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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Olivia Foa’i: Tūmau Pea (digital outlets)

12 Nov 2023  |  1 min read

We sometimes seem to have a curiously ambivalent relationship with some artists who leave the country and become successful overseas. Because they are not around – performing or to promote their work – their albums can go right past us. We could look to Margaret Urlich and Sharon O'Neill whose albums The Deepest Blue and Edge of Winter respectively failed to catch fire here... > Read more

THE RETURN OF THE ROLLING STONES (2023): More diamonds than hackneyed

30 Oct 2023  |  7 min read  |  1

In the years since the Rolling Stones released A Bigger Bang in 2005 – their last album of original songs – there have been six British prime ministers, Paul McCartney has released nine albums and Taylor Swift's debut album was still a year away in 2005. Since then she's released nine studio album and re-recorded four. At the time of A Bigger Bang, Mick Jagger was a mere 62. His... > Read more

Vanishing Twin: Afternoon X (Fire/digital outlets)

29 Oct 2023  |  1 min read

Elsewhere has previously recommended two albums by the multi-culti experimental UK project Vanishing Twin whose impressive releases seem to arrive at two year intervals and have an interesting philosophical bent. The opening track on this new album is Melty: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profane and we are at last compelled to face, in sober senses, the real... > Read more

Lazy Garden

Paul McLaney: As the North Attracts the Needle (AAA/digital outlets)

9 Oct 2023  |  1 min read

In an understated but relevant cover of his own design, this album finds  Paul McLaney returning to his acoustic guitar for 10 intimate and typically thoughtful songs which have a discreet spiritual quality (All It Takes is Time), a delight and wonder in Nature (Like a Diamond in the Sky), an appreciation of slowness (“pause for a moment, take a deep breath and hold it” on A... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Various Artists: The Endless Coloured Ways; The Songs of Nick Drake (digital outlets)

25 Aug 2023  |  3 min read  |  1

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a remastered double album on heavyweight vinyl with liner information on the framable inner covers about the recording details. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Conversations and experience tell me not many people actually heard much of... > Read more