Interviews, overviews, critical essays and extended music reviews

ADDITIONAL PROVOCATIONS OF RATTLES (2024): The wide river of new Rattle releases.

18 Oct 2024 | 2 min read

As we have noted in previous Provocation/Provocations of Rattles columns, the Auckland label releases albums at such a rate it is often impossible to keep up. This year has been a quiet one however, just one or two releases in the first six months, but suddenly a small slew have been released by Rattle, the local label we consider to be one of the most interesting, innovative and... > Read more

THE GROOVE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD: It's where we are at

25 Sep 2024 | 3 min read | 2

New Zealand music has some interesting side roads and tracks off the main highway. But running right down the highway, securely in the middle of the road, is a wide path which many artists prefer. It's smooth driving and a popular route, it can also be mundane and the sights repetitive and dulled through familiarity. The vehicle is riding on an uplifting rail of reggae, soulful... > Read more

We Got This, by Toi

PAUL TURNEY, INTERVIEWED (2024): From Flight X-7 to the I.R.A.

16 Sep 2024 | 15 min read

“I don't listen in the same way as most people listen, I listen in a negative way,” says Paul Turney, nursing a lunchtime beer at the Kingslander pub in Auckland. “I listen as a negative is to a photo. If the negative is good and you develop it properly then the photo is good. I'm always listening out for problems.” Turney is back in Auckland briefly from his... > Read more

You're The King

OUT FROM THE UNDERGROUND (2024): Steve Wynn far beyond the paisley years

2 Sep 2024 | 4 min read

Popular music as we know it is 70 this year, we're seven decades on from Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, Elvis' That's Alright Mama and Blue Moon of Kentucky, Big Joe Turner's Shake Rattle and Roll, Ray Charles' I Got a Woman and Hank Ballard's Work With Me Annie. We're also 70 years on from Chet Baker's My Funny Valentine, the Moonglows' Sincerely, Errol Garner's Misty and Billie... > Read more

What Were You Expecting

WORDS AND MUSIC FROM THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (2024): The strange magic of Jeff Parkhurst, at last

12 Aug 2024 | 2 min read

This year Elsewhere can reflect on a 20 year relationship with the music of the Pacific Northwest. Not Jimi and grunge which we'd been there for, but with more recent artists just off the radar for most people in this hemisphere. It started in 2004 when, just before going to Seattle, a friend asked if we'd be seeing Green Pajamas when we were there. “Never heard of 'em.”... > Read more

Another Portrait

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE; THE SIDE PROJECTS 1970-74: The Baron and the Nun go it alone, together

11 Aug 2024 | 6 min read

The New York garageband Blues Magoos' Psychedelic Lollipop of 1966 was one of the first albums to have the word “psychedelic” in the title, but it wasn't quite the spaced-out sweet thing the name suggested. 13th Floor Elevators out of Texas the same year with their debut The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators were more like the real thing: Psychedelic Sounds is... > Read more

Grace Slick: Come Again? Toucan? (from Manhole)

THE PETER NELSON STORY (2024): From Chch beat to HK soul

11 Aug 2024 | 3 min read

In some ways Peter Nelson's story is familiar: the Christchurch singer fronts a number of bands in the pre-Beatles era (the Metronomes, the Diamonds) playing covers at weddings then takes over the spot vacated by Ray Columbus and the Invaders who moved to Auckland. But as Peter Nelson and the Castaways they found their feet in late '64 and Nelson's tough, soulful voice – he could... > Read more

Runaway Child, by Peter Nelson and Renaissance

GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS, COLLECTED (2024): We'll never turn you away

4 Aug 2024 | 2 min read

Life and pop music were cruel to this band who were running mates with the Beatles: they too played the Cavern and Hamburg, had their first hit with a song the Beatles turned down (How Do You Do It?), shared bills with the Beatles, were managed by Brian Epstein, made their own pop movie and, as much as the Beatles, made an indelible mark which wrote “Liverpool” in people's... > Read more

Walk Hand in Hand

MARTIN PHILLIPPS, REMEMBERED AND RESPECTED (2024): Pop hits for those that still want them

29 Jul 2024 | 4 min read | 3

Like most people, I knew Martin Phillipps from a distance: me down there as just a face in the crowd and him up there under the lights, wringing out his songs with a passionate intensity or delighting in their uplifting pop quality. Martin wrote some of the most engaging and endearing songs in popular music, not just in this country but in the world. And the breadth of his lyrical... > Read more

Night of Chill Blue

FAN CLUB, PROFILED (2024): New kids on the block

15 Jul 2024 | 2 min read

Back in the late Eighties/early Nineties there was a very popular synth-pop dance band called Fan Club. Because of the background of their singer Aishah and tours there, Fan Club were also successful in Malaysia. Their joyful single Sensation damaged the charts here and their subsequent dance-pop proved club-friendly as well as also making the charts. They didn't make music that much... > Read more

