THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and for many years Graham Reid has been going there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review columns and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more. This site is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It is an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter and be in to win CDs, DVDs, books and more. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
MARTIN PHILLIPPS INTERVIEWED (2018): A lone guide cutting through snow
20 Aug 2018 | 12 min read | 1
Martin Phillipps takes the guitar off his knee so he can talk about, among many other things, the Chills' new album Snow Bound. But he immediately admits that he can leave such instruments around gathering dust. He can be “lazy” and “gave up on being a technically proficient musician a long time ago,” says the man who wrote sublime songs like... > Read more
Dudley Benson: Zealandia (Golden Retriever)
19 Aug 2018 | 2 min read
It has been more than a dozen years since Dudley Benson announced himself with alarmingly good but small scale solo concerts, one of which I caught at the time where he opened for the American artist Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. At the time it seemed an appropriate pairing – both used loops and sang strangle little songs full of emotional weight – but... > Read more
Cook Beleaguered
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . ZZ HILL: Suited up for Soulville
18 Aug 2018 | 2 min read
Arzell Hill was a soul and blues singer who came to serious attention in the early Eighties with his crossover hits Cheating in the Next Room and the terrific Down Home Blues. He was in his mid Forties at the time and had been recording two decades, mostly with little success beyond admiration and critical appreciation. It was dreadful tragedy then that just two years... > Read more
Nothing Takes the Place of You
Wojtek Mazolewski Quartet: Polka, Deluxe Edition (Whirlwind/Southbound)
16 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
Some clarification in anticipation of an immediate turn-off. This is not an album of polka music. Perhaps the heavily tattooed hands of young Polish bassist and bandleader Mazolewski might have alerted you to that anyway. Or the mohawk sported by pianist Joanna Duda on the inner sleeve. Also this is a slightly expanded reissue of an edgy but approachable jazz album... > Read more
Krakow
EPs by Yasmin Brown
15 Aug 2018 | 5 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column by the informed and opinionated Yasmin Brown. She will scoop up some of those many EP releases, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up albums by New Zealand artists, and IN BRIEFdoes for international artists. You can read her previous... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE SONGWRITER QUESTIONNAIRE: Holly Arrowsmith
14 Aug 2018 | 2 min read
Singer-songwriter Holly Arrowsmith already has an impressive award under her belt: for best New Zealand folk album in 2016 which acknowledged her debut For the Weary Traveller. It was a fine album . . . but her new one A Dawn I Remember is both a step up and a step sideways into a more mature, emotionally rewarding place and we commend it highly. Yes, it is... > Read more
Slow Train Creek
Bob Dylan: Why Try to Change Me Now (2015)
13 Aug 2018 | 1 min read | 1
We didn't go too far back into the Vaults for this one by Bob Dylan, it is from his excellent Shadows in the Night covers album, but of course the song goes way, way back. It was written by Cy Coleman (music) and Joseph McCarthy (lyrics) in 1952 and was recorded by Frank Sinatra later that same year, apparently among his last songs for Colombia before departing for... > Read more
Fraser Ross and the 04s: Life is Magic, Where is my Rabbit? (Home Alone)
10 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
Although singer-songwriter Fraser Ross is sometimes described as “folk” that suggests something a little less than what he does across the 10 songs on this album with a small band. Certainly his intelligent songs seem written on guitar, but a yearning and taut piece like Salisbury Lane sounds as if at any moment it could spring into the epic grandeur of U2.... > Read more
Life is Magic Here is My Rabbit
Giant Sand: Returns to Valley of Rain (Fire/Southbound)
10 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
Even for the most ardent Giant Sand/Howe Gelb fans this “new” album comes with an odd provenance. The original Valley of Rain album was the band's impromptu debut recording in LA released back in '85, in 2010 there was a 25thanniversary reissue (of that little heard debut), in 2015 there was Beyond the Valley of Rain (which reissued the album on vinyl with... > Read more
Curse of a Thousand Chains
Jose M Bandera and Mario Montoya: Jumping' Jack Flash (2008)
10 Aug 2018 | <1 min read
