THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Viagra Boys: Viagr Aboys (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Set aside the silly band name, because here is a band which is part rocking Beck in slacker-punk mode, part Beastie Boys, part political comedy act and probably a bit more of other things. This Swedish outfit – fronted by US-born singer-writer Sebastian Murphy – are frequently described as dance punk and garage punk. They seem adequate descriptors for a... > Read more
Dirty Boyz
Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The classy songwriting and delivery of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner has been one of the delights and discoveries of the past decade as they weave soul, r'n'b, funk and pop into art-pop. But they also deliver more as on this album which, despite the sheen of the surfaces and the clever music, has something to say about these straitened times. This from the hypnotic... > Read more
Swarm
THE KITCHEN CINQ REDISCOVERED: Amarillo, California in the Sixties, y'all
19 May 2025 | 2 min read
In their photos, the Kitchen Cinq out of Texas in the mid Sixties don't look entirely promising, like buttoned-down high school seniors who have been given the afternoon off from library duties. And yet . . . The first thing to pique interest in the 2015 28-song compilation When the Rainbow Disappears; A Drama Worthy of The Kitchen Cinq is that this band from... > Read more
Please Come Back
Kurt Cobain: Gun, head and Smithereens.
19 May 2025 | 2 min read
As with most people of a "certain age" I can remember where I was when I heard John F Kennedy had been shot ( I was in bed), and when I was told another Kennedy had gone the way of the gun (in bed again, there's a pattern emerging). Of course I also remember John Lennon's murder (came in with the kids from soccer and it was on television) and, oddly enough --... > Read more
Tupac Shakur: Picture Me Rollin' (1996)
19 May 2025 | <1 min read
Is there a more sad song in the retrospect than this, after Tupac (assailants "unknown") was gunned down? The great poet of rap gets into a beautiful low, confidently cruising but melancholy groove while giving himself some big-ups because, after all, those punk police have passed on and now we need to picture him at the top of his game . . . ... > Read more
Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Labels “indie” and “alternative” haven't meant much since one-time indie bands (R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Husker Du) signed to major labels. But they are convenient shorthand. Seattle-based Car Seat Headrest fronted by singer-writer Will Toledo have remained loyally indie and alt.rock, but for this impressive 13th album they embrace one of... > Read more
Devereaux
Jensen McRae: I Don't Know How But They Found Me! (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The jury is always out on an album where the artist uses it as public therapy. Of the few successful ones, the most outstanding for its courage was the John Lennon Plastic Ono Band album of 1970 which was cathartic and uncomfortable. It was uncommon at the time – has any other artist of his stature since been that emotionally naked and brave, musically and... > Read more
I Can Change Him
Spencer Davis Group: I'm a Man (1967)
18 May 2025 | 3 min read | 2
Down the years – from Mairzy Doats in 1943 to Springsteen's Blinded by the Light three decades later (“madman drummers, bummers and Indians in the summer”) – lyrics have been open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For years I thought Manfred Mann's Ha Ha! Said the Clown was “the horse hit the town”. I'd been ready for... > Read more
Jenny Hval: Iris Silver Mist (digital outlets)
18 May 2025 | 1 min read
Although Elsewhere championed Jenny Hval's excellent The Practice of Love album we're aware that she's probably a hard sell. She has rolled from dark metal, edgy art music and 2016's exacting jazz improvisations of In the End His Voice Will Be the Sound of Paper to alt.folk and experimental sounds under own name, and as Rockettothesky and Lost Girls. She's now 44,... > Read more
To Be A Rose
MARLON WILLIAMS' TE REO LYRICS FOR THE ALBUM TE WHARE TIWEKAWEKA (2025): English translation offered
12 May 2025 | 15 min read
Marlon Williams' te reo album is an important milestone for the artist in that he has not only embraced his heritage but has woven his journey into a series of extraordinary songs which refer to many traditions of Māori music. As we noted in our review, "These original waiata, with lyrics by Williams and Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, present music rooted in Māori concert... > Read more
