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. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
LAUREL CANYON directed by ALLISON ELLWOOD (2020): California dreamin' and tension
13 Jul 2020 | 2 min read
In 2009 the producer, music journalist, radio consultant and album compiler Harvey Kubernick wrote an interesting book Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and Music of Laurel Canyon, the story of the area where he lived in Los Angeles. It came with a foreword by the Doors' Ray Manzarek and an afterword by producer Lou Adler (The Mamas and The Papas etc) In 360 heavily... > Read more
Malouma; Nour/Light (2007)
13 Jul 2020 | 1 min read | 1
The shrink-wrap that this exceptional album came in provided the clue: "blues woman mauritanienne, transcende les frontieres musicales". And Amen -- or more correctly Allahu Akbar -- to all that. Malouma wasn't "blues" in the same way that say Etran Finatawa or Tinariwen were on a first encounter around the same time. If you were desperately... > Read more
Malouma: Nebine
fra fra: Funeral Songs (Glitterbeat/digital outlets)
13 Jul 2020 | <1 min read
If memory serves, when the late writer Paul Oliver (who died in 2017 at 90) released an album to coincide with his seminal book The Story of the Blues in the late Sixties, the first track was a song of praise by people known as the Frafra tribe from Northern Ghana. In it you could hear some of the elements more familiar from songs by Willie McTell, Leadbelly and other... > Read more
Shona Laing: Hindsight (Frenzy)
12 Jul 2020 | 1 min read
This timing of this compilation of “hits, new recordings, alternate versions and rarities” could not be better. A couple of months ago at the Taite Prize, Shona Laing's '87 album South was accorded the award for Independent Music NZ Classic Record, it's two most memorable songs (Glad I'm Not a Kennedy and the tight single edit of the chilling/thrilling Soviet... > Read more
The Mahatma's Army
UTOPIA AVENUE by DAVID MITCHELL
12 Jul 2020 | 2 min read
Around the midpoint of this 560 page doorstop by the acclaimed writer David Mitchell, anyone who has a loose working knowledge of how Sixties pop and rock bands like the Beatles, Stones, Who and others formed will be wondering what the point of this book is. Mitchell here writes of a fictional British band Utopia Avenue, pulled together by a manager who... > Read more
Scofield/Swallow/Stewart: Swallow Tales (ECM/digital outlets)
11 Jul 2020 | 1 min read
Anyone who has even a modest collection of ECM jazz albums will have encountered bassist Steve Swallow, most often on albums with his longtime partner Carla Bley but also with vibes player Gary Burton, and with guitarist John Scofield with whom he has an almost intuitive understanding born of four decades of playing and recording together. This album of Swallow's... > Read more
JEFFERSON STARSHIP: EARTH, CONSIDERED (1978): Who's at the controls on the flight-deck?
10 Jul 2020 | 5 min read
Pulling albums randomly from the shelf for this stand-alone section of Elsewhere can be fraught. As with this one by Jefferson Starship who were on their fourth album in that post-Airplane incarnation, with some solo outings by various members between times. By just a fraction of a centimetre we could be looking at their much better album, Red Octopus of '75 which --... > Read more
The Beths: Jump Rope Gazers (Carpark/digital outlets)
10 Jul 2020 | 2 min read
This fiery Auckland rock band are proof of the value of getting out of the practice room and a few local gigs . . . and into the wider world to get your road miles up. When they first emerged a few years ago and were embraced enthusiastically by their friends and peers, the Beths actually had some considerable way to go. Their songs felt undernourished, they could be... > Read more
Paul Weller: On Sunset (Polydor/digital outlets)
9 Jul 2020 | 4 min read
Paul Weller's albums are a bit like films by Woody Allen or Ken Loach. If you miss one it doesn't matter because another will be along soon. On Sunset is his 15thsolo album but it has been five years since we seriously checked in with his progress (for Saturn's Pattern) and there were two other albums (A Kind Revolution, True Meanings) and an EP in the interim. Note... > Read more
GUEST WRITER STEVE GARDEN considers women filmmakers looking at men in the #MeToo era
9 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
Recently I watched two films that ostensibly examine male power from female perspectives in the context of #MeToo, both of which could, in a sense, be described as psychological horror films. The Invisible Man (2020) is a mainstream thriller directed by Leigh Whannell starring Elisabeth Moss, who came to prominence playing Peggy Olson in the TV series, Mad Men. The... > Read more
