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.
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
The Mons Whaler: Hold My Gun (digital outlets)
3 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
What's in a name? Whatever “the Mons Whaler” is, it sounds like a big and possibly menacing leviathan. And an album title like that? Clearly this four-piece from Taranaki are serious, and sure enough this album sometimes rides on the back of heavyweight blues and alt.rock. But there is much more than that going on in these 10 refined and discrete songs which range... > Read more
Linger On
Sheherazaad: Qasr (Erased Tapes/digital outlets)
2 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
With a variation on the name of the tale-teller in the famous folk-tale The One Thousand And One Nights (and which in Hindi and Urdu translates to “free city”), this San Franciscan singer/composer -- now based in Brooklyn -- arrives with at least one impeccable recommendation: her album is produced by Arooj Aftab who'd heard some of her home recordings and offered assistance.... > Read more
Khatam
Liam Gallagher, John Squire: Liam Gallagher John Squire (digital outlets)
1 Mar 2024 | 1 min read
Although never much greater than the sum of its partners, this pairing of former Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and Stone Roses guitarist John Squire is not without interest. We dispense immediately with the lyrics because most of them are lame, lazy or referential as has often been the way with Gallagher in his solo career. And we concede immediately that much of this is music aimed for... > Read more
Mars to Liverpool
Chelsea Wolfe: She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (digital outlets)
29 Feb 2024 | <1 min read
Anyone new to this industrial strength, electro-techno Californian – with reference points in Trent Reznor, Bauhaus and recent Gary Numan – might note previous albums included Pain is Beauty, Abyss and Birth of Violence. Those titles read like consumer warnings, albums only to be approached by frontline members of the armed forces. Wolfe's background speaks of longtime... > Read more
Tunnel Lights
Brittany Howard: What Now (digital outlets)
26 Feb 2024 | 2 min read
Some years ago I heard a remarkable song which I immediately introduced to my uni music students: it was Don't Wanna Fight by Alabama Shakes, a band I knew nothing about at the time. But the singer, Brittany Howard, delivered the “I don't wanna fight” line over and over with a different expression, from anger to resignation and defeat. It was a remarkable performance and... > Read more