Beach Weather

RECOMMENDED RECORD: PAUL McCARTNEY'S ONE HAND CLAPPING (2024): Back in the Abbey

15 Jul 2024 | 3 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this reissue which comes as a double album with an insert of album credits etc. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . No less than John Lennon, Paul McCartney's immediate post-Beatles career was messy and frequently critically derided. His 1970 McCartney album... > Read more

Soily

SAM COOKE, GOSPEL INTO POP: The change was always gonna come

15 Jul 2024 | 4 min read | 1

At this distance, we can’t be expected to understand what the death of Sam Cooke in the sleazy Hacienda Motel in ’64 meant to black Americans. The former gospel singer was found slumped against a wall – naked except for an overcoat and one shoe, gunned down by the motel owner after a woman he’d picked up in a bar had fled his room claiming he attempted to rape... > Read more

Somewhere There's a Girl (1961)

MID-YEAR REPORT: THE TOP 24 OF '24 (2024): The moving finger writes . . .

24 Jun 2024 | 5 min read

It's the middle of the year and progress cards are being sent out. Here Elsewhere singles out excellence from the many dozens of albums we have written about so far this year. But note, these are only chosen from what we have actually reviewed: we heard more but didn't write about them. And we also didn't hear albums which are doubtless your favourites from the past six months.... > Read more

GRAEME DOWNES, INTERVIEWED (2024): Leaving it all on the park

3 Jun 2024 | 1 min read

From his home on the Kapiti Coast, Graeme Downes sounds much as he ever did: astute, casually intellectual, peppering his digressive conversation with droll social and political observations, and noting his current reading has been Shakespearean scholar George Wilson Knight's 1948 essay Christ and Nietzsche. “I'm also fond of Shostakovich's letters to [critic] Isaac Glickman.... > Read more

Blanket Over the Sky

RECOMMENDED RECORD: CHRISTINE WHITE AND THE RAVEN PROJECT (2022): Songs given wings and strings

15 May 2024 | 2 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this album released for the first time on vinyl. It has been some time coming (the album was released on bandcamp in November 2022) but now appears on vinyl with an insert gatefold of lyrics and recording information -- and is available through Christine White's website here. We reprint our... > Read more

Raven (Paddy Free remix)

AMIRIA GRENELL, SHE WHO DOES/DOESN'T FIT (2024): The reward of being beyond categories

8 Apr 2024 | 3 min read

In his interesting book How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll (they didn't, but . . . .), the writer Elijah Wald reminds us that it wasn't until the Fifties that songs became exclusively associated with specific singers. Before that – and there were exceptions like Sinatra and Paul Whiteman's jazz recordings – songs were tied to sheet music which anyone could use. The song... > Read more

Suzy Blue

KAYLEE BELL, PROFILED (2024): A star has risen

8 Apr 2024 | 2 min read

When Kaylee Bell's new album Nights Like This debuted at the top of the New Zealand artist's chart recently and entered the main chart at number 3, few could have been surprised. It wasn't just that her time had come, but her style of music – mainstream country, strong on choruses, hooks and narrative – had also been penetrating the charts and public consciousness. American... > Read more

Life is Tough (But So Ami I), ft Navvy

THE RETURN OF THE CYRKLE (2024): Did anyone request this?

4 Apr 2024 | 4 min read

Some weeks ago, on a list of forthcoming album releases, a band named the Cyrkle appeared. I joked with a friend about it, sending him a clip of the buttoned-down American band of the Beat Era of the same name and saying it couldn't be these guys. Surely not? Cyrkle were one of those short-lived pop bands who had a couple of hits and disappeared. They were in there with Gary Lewis and the... > Read more

We Thought We Could Fly (2024)

KĀREN HUNTER, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2022): The roads less travelled

1 Apr 2024 | 1 min read

Although many musicians often speak of their life and work as a journey, in truth most don’t stray too far from home base or an established style. Others however – like Tāmaki Makaurau-based singer-songwriter Kāren Hunter – frequently set off into different terrain, go down backroads and small corridors, usually picking up very different traveling companions along... > Read more

JENNIFER LOPEZ. ONE ALBUM, TWO FILMS (2024): Oversharing overkill

18 Mar 2024 | 3 min read

When the brightest stars in the pop firmament – Taylor, Adele, Beyonce – release new albums, the announcement alone often ensures hysteria and hyperbole, expensive videos and soul-baring interviews. And so we come to Jennifer Lopez's new album This is Me . . . Now, its title updating her 2002 album This Is Me . . . Then. J-Lo – we'll default to the shorthand – is... > Read more

Wide angle reviews, interviews and opinion
on music, travel and the arts by writer Graham Reid

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