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
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
Harry Charles: Movement (Loop/digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | <1 min read
Although he left New Zealand more than a decade ago and his really formative musical influences and growth came in Berlin, we can still claim Harry Charles as our own. And be proud to so because, as he proves on this second album he is a quiet master craftsman in the world of electronic music who effortlessly manages to blend soaring or gentle melodic elements with beats... > Read more
Titans (2nd Movement)
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE (digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a double set in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and credits. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . The landscape of popular music is in constant flux and development with new genres emerging all the time (coldwave,... > Read more
From
Mark de Clive-Lowe: Past Present, Tone Poems Across Time (digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | 1 min read
Recently expat composer and keyboard player introduced this album to Elsewhere readers with an interesting essay about how he came to write this tribute to his father. De Clive-Lowe described his father – who died in 2011 – as strict and overbearing but, looking through his archive of photos and letters when he was in Japan for 20 years from 1953, he came to... > Read more
Acceptance
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Julien Baker and Torres: Send a Prayer My Way (digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | 1 min read
Those Th Those understandably lamenting that boygenius have gone into an indefinite hiatus actually have reasons to celebrate, each of the three artists in the group have released solo albums in the past month, starting with Lucy Dacus' excellent Forever is a Feeling. And now the highly regarded Grammy-nominated alt.rock singer-songwriter Julien Baker moves from one... > Read more
Tuesday
The 2a.m. Orchestra: The Last (digital outlets)
2 May 2025 | 1 min read
Expat Californian now resident in Auckland, multi-instrumentalist David Kelley has helmed his long-running and serious-minded “orchestra” (here mostly just him) across four previous albums. Kelley has never lacked ambition, in fact we criticised the lyrics of the Impermanence album for being messianic. But that is in the position he has frequently adopted... > Read more
Dying Star
PERE UBU REISSUED, PART ONE (2016): On a thin wire dancing above the abyss
28 Apr 2025 | 6 min read
In his 1974 philosophical narrative Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the American author Robert M. Pirsig writes of being at the home of some friends where there is a constantly dripping tap. “If you try to fix a faucet and your fixing doesn’t work then it’s just your lot to live with a dripping faucet,” he writes.... > Read more
Thriller!
Adrianne Lenker: Live at Revolution Hall (digital outlets)
28 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
Outside of the band Big Thief, their singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker runs a parallel solo career which has hit some impressive high-water marks. Notably last year's Grammy-nominated Bright Future (in the folk category) which was also among our best of 2024 picks. (The earlier Big Thief album Dragon Warm New Mountain in our 2022 list.) This enormous collection... > Read more
Not a Lot, Just Forever (live)
Betty James: I'm a Little Mixed Up (1961)
28 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
Careers can been pretty short sometimes, witness the case of Betty James out of Baltimore who played the club circuit with her husband on guitar and son on bass. She was heard by a couple of ambitious entrepreneurs --Bobby Johnson and Joe Evans -- who had her record I'm a Little Mixed Up for their New York label Cee Jay. It became a hit in the city but Chess Records... > Read more
Anouar Brahem: After the Last Sky (ECM/digital outlets)
28 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
It has been almost 20 years since we first wrote about Tunisian oud player Brahem (the ECM album Le Voyage de Sahar) whose subsequent albums have always been worth hearing. Oddly enough although we heard them we only ever wrote about one other. That said, he hasn't recorded that much since Sahar, just three albums under his own name prior to this one. We... > Read more