Favourite Five Recently Reviewed CDs
Five of the best albums from the recent postings at New Music From Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you are looking for a quick fix of great and interesting albums.
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Julia Jacklin: Crushing (Liberation)
21 Feb 2019 | 1 min read | 2
Might as well just say this straight away: the list for “best of the year” albums starts with this remarkable, mature second album by Australia's Julia Jacklin who here peels away emotional layers, takes a look through the prism at her recent life and refracts the views back through clever and often understated songs. Since her impressive and unexpectedly successful debut album... > Read more
Don't Know How to Keep Loving You
ONE WE MISSED: Brisa Roche: Father (Black Ash)
14 Feb 2019 | 1 min read
We forgive ourselves – and of course you – because this one went past unnoticed. Elsewhere only discovered it when a fan/supporter here sent a on copy of this quietly gripping album from last year. American-born musician-poet Roche – now 42 – spent most of her life in Paris where she performed across a variety of genres, recorded an album and was signed to Blue Note... > Read more
Carnation
Tiny Ruins: Olympic Girl (Milk! Records vinyl/digital outlets)
4 Feb 2019 | 1 min read
At some point in the late Sixties, British folk music got a little psychedelic, baroque and more interesting than much of the earnest finger-picking style which had preceded it. People like Donovan – on songs such as Sunny Goodge Street, Three Kingfishers and so on – found these new musical settings opened up and allowed for new avenues of lyrical expression. Hollie Fullbrook... > Read more
School of Design
Francisca Griffin: The Spaces Between (Coco Muse/digital outlets)
30 Jan 2019 | 1 min read | 1
In an engagingly monochromatic voice which alludes to the dispassionate indifference of Nico or the battered dignity of recent Marianne Faithfull, singer/guitarist Francisca Griffin – formerly of Flying Nun's Look Blue Go Purple then Cyclops – here delivers her poetic alt.pop against backdrops of dark and driving folkadelics (the gripping opener One Eye Open and Martyn with Ro... > Read more
Bones and Lies
Sona Jobarteh: Fasiya (West African Guild)
27 Jan 2019 | 1 min read
Although this remarkable London-raised woman from West Africa is acknowledged as a rare female kora player from her griot family (Toumani Diabate is a cousin), she is also a strong advocate and exemplar of women's rights, has her own Gambia Academy which is a cultural centre which she underwrites (see here) and has taken her music and opinions to festivals and forums around the world. And... > Read more