EPs by Yasmin Brown
9 Jul 2020 | 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 BRIEF does for international artists. You can read her... > Read more
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JUNELLE AND ABRAHAM KUNIN INTERVIEWED (2020): Tibetan words of wisdom, universal sounds of peace
6 Jul 2020 | 9 min read
In a year full of the unexpected, the new album Inner World still surprises. It features the voice of the Dalai Lama speaking words of wisdom and compassion and placed against relaxing soundbeds. The album Inner World, released on The Dalai Lama's 85thbirthday, has already picked up excellent advance notices, perhaps because in a troubled time his thoughts speak to... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
The Dalai Lama: Inner World (digital outlets)
6 Jul 2020 | 1 min read
Two weeks ago in the Guardian's list of top new tracks there was an unusual entry. Alongside the clubland pop of Kiesza, a groovy remix of St Germain's Rose Rouge by Jorja Smith, the big voiced singer-songwriter Tom Walker and the r'n'b of Kenzie with Sia was the 84-year old Dalai Lama with the track Compassion from his debut album Inner Worlds. Maybe – with... > Read more
Joan Baez: Simple Twist of Fate (1975)
6 Jul 2020 | <1 min read
In late '74 Joan Baez went into a studio with hot session musicians and jazz players (Jim Gordon, Larry Knechtel, Joe Sample, Larry Carlton, Wilton Felder), and she had been hanging around with her new friend Hampton Hawes. So jazz -- and Joni Mitchell -- was in the air, and Baez responded by delivering the album Diamonds and Rust which was a step well away from her... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS: Trip, stumble and fall
5 Jul 2020 | 6 min read
When we look at the cast of misfits, murderers and murder victims, oddballs and eccentrics in our articles at WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT, you'd be entitled to ask why Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and hit-makers The Mamas and the Papas should be in such strange company. By way of explanation, let us start at the end. In fact, let's start after the end . . . Because in... > Read more
Creeque Alley
Garnett Betts: Highfield (digital outlets)
4 Jul 2020 | <1 min read
Although this album by Canadian singer/guitarist Garnett Betts came out late last year, we'd bet high odds that few in this country have heard it, or of him. But with his appealing vocals style – sometimes country-blues, sometimes closer to Bruce Hornsby's easy style – he should have strong appeal here for those who have remained loyal to his fellow Canadian... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE COMPILER'S QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Ben Stevens
4 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
The past decade has seen a surge of interest in New Zealand's pop culture history. In large part that has been due to the ever-expanding audioculture website, but also through the work of people like Chris Caddick quietly getting New Zealand music of all kinds onto digital platforms, archivists and compilers such as Grant Gillanders, John Baker, Karl Lock, Alan Perrott... > Read more
THE DURUTTI COLUMN: THE GUITAR AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS, CONSIDERED (1987): Man and machine music
3 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
Manchester's Vini Reilly -- who steered Durutti Column through scores of studio albums and many side-projects from the late Seventies until fairly recently -- probably only ever earned enough to pay the mortgage . . . and never enough to pay it off. Respected, nervous, anorexic and almost popular sometimes, he was always his own man. Reilly – in... > Read more
GREEN MONKEY OUT OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (2020): Never too much Monkey business
3 Jul 2020 | 4 min read
When the music industry power players descended on Seattle waving cheque-books in the wake of Nirvana, a number of artists dodged that bullet. As grunge ran its course, many local artists and labels simply carried on making the music they wanted, free of the constraints of marketing, PR and a fickle media. As Elsewhere has frequently noted, we were lucky to have our... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Brigid Mae Power: Head Above Water (Fire/Southbound)
2 Jul 2020 | 1 min read
Elsewhere is well-known for approaching English and Irish folk music with some caution if not outright suspicion. The lamentations, murder and miserablism, references to medievalism, “fair maiden” and “kind sir” lyrics . . . . that is rarely for these ears. But of course there are a more contemporary stylists – like ol' Bill Fay or the... > Read more