violets: 180 (Rough Trade)
3 Mar 2013 | <1 min read
It's possible to enjoy and maybe even admire this English quartet (who pose cheerfully by Liverpool's Magical Mystery Tour bus on the inner sleeve) because of their energy, the bellicose single Best of Friends and their enthusiasm. But over the 11 tracks here on their debut album you are left with the overall impression that while they sort of like the Clash and garagerock and all that, they... > Read more
Chicken Dippers
The Ruby Suns: Christopher (Sub Pop)
3 Mar 2013 | 1 min read
While in some parts of the Unknown Mortal Orchestra album they embrace a whiff of gentle psychedelia (and has no one noticed McCartney melodies in their mix?), this is a territory which the Ruby Suns have long found seductive and enchanting. And over their first two albums they certainly managed to couple an assured sense of pop with seductive and often enchanting songs. There were... > Read more
Starlight
Salim Ghazi Saeedi: namoWoman (salimworld.com)
25 Feb 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Over nine tightly drawn and economic instrumentals (all under five minutes), mutliple-threat Saeedi who plays everything here locates himself in that edgy post-metal prog world where pictures in sound are painted by searing guitar, jazz-influenced piano, sombre cello (or is it arco bass?) and much more. But, as his name suggests, Saeedi also has a point of difference. From Tehran, he... > Read more
man
DJ T-Rock and Squashy Nice: Getting Through (Why)
25 Feb 2013 | <1 min read
At the start of this slightly mad but always enjoyable hip-hop mash-up a sampled voice says, “welcome to a new kind of listening experience . . . this record is different/different/different”. But that's not entirely true. As a clever meltdown of supple beats, rapid scratching, samples from obscure Southern country-soul, Mexican horns, bumpin' bass and much more from some... > Read more
43 Flavours of Jam
Chris Stamey: Lovesick Blues (Yep Roc)
25 Feb 2013 | <1 min read
Given Stamey was one of the mainmen in the dB's who bridged Beatlesque power-pop and college radio indie-rock (eg REM) in the Eighties, this solo outing might come as a surprise. He mostly dials down the backbeat and repositions himself as singer-songwriter with one foot in the slightly dull country-folk camp (the funereally paced seven minute title track) or gets tripped out in a... > Read more
Astronomy
Donna Dean: Tyre Tracks and Broken Hearts (donnadeanmusic.com)
25 Feb 2013 | 2 min read
While the title of this album might look like an easy and reflexive nod to earthy country music and it's brokedown traditions, you need only flick straight to the second song Twister to be persuaded that New Zealand's Donna Dean is someone special. She writes with the poetic economy of musicians like James McMurtry and Dolly Parton, and authors like Appalachia's Ron Rash, in that she can... > Read more
Long Time Gone
Devils Elbow: Broken Record Syndrome (Hit Your Head Music)
19 Feb 2013 | 1 min read
Devils Elbow -- the core of which is singer/guitarist Alec Withers -- deliveerd one of Elsewhere's best of 2010 albums with the excellent Sand on Chrome, an album that picked up favourable notices everywhere in New Zealand for its gritty country-flavoured folk-punk which drew on ragged alt.country and bar band rock'n'roll. Another album is due later this year -- the title track here is to... > Read more
Broken Record Syndrome
Eels: Wonderful, Glorious (Universal)
18 Feb 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Mark Everett (aka Eels) has written albums about family death/illness (not as bleak as that sounds, but dark nonetheless), knows his way around an uplifting pop song and on Hombre Loco (2009) alternated searing Neil Young-rock with disarming ballads to parallel the Jekyll'n'Hyde nature of our base and sublime desires. Everett can be into slightly difficult-to-follow concepts, but you... > Read more