Interviews, overviews, critical essays and extended music reviews

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

GREG JOHNSON, PROFILED AND REVIEWED (2024): Back for another crack

11 Mar 2024 | 2 min read

It has been more than 30 years since we first wrote about Greg Johnson, a major profile in the New Zealand Herald in about 1991 when he released his debut album The Watertable. We have followed his career ever since, caught up with him in Los Angeles where he went to live and have interviewed and reviewed him over the decades. But we are also aware that for many, because of his long... > Read more

The Cherry Pickers, From Thunder in Fall (2024)

THE STEADY RETURN OF THE VERLAINES (2024): Taking good care of it

5 Mar 2024 | 5 min read

Although Graeme Downes retired from the field of play four years ago, his legacy of music with the Verlaines – and with students who passed through his courses at the University of Otago's music department – is assured. Tall, dark and interesting, Downes always seemed more mature than his peers on Flying Nun when the Verlaines emerged alongside the Clean, the Gordons, Balloon... > Read more

THE BEVIS FROND, REVISITED (2024): Turning up the heat, refining the focus

4 Mar 2024 | 1 min read

In 2016 we wrote about Britain's Bevis Frond – the vehicle for the multi-talented Nick Saloman – but were about three decades late. By that time Saloman/Frond from Walthamstow, London had released about 25 studio albums on his own Woronzow label. And there were off-shoot projects (the Von Trap Family) and live albums. Most of these had been fairly obscure – despite... > Read more

Maybe We Got It Wrong

THE JULIAN TEMPLE BAND, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2024): The long and winding road

29 Feb 2024 | 1 min read

For almost 20 years Dunedin-based Julian Temple has led his band through a number of line-ups, across seven albums, touring and receiving positive mentions in international media. Along the way they’ve played on the West Coast of the United States – where he was raised – and he recorded a solo album on the side as part of his post-graduate studies at the University of... > Read more

UP UP AND AWAY, AGAIN (2024): Balloon D'Essai and the Instigators fly once more

26 Feb 2024 | 3 min read

The small independent Christchurch label Leather Jacket Records has had a number of favourable mentions at Elsewhere, as much for their reissues of post-punk rock (and the terrific Grim Ltd live album from '66) as for their new releases. But communication and self-promotion isn't the label's long suit. So we have had to rely on others to tell us when albums have been released. Thank you... > Read more

You Don't Matter, by the Instigators

JOHN KENNEDY, AT AUDIOCULTURE (2024): The Kiwi who created British rock'n'roll

20 Feb 2024 | 2 min read

An expatriate New Zealander in the right place at the right time helped launch British rock’n’roll. In 1956, John Kennedy was a suave opportunist in his mid-twenties who would become a clever and shameless publicist-cum-PR operative in London showbiz circles. He had, as Nik Cohn wrote, “flair, invention and a fast mouth”. In the mid 1950s a teenage culture... > Read more

UNEARTHING THE PAST FOR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE (2024): Seldom, or never, heard Kiwi rock from the Seventies

18 Feb 2024 | 3 min read

To paraphrase the philosopher George Santayana, “Those who didn't hear the past are condemned to listen to it on repeat play”. Or something like that. The fact is, the archaeologists of local rock just keep digging. Last year we had previously unreleased 1990s albums from Auckland band Crash and Boom Boom Mancini, the pre-Bads Britain-based band... > Read more

Bloodsucker, by Littlejohn

PETE HAM OF BADFINGER: Take a sad song and make it sadder

11 Feb 2024 | 7 min read | 3

Put simply: Pete Ham was one of the singer-songwriters in Badfinger, the British pop band of the late Sixties and early Seventies which enjoyed the patronage of Paul McCartney. He gave them his Come and Get It (used in the Ringo-Peter Sellers movie The Magic Christian) on the condition they record it exactly as his demo. They did, it was a hit, and a band was born which always... > Read more

Hurry on Father (demo from the Golders Green album)

JIM PEPPER, REMEMBERED (2024): A man comin' . . . an' too soon goin'

5 Feb 2024 | 3 min read | 2

It is a rare jazz musician who can score a rock-radio hit -- but saxophonist Jim Pepper was a very rare jazz musician indeed. Of Kaw and Creek descent, Pepper was born in Oregon in 1941 and described himself as an "urban Indian". He spent much of his early life between family homes in Oregon and Oklahoma and although he grew up listening to big band jazz and bebop he was also... > Read more

Ya Na Ho

LEATHER JACKET RECORDS, PROFILED (2024): Like a great big noisy hug

30 Jan 2024 | 5 min read

In the early Eighties, inspired by the punk DIY attitude and the proliferation of young bands, numerous local independent labels sprang up: Flying Nun, Ripper, Propeller, Pagan, Warrior, Failsafe . . . For the most part those at the helm of these labels were navigating unfamiliar waters without a compass. This was the notorious “here be monsters” world of antiquity where the... > Read more

Mercury, by Hannah Everingham

GRAHAM NASH, INTERVIEWED (2024): Can we get a witness?

29 Jan 2024 | 6 min read

At the end of last year 81-year old Graham Nash could add a new accolade to his long list of awards: he was presented with the ninth annual John Lennon Real Love Award. “Over many years,” he said, “I watched John and Yoko ‘fight the good fight’ for many whose voices were not being heard, a fight that Yoko continues to this day.... > Read more

AROOJ AFTAB, INTERVIEWED (2024): Music from and for the soul

29 Jan 2024 | 7 min read

As far as we can recall, it had never happened before until late last year: an artist whose two consecutive album ended up in our best of the year list. Arooj Aftab's Love in Exile was in the best of Elsewhere 2023 list and her previous one Vulture Prince was in the same list in 2021. And we had them both as a Recommended Record (albums to have on vinyl). So needless to say she has... > Read more

JOEY BURNS OF CALEXICO, INTERVIEWED (2023): Still wired after all these years

19 Jan 2024 | 6 min read

For a few minutes the well-groomed and otherwise articulate Joey Burns of the American band Calexico is lost for words. He, like me, has just learned of the death of the Pogues' Shane MacGowan. We resort to vague cliches: sad, so talented, not unexpected of course . . . Burns never met MacGowan but says he always admired his lyrics and . . . We trail off, the conversation about... > Read more

LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING; SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970: Flowers and freak outs

15 Jan 2024 | 2 min read

Any box set or collection which tries to mop up an era, genre or decade is probably doomed to failure, not from lack of genuine effort but because some artists (the big ones) don't want to be included. So you can get a multiple disc, very inclusive set of the Eighties for example and it doesn't have anything by Madonna, Prince, Springsteen and Michael Jackson. That the Rhino label did such... > Read more

Salvation: Think Twice

TIM FINN, INTERVIEWED (1992): The art of always arriving

12 Jan 2024 | 1 min read

When there is time, Elsewhere will be sourcing a rich vein of its archival material which was published in various places during the Eighties and Nineties which are not available on-line. These will most often be reproduced as they appeared in print. Some may be a little fuzzy in the reproduction but we think the story or interview are worth it for researchers or fans. Best read on a... > Read more

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

Absolute Elsewhere