Favourite Five Recent Releases

Five of the best albums from the recent postings at Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you're looking for a quick fix.

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Jenny Hval: The Practice of Love (Sacred Bones/digital outlets)

21 Oct 2019  |  1 min read

Norwegian multi-discipline artist (novelist, songwriter, sonic experimenter, collaborator) Jenny Hval is – like Laurie Anderson – someone who melds the spoken and sung word with unusual sonic settings and sometimes a kind of emotionally cool distance or a sensual whisper. She is probably so far out of most people's orbit that it serves little purpose to... > Read more

Matthew Bannister: Rubber Solo (Powertool Records)

21 Oct 2019  |  2 min read

Now this is a pleasant and welcome return by Matthew Bannister (Sneaky Feelings, Dribbling Darts of Love, Changing Same and more). Six years ago under the name One Man Bannister he revisited and reconstructed the Beatles' Revolver album in its entirety in what might have been seen as foolhardy and overly ambitious. But it worked because although he was reverential to the songs, that... > Read more

Run for Your Life

Brittany Howard: Jaime (Columbia)

26 Sep 2019  |  1 min read

Among the many remarkable songs by Alabama Shakes, the band fronted by Brittany Howard, was Don't Wanna Fight on their 2015 second album Sound and Color. In the song she repeats the line “don't wanna fight no more” and it changes meaning, from anger and confrontation to hurt and despair and a woman breaking down defeated by it all. Howard has an extraordinary and expressive... > Read more

David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights: Bobbie's a girl (Merge/digital outlets)

23 Sep 2019  |  2 min read

Earlier this year I had a very knowledgable young American student in a couple of my music classes. He knew the Velvet Underground and minimalists, a lot of the Band and Bob Dylan but also contemporary pop and r'n'b. He was also familiar with Flying Nun acts, notably the Chills and the Clean. When I set him on the path of a deeper exploration of the Clean he came back amazed, he never... > Read more

Entrance

Angie McMahon: Salt (AWAL)

18 Sep 2019  |  1 min read

This album-length debut (11 songs over two sides of vinyl) pulls together a few of this powerful, mature and vocally gripping twentysomething Melburnian's previous singles. But as Angie McMahon doesn't seem to have damaged our charts with any of them we can just take this as a complete and discrete work – and frankly her singles sound more like strong,... > Read more