Interviews, overviews, critical essays and extended music reviews

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN'S NEBRASKA (2019): The idea for the song from the film of the true story

23 Mar 2019 | 2 min read

It has been more than 35 years since Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, an album that many fans – and Springsteen himself – consider pivotal in his career and an artistic breakthrough into new and rewarding territory beyond rock'n'soul. After the sometimes bombastic heroics and escapism of Born to Run, it's more muted and humane Darkness on the Edge of Town and the double album The... > Read more

THE STAIRS RECONSIDERED (2019): Through the past, smartly

11 Mar 2019 | 3 min read

And suddenly, they they were, all The Definite Article bands. After years of single-name grunge outfits (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad etc) the post-Britpop groups appeared with “the” in front of their names. This wasn't new, of course, but in that Brit-pride world which had musically looked back to the Sixties for reference points (the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, the... > Read more

Flying Machine

JULIA JACKLIN INTERVIEWED (2019): It's life Julia, but not as you knew it

25 Feb 2019 | 17 min read

Yes, Leonard Cohen makes sense . . . but Doris Day and the Andrews Sisters? “Oh, I love the Andrews Sisters,” says Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin of the famous close-harmony Forties and Fifties trio. Jacklin is back in New Zealand for a day to talk about her new album Crushing and to play a brief showcase before a flight back to... > Read more

Head Alone

RICHARD FARIÑA REMEMBERED (2019): The man who wouldn't be king

21 Feb 2019 | 12 min read

See him there in that photo from the early Sixties, the young singer standing alongside the beautiful Baez sisters Joan and Mimi. There he is again, a key figure hanging out in the downtown New York folk scene around the Village, his original songs pulling an audience his way, their lyrics political, allegorical, metaphorical and sometimes as gentle as a butterfly alighting on a leaf.... > Read more

Michael, Andrew and James

WINGS, AT THE SPEED OF SOUND CONSIDERED (2019): And now, some not so silly love songs?

20 Feb 2019 | 4 min read

Paul McCartney must have been livid with his record company in 1976. Consider: He'd been in the biggest and most culture-changing, money-making band of the century and along the way had written dozens of classic songs; a field-length list which included Yesterday, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby, She's Leaving Home and . . . Then when that band broke up he reinvented himself over a couple... > Read more

DENNIS CASEY OF FLOGGING MOLLY INTERVIEWED (2019): Taking Irish back to the Irish

18 Feb 2019 | 7 min read

Guitarist/singer Dennis Casey may boast a resonantly Irish surname and play in one of the most widely-acclaimed punk-influenced Irish folk-rock bands Flogging Molly, but the phone call catches him at home in Rochester, New York where he lives with wife and four children. And where he was brought up. With a laugh he's prepared to admit that Irish music didn't come to him until... > Read more

JAPANESE AMBIENT MUSIC OF THE EIGHTIES CONSIDERED (2019): The sound of very little, but beautiful

12 Feb 2019 | 5 min read

Someone very famous – who doesn't turn up on a Google search – once quipped “money follows intellect”. You'd like to think it was more true than it is, but it is certainly verifiable when you see Big Money (usually in the form of advertisers) paying top dollar to use the work of creative people. (And I don't mean “creatives” in ad agencies, I mean... > Read more

BILL FAIRS' ROCK'N'ROLL PHOTOS, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): History in the lens . . .

12 Feb 2019 | <1 min read

Many bands have an in-house archivist, the member (or proud parent) who keeps posters, tickets, clippings, photos and such. Such people are invaluable to researchers, historians and the curious. The early New Zealand pop and rock scene from the late 1950s to the early 70s was lucky enough to have saxophonist Bill Fairs, who kept dozens of photos. These charted his career from the school... > Read more

THE PICTONES PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2019): Hashish in the provinces, or maybe not

11 Feb 2019 | 1 min read

In an odd coincidence, around the same time as the young Beatles went into a studio in Germany in 1961 and backed the singer Tony Sheridan on a rock'n'roll version the old While that uniquely European amalgam out of Hamburg featured a vocalist, the version from the band out of Palmerston North was a Shadows-styled instrumental, and a pretty good one at that. It was on the flipside of... > Read more

PETER POSA INTERVIEWED (2012): Pulling a hit out of the hat

4 Feb 2019 | 9 min read | 3

Half a century ago, in that monochrome world before the Beatles – before even Coronation Street screened on New Zealand television -- guitarist Peter Posa from Henderson rode a wave of local popularity with his single Wheels. As was the custom of the day, he'd adapted an already established hit – by the String-A-Longs out of Texas – and radio picked up his version.... > Read more

The Old Rugged Cross

DODSON AND FOGG. REVISITED. AGAIN (2019): Through the English countryside to dark and light . . .