This being the 50thanniversary of the Rolling Stones' single Jumpin' Jack Flash which took them back to their tough r'n'b roots (along with nudges to county and folk on the subsequent Beggar's Banquet album) we go here – without making any claims – to a version of JJFlash. It was recorded for the project Stones World by saxophonist Tim Reis who pulled in... > Read more
Gabor Szabo: Breezin' (1969)
9 Aug 2018 | <1 min read
The Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo -- often described as a gypsy musician -- was a sophisticated player and composer, as witnessed by those who had success covering his material, not the least Carlos Santana who picked up Szabo's Gypsy Queen. Szabo studied at Berklee in Boston, played at Newport and in the early Sixties was in Chico Hamilton's group. He was named best... > Read more
Errol Garner: Nightconcert (Mack Avenue/Southbound)
9 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
Back in the Fifties some jazz albums imprinted themselves on the wider public consciousness: Big sellers like the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out (1956), Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool ('57) and Kind of Blue ('59), and more than a few by Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan among them. And pianist Errol Garner's Concert by the Sea ('55) which was enormously popular and... > Read more
No More Shadows
NOWHERE NEAR by ALICE MILLER
8 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
The first time I went back to Britain as an adult (or at least a late-teen) I wrote in the journal I was carrying that “England is full of dead people”. Graveyards in villages, St Paul's and other such monuments, churchyards covered in tombstones, large areas where ancient battles were fought and the soil had been nurtured by the blood, bone and flesh of the... > Read more
The Beths: The Future Hates Me (Carpark)
7 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
Let's be very clear here: This local four-piece doesn't reinvent the wheel. But Elsewhere is of the unshakable opinion that bristling power-pop doesn't require any kind of overhaul, just that it be done loudly and with enthusiasm. So when the Beths -- who play the soon-come Others Way Festival in Auckland, see below -- hit a midpoint between Nirvana, the pure pop of... > Read more
You Wouldn't Like Me
THE SOUND OF HER GUITAR, a doco by BILL MORRIS
6 Aug 2018 | 2 min read
This charmingly low-key, often movingly honest documentary about New Zealand singer-songwriter Donna Dean takes her from a childhood in a state house in Glen Innes under blue Pacific skies (she ackowledges the drinking and violence between her parents) into Texas clubs and bars and radio stations singing her distictive and mature country music to appreciative audiences.... > Read more
Pretty Buttons
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Blair Parkes
6 Aug 2018 | 3 min read
Among the many enjoyable local albums which have come out in the past few months, the new one by Blair Parkes out of Christchurch is the one which might struggle for attention against The Big Names. But Elsewhere is going to say Parkes' Always Running – with Ryan Chin and Miss Mercury (see below) helping out – is a real find, a keeper and a repeat-play item.... > Read more
Sweetest Darkness
Cowboy Junkies: All That Reckoning (Proper/Southbound)
6 Aug 2018 | 1 min read | 2
When Canada's Cowboy Junkies arrived in the late Eighties with their quiet and contained Trinity Sessions album – recorded in hushed tones in a church -- the landscape of music was very noisy: hard metal, gangsta, stadium rock acts . . . Cowboy Junkies' subtle blend of moody folk, alt.Americana, respect for early Elvis and a whisper of Velvet Underground seemed to... > Read more
Missing Children
Fatoumata Diawara: Fenfo (Wagram)
6 Aug 2018 | <1 min read | 1
The album title here might be a joke, it means “something to say”. But this outing by one of Mali's finest singers and songwriters comes a full seven years after her stunning debut Fatou which was in our best of that year's list. Admittedly she has been busy recording with other artists (among them David Crosby, Herbie Hancock and Snarky Puppy, which is... > Read more
Lionsden: Songbird (usual digital outlets)
4 Aug 2018 | <1 min read
Perhaps this is more of a public service announcement for Elsewhere readers because this album by the gifted Korean musician/composer doesn't exactly shake our tree, other than admiration for the technical and arranging skills he brings to his meltdown of guitar pyrotechnics and electronica. Rhy Dongju grew up in a classical household, was schooled in Western classical... > Read more
Resistance
Ha the Unclear: Invisible Lines (Woollen/usual outlets)
3 Aug 2018 | 1 min read
It has been some years since Dunedin's Ha the Unclear (the band helmed by Michael Cathro, who was interviewed at Elsewhere) first broke into our consciousness with the terrific, quirky, funny and very astute album Bacterium, Look At Your Motor Go. There was more than just wit at work, also an acute understanding of many aspects of pop history which were distilled into... > Read more