arch hill

The self-titled debut album by this Auckland-based folk-pop band was among the Best of Elsewhere 2007 list -- and they have just been getting better. No surprise really given that alongside the core duo of John Guy Howell and Rachel Bailey are Sam Prebble (who, as Bond Street Bridge, appeared in the following year's Best of Elsewhere with his...
> music/3322/the-broken-heartbreakers-wintersun-bhb/

We shouldn't feel too sorry for the profoundly talented Grayson Gilmour -- but I do sympathise with him at the moment: being the first act signed to the resurrected Flying Nun label means that has become the story and not this quite superb album. I have heard and seen Gilmour interviewed repeatedly and most of the time has been taken up...
> music/3170/grayson-gilmour-no-constellation-flying-nun/

If there were awards in local rock for candour beyond the call of duty, then Graeme Downes, linchpin of the formative and formidable Flying Nun band the Verlaines (1981-97), would be saying “Thank you” at the podium more than most. Always a straight shooter, Downes settles over lunch to chat about the long overdue...
> absoluteelsewhere/3144/graeme-downes-of-the-verlaines-interviewed-2003-such-brave-flawed-diamonds/

Quite why anyone thought there ever was a "Dunedin sound" is bewildering -- without even hearing a note of the music all you had to do was look at the cover of the famous "Dunedin double" album of mid '82 to see how each of the four bands -- the Stones, the Chills, Sneaky Feelings and the Verlaines -- thought of...
> absoluteelsewhere/3146/the-verlaines-reissued-and-reconsidered-2010-listened-to-mahler-look-over-my-shoulder/

For their third album, this duo (now a band) out of Dunedin (now Auckland) here deliver a particularly interesting amalgam of radio-friendly pop (the single Hut 234, the delightfully driving power-pop of Fly Man) and alt.rock (most of the other 9 songs) onto which they throw strange and strangely appealing guitar shapes and rhythmic twists....
> music/3058/george-and-queen-teenagers-and-grownups-universal/

The dreamy pop landscape that Ryan McPhun, mainman behind the Ruby Suns, conjures up usually wouldn't sound too far removed from that of bands on the PopFrenzy label which Elsewhere has always favoured. The last Ruby Suns album Sea Lion had an identifiable pop-folkadelic quality coming from the Pacific Rim (he's a Californian transplanted...
> music/2929/the-ruby-suns-fight-softly-lil-chief/

We'll make this a quick product description to coincide with this great alt.American band playing in New Zealand -- here is a remastered 23-track collection which draws on their singles, tracks from their classic albums (Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, Brighten the Corners) and adds three early songs from before...
> music/2924/pavement-quarantine-the-past-the-best-of-pavement-matador/

This young pop band out of Sydney come, not so much trailing influences but shoving them up ahead of them: variously they sound like nasal Dylan '65 doing early Velvets drone (Farmacy), the Bats jingle-jangle (Something to Believe In), the fuzzy end of the Clean (Oh No), more Velvets-in-Dunedin (Retreat) . . . And those are just the first...
> music/2860/songs-songs-popfrenzy-rhythmethod/

As we all know, song lyrics are rarely poetry -- and conversely poems, especially contemporary poems which don't bother with rhyme schemes, can't often be readily adapted into the service of a song. Singer-guitarist David Kilgour of the Clean here takes some of Sam Hunt's poems (despite the attribution, Hunt's distinctive sing-song voice...
> music/2347/david-kilgour-and-sam-hunt-falling-debris-arch-hill/

While Neil Young berates his way down the highway on Fork in the Road, this well-established Wellington four-piece just get on with the business of making music which conjures up the driving energy and magic of an accelerator and open road, and in some places the wide terrain of Texas (or maybe Southland). With throbbing guitars which...
> music/2333/grand-prix-the-speed-of-sound-arch-hill/

This exceptional album by Buda of the Phoenix Foundation may take some getting used to for a few people: it is ambitious (and often lyrically funny or provocative) wide-screen pop which unashamedly doesn't shy from a McCartney-like hook, or deploying lap steel to fine effect -- as well as conjuring up the innocence of mid 60s pop (Electric...
> music/2038/best-of-elsewhere-2008-luke-buda-vesuvius-arch-hill/

The first time and the last time I saw the Bats (at the dawn of time, at the Big Day Out in . . . 2008?) I loved them. In fact at that BDO gig I thought they were one of the best bands on the bill, they seemed utterly invigorated and quite driven. However I often felt I was enduring rather than enjoying them every time between those two...
> music/2032/the-bats-the-guilty-office-arch-hill/

What can you say? The Clean recorded live during their '07 national tour.Really, enough said: David Kilgour's guitar just gets more mercurial and expressive over time (if sometimes pulling back from the edginess of previous decades) and Hamish and Robert create and ride these often oceanic surges of sound. But nuance is everywhere also.Magic at...
> music/1705/the-clean-mashed-arch-hill/

An excellent earlier EP by this Auckland duo and friends made repeat appearances at Elsewhere previously -- and this follow-up is their "double mini album".W/B Swan are Sonya Waters and Ben Howe who have long and illustrious careers (in bands such as the Instigators, ICU in London, Orange, Superette) and they were together in the...
> music/1741/white-swan-black-swan-white-swan-black-swan-arch-hill/

Anyone who was dropped into New Zealand music in the 80s and 90s would have thought that (for the most part) they had arrived in some grim North England industrial town: black moods, anger, negativity and cynicism -- and the shoe-gazing bands dressed to match. There was a lot of sullen music around and I guess young musicians thought that by...
> music/1607/beach-house-devotion-arch-hill/

This five-song EP by the Auckland duo of Ben Howe and Sonya Waters is a charming little collection: a little bit alt.country, a little bit alt.pop. Considered and quiet -- and needlessly modest. Check their label www.archhill.co.nz (Good website all round)
> music/1564/white-swan-black-swan-castle-of-useless-junk-arch-hill/

This off-kilter and eerily dreamy slice of Americana from a conjured up "South" comes from an unexpected source: the Haints of Dean Hall are in fact Stephen Reay and singer/photographer Kathryn McCool, the former from the rowdy Flying Nun band the Subliminals and the latter who now lives near Melbourne. A haint is an imagined ghost...
> music/875/the-haints-of-dean-hall-the-haints-of-dean-hall-arch-hill/