22 Jan 2019 | 2 min read

Elsewhere has long championed the music of Chris Wade (aka Dodson and Fogg) and also the art of his partner Linzi Napier. But as we have said previously, D&F is such a productive project that we sometimes have trouble keeping up: Wade also writes books and comix, does radio and his own art and much more. But we do keep coming back to his music which can range from cosmic folkadelic... > Read more

Ascending (from Phantom Gesture, 2019)

TEENAGE FANCLUB CONSIDERED (2019): Big star and middle-big stars . . .

15 Jan 2019 | 6 min read

Even at the Big Day Out in Sydney in '94 -- headlined by Soundgarden (stunning), Bjork (a revelation) and the Ramones (“great, man” but actually disappointing) -- two bands stood out . . . other than Smashing Pumpkins. They were Urge Overkill who brought style, cynicism and wit to pop-rock on a small stage; and Teenage Fanclub who were riding the crest of two fine albums,... > Read more

Winter (from Songs From Northern Britain)

EZRA FURMAN CONSIDERED (2019): The screen door slams, Ezra's dress waves . . .

14 Jan 2019 | 3 min read

Of all those following Springsteen melodramatically hitting the blacktop to escape the suffocation of smalltowns and Dad/the day job/the downturn, few are as unexpected as Ezra Furman. At 32 with five albums behind him with his bands the Harpoons and the Boyfriends, and a solo album (The Year of No Returning in 2012) Chicago-born San Francisco-based Furman unleashed his desperate,... > Read more

God Lifts Up the Lowly

ROSS MULLINS PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2018): The poet of the suburbs

29 Dec 2018 | 1 min read

When pianist-singer Ross Mullins released his seventh album The Poet and the Fisherman in 2016 it was certainly long overdue but perhaps not long-awaited. It had been 17 years since his previous album and for all of his long career which dates back to his debut in 1985, Mullins has been below most listeners’ radar. In part that’s because his first three albums came under the... > Read more

THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2018: THE READERS' CHOICES

17 Dec 2018 | 7 min read | 2

Well, we did ask! Following Elsewhere posting its choices for the Best of the Year albums and The Best in Reissues (of what we heard, obviously a lot went past us) we invited Elsewhere readers to tell us what they were impressed by this year. Here is what people told us . . . and where Elsewhere had reviewed the album we have highlighted it with a link to our original review.... > Read more

WINGS. RED ROSE SPEEDWAY REISSUED (2018): The malaise or just lazy?

17 Dec 2018 | 3 min read | 2

For every person who loves Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre there is another who couldn't hate it more. For everyone who loves With a Little Luck there is me. McCartney's most popular songs seem to divide people: he could write beautiful love songs . . . and Silly Love Songs. A curious case in point is My Love which appeared on his Red Rose Speedway album. Some people find it... > Read more

Loup (First Indian on the Moon)

WINGS. WILD LIFE REISSUED (2018): “And in the end . . .” there's a begin-again?

14 Dec 2018 | 5 min read

In the Beatles' Anthology DVD, their producer George Martin observed that no one – other than the four young men themselves – knew what it was like in the hurricane that was Beatlemania. They only had themselves to rely on for support, solace, humour and an understanding of the fear about what could possibly go wrong when the screaming turned to anger and disgruntled US fans... > Read more

Mumbo

THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2018: THE EDITOR'S PICKS

11 Dec 2018 | 11 min read

By my loose count, Elsewhere has written reviews or overviews on around 200 albums this past year (mostly new releases but also reissues, compilations and so on). Most of those reviews appeared at Music from Elsewhere, but there were also some others under World Music, Jazz, Reggae and Blues. And when it came to box set reissues or the like, they got some greater essaying and discussion... > Read more

THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE, THE YEAR IN REISSUES (2018)

8 Dec 2018 | 5 min read

Caution: Objects in the rearview mirror may be more expensive than they seem. Yes, living in the past may be an exercise in nostalgia, but there's a very good reason to go there. Everything was cheaper back then. Which is a good joke but not exactly true: vinyl records in New Zealand in 1968 – half a century ago – cost around the same as new vinyl... > Read more

TE VAKA PROFILED, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2017): Pasifika to the world

8 Dec 2018 | 1 min read

The acclaim for Opetaia Foa’i of Te Vaka for his music on the soundtrack to the animated Disney film Moana – which topped the Billboard soundtrack and children’s charts, and went to No.2 on the main US charts – is a story many decades in the telling. For those who haven’t followed Te Vaka, it may seem like an overnight success, but they’ve long been a... > Read more

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

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