Kōrero Māori
Thom Yorke, Mark Pritchard: Tall Tales (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
Sometimes it's useful for a critic to make clear their position and preferences, especially when it comes to artists with lengthy and diverse careers. We've mentioned this in regard to Pink Floyd whose work before Dark Side is rated much higher at Elsewhere than all which followed; with U2 it is the two albums before Pop Mart (Achtung Baby and Zooropa) and just a few... > Read more
The Spirit
Jon Hassell: Dream Theory in Malaya (1981)
12 May 2025 | 2 min read
When I imported this album in 1981 it was on the basis of faith: faith that the Melody Maker writer who had hailed it was on the money, that Brian Eno who appeared as a collaborator and on whose EG Music imprint it appeared was right, that it would be as good as their previous collaboration . . . and that it would arrive intact. My faith was vindicated on all counts and... > Read more
Jon Hassell
ROY ORBISON 1960-65: The years of monumental pop
12 May 2025 | 5 min read | 1
Looked at one way, the great Roy Orbison (who died in late '88) had five separate careers, but he only ever changed musical direction once. "The Big O" -- or "the Caruso of Rock" -- as he was known, had long periods away from the spotlight and it would be fair to observe his defining work was done in an exceptional period of creativity which lasted... > Read more
In Dreams
Greta O'Leary: River Dark (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
Let's be clear: this debut album by the local “spook-folk” singer-songwriter is not delivered up as an easy proposition. It opens with three dreamy and melancholy songs – Baby I'm a Singer, The Greatest Peace I've Ever Known and Prelude, all previously released as singles – which certainly establish her distinctively high vocal style and the... > Read more
Prelude
GUEST MUSICIAN JUSTIN DEVEREUX introduces his debut album Nickels&Dimes
12 May 2025 | 3 min read
Like many people, during COVID I had a lot of time to think and reassess my career in film and television. I was waking up in the middle of the night with cold sweats, freaking out that I’d missed my chance to make music. That was what I always wanted. That’s always been my dream really. So in 2023 we packed up our young family to follow the lifelong... > Read more
Starring in my Dreams
Neither Do I: We're Not Known For Anything (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
What's in a name? Quite a lot I would think. No band named something like Big Fat Possum, Up at Sparrow Fart or Drunken Uncle at a Wedding is making a serious pitch for wide attention. A band name can be an identifier of a sound also, or at least give a clue that it's metal and not gentle folk. Which brings us to this album and artist. With an album title... > Read more
Recollection
Eddie Hinton: I Want a Woman (1986)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
Alabama-born Eddie Hinton (1944-95) is hardly a household name but was one of the great Southern soul songwriters and sessionmen. As a Muscle Shoals musician he played guitar on scores of sessions (for everyone from Aretha Franklin to Boz Scaggs, Elvis to Solomon Burke) and was a prolific, if under-recorded, songwriter. His most notable hit was Breakfast in Bed, a... > Read more
GO WEST THEN WEST AGAIN: Memories in mid-May 2025
11 May 2025 | 4 min read
This week the great American poet/essayist and translator Gary Snyder – who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry half a century ago – turned 95. Snyder was often associated with the Beats (he emerged at the same time, shared some beliefs, Ginsberg and others were his friends) but he was always different. He wasn't urban but grew up on farmland in the Pacific... > Read more
BLUES MAGOOS, REMEMBERED: The spirit of '66 and pop's psychedelic pioneers
5 May 2025 | 4 min read | 2
Some albums catch a band at a turning point, one foot in the past and the other stepping towards an unknown but promising future. If the Beatles, through exhaustion and wrung out by the constant pressure to produce, had called it a day in late 1965 their legacy would have been easy to distill down: a few joyfully adolescent pop hits, Beatlemania, a classic pop film in A... > Read more
Tobacco Road
The Waikikis: Nowhere Man (1968)
5 May 2025 | 1 min read
It is a well known fact that Honolulu and Liverpool have much in common. Both are port cities and . . . Err. Maybe not. But the emotional and physical difference didn't stop the Waikikis from adapting a bunch of Beatles songs into their distinctive Hawaiian style. Not that there was anything unusual in a band adapting the Lennon-McCartney songbook into their own... > Read more