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.
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Harry Styles: Harry Styles (Sony)
12 Jun 2017 | 1 min read | 2
There is a saying around Elsewhere's way which we deploy against ourselves when confronted with certain kinds of music, and we pass it on sometimes to correspondents who are railing against an artist, usually in the teen pop idiom. It is this: “Just remember, they aren't making music for you”. When Lorde released her new single a few months back, my end of... > Read more
Mark Mulcahy: The Possum in the Driveway (Mezzotint)
22 May 2017 | 1 min read
If American Mark Mulcahy is known at all in New Zealand it might only be for his part in the indie.rock outfit Miracle Legion who broke up in '96 after more than a decade and then reformed last year. (Maybe just briefly given a pointed lyric here in The Fiddler). You'd prefer Mulcahy however to be known for his excellent solo album Dear Mark J Mulcahy I Love You of four years ago.... > Read more
Matthew Smith: Matthew Smith (Lyttelton/Southbound)
16 May 2017 | 1 min read
Former rock frontman (of the atmospheric and crunching Von Voin Strum), Matthew Smith here (mostly) gets the knobs turned down and – with a small band, some important and sympathetic colleagues including co-producer and mixer Ben Edwards in the Sitting Room, mastering by Chris Chetland – initially brings an unexpected and intimate low-lights indie.folk voice to the fore on... > Read more
Penguin Café: The Imperfect Sea (Erased Tapes/Southbound)
12 May 2017 | 1 min read | 1
The former Penguin Café Orchestra under the baton of the late Simon Jeffes were never for just anyone, they were for everyone. Their string minimalism and quirkiness (try the odd Telephone and Rubber Band from their self-titled second album in ’81) found them labelled as classical, avant-garde, indie.folk, ambient . . . Jeffes – who died in ‘97 -- even... > Read more
Slowdive: Slowdive (Dead Oceans/Rhythmethod)
5 May 2017 | 1 min read
We’ve said it before but it does bear repeating: there seems to be a (welcome) return of shoegaze . . . and when we essayed the absolutely terrific retrospective box set Still in a Dream we specifically mentioned UK band Slowdive with singer Rachel Goswell and “the great Neil Halstead”. As singer/guitarist Halstead observed some years after Slowdive broke up in the... > Read more