Music at Elsewhere
These pages - sometimes with sample tracks and videos posted - introduce and review music which may otherwise go unheard and unnoticed. Subscribers to Elsewhere (free, here) receive a weekly e-newsletter with updates on what's new at the ever-expanding site. Elsewhere: an equal opportunity enjoyer. So enjoy.
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David Gilmour: Luck and Strange (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Many decades ago there was a New Zealand whisky called 45 South. My father used to say it was a perfectly fine drink . . . as long as you didn't think of it as a whisky. I mentioned this the other night to a friend when the topic of the new David Gilmour album came up. Neither of us had rated his solo albums outside Pink Floyd as being up to much and then I said I actually didn't mind... > Read more
The Piper's Call
Mystery Waitress: Bright Black Night (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
In a recent conversation with a fellow music writer, the conversation turned to the problem of giving early acclaim to local artists on the basis of very little: maybe just a single or two. My friend said it could give the artist an artificially inflated idea of self-worth and raised unreasonable expectations. It's a fair point, but then I mentioned a band which kick-started it's career... > Read more
Mountain
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: Woodland (digital outlets)
9 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
When we interviewed Gillian Welch 20 years ago it was still relatively early in her career, but she and her partner David Rawlings were already being acclaimed – on the basis of the albums Hell Among the Yearlings and Time (The Revelator) – as being in the vanguard of a deeply rooted Americana. Their debut – although credited solely to Welch – was the Grammy-winning... > Read more
The Day the Mississippi Died
Pitch Black: Echoes of the Night; The Adrian Sherwood Remixes (digital outlets)
6 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Elsewhere at Elsewhere Mike Hodgson – one half of Pitch Black alongside Paddy Free – explains how these four remixes of their material came into being. Have a look here. So here let's just acknowledge how very different the results are from the source material on their 2007 Rude Mechanicals album. The haunting opener Transient Transmission is twist of a twist: remixer... > Read more
Transient Transmission
Peel Dream Magazine: Rose Main Reading Room (digital outlets)
6 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
Across 15 seductive songs this LA-based trio offer what sounds like lush miniatures which blend languid vocals, warm synth washes, minimalist repetition and understated melodies. The sort of music you could imagine playing quietly in a reading room. They aren't averse to glistening pop (I Wasn't Made For War) and we might guess the band's songwriter Joe Stevens had an affection for... > Read more
Machine Repeating
Troy Kingi and the Cactus Handshake: Leatherman and the Mojave Green (digital outlets)
2 Sep 2024 | 1 min read
Troy Kingi can at last see the finish line of his 10/10/10 project: 10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years. He's knocked off classic soul, reggae, cosmic rock, folk . . . This impressive double album – which debuted at the top of the New Zealand charts – is number eight in the projected series and in the TVNZ+ documentary series Troy Kingi's Desert Hīkoi about its creation, Kingi... > Read more
Mezcal Eye Drop
Peter Skandera & Dave Maybee : blue grit & rhyme (digital outlets)
31 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Last heard on record together in 1994 (the album Acoustic Spirit), Raglan's harmonica player Skandera and guitarist Maybee here bring their considerable skills and years to a collection of funky blues, country blues, old folk and gospel (Jesus on the Mainline) from the likes of Johnny Cash, Little Walter (his Juke a showcase for the exceptional playing of Skandera), JJ Cale, Mark Knopfler,... > Read more
First Acquaintance
Mike Hall: Nothing Stands Still (digital outlets)
26 Aug 2024 | 2 min read
To paraphrase Milton: They also serve who only stand and play bass? Although Johnny Rotten once glibly dismissed the bass as just a big booming noise in the background (he was talking about his friend, the unschooled Sid), we at Elsewhere don't diminish the important role of bass players. Because from Bill Black through Paul McCartney to Jaco Pastorius, Jah Wobble, Bill Laswell, Tina... > Read more
Stop Dragging Me Around
Al Park: Monkey (digital outlets)
25 Aug 2024 | 1 min read
Five years ago a CD turned up in Elsewhere's letterbox and we didn't know what to make of it. It was Better Already and was the songs of someone named Al Park – not known to us – presented by the likes of Delaney Davidson, Anita Clark (aka Motte), Jordan Luck, Marlon Williams, Barry Saunders and others. The album moved from the stereo to a shelf, then to another more distant... > Read more
Careless Love
ONE WE MISSED: Silk Cut: Silk Cut (digital outlets)
19 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Released a few weeks ago when we were otherwise engaged, this second album by the tight and seasoned Auckland four-piece should have leapt to attention, given how much we enjoyed their debut. But we get to it now and delight in its old school, power pop familiarity (The Transfer, the Beatlesque Turning the Whole World On, the lyrically pointed Punches), surging energy (Anywhere We Can... > Read more
The Transfer
Bilders: Dustbin of Empathy/Nictate (digital outlets)
11 Aug 2024 | 3 min read
It would be a brave or foolhardy soul who attempted to write the biography of Bill Direen. Even just a discography would be a Sisyphean task: no sooner had you made the last entry than overnight he has recorded another album which arrives, perhaps even with a book of poems. Or in the case of this new collection, a 15-song album Dustbin of Empathy (digital and on limited edition 300... > Read more
The Weevil, from Dustbin of Empathy
Jack White: No Name (digital outlets)
5 Aug 2024 | 1 min read
In the 13 years since the end of the White Stripes it was possible to lose touch with Jack White as he moved through the Raconteurs and Dead Weather, made various appearances, and ran a parallel solo career. Oh, and he started his own Third Man label and shops. But here we are again, acknowledging this searing, garageband blues rock collection which has reference points in Led Zeppelin,... > Read more
What's the Rumpus?
Empire of the Sun: Ask That God (digital outlets)
3 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Frankly, it's been so long that we've heard from this duo that we'd almost forgotten them: eight years since their last album which actually went past us. So a quick reminder if you'd forgotten them also: they are the popular and successful Australian, glamed-up electronic duo Luke Steele (an expat Kiwi of Sleepy Jackson) and Nick Littlemore (PNAU). And here once again they... > Read more
The Feeling You Get
Patron Saint of Hummingbirds: Environmental Music Vol 2 (digital outlets)
31 Jul 2024 | <1 min read
Elsewhere is not averse to ambient or atmospheric music, or even that stateless music which seems designed for relaxation massage centres. When we are writing something which requires concentration it can provide an interesting backdrop which puts a curtain between the focus and the noise of life outside. Patron Saint of Hummingbirds is the performance name of a Californian artist (who... > Read more
11.11
JessB: Feels Like Home (digital outlets)
29 Jul 2024 | 2 min read
It is perhaps unusual and maybe even unseemly that a man of a certain age (plus a decade or more) should be so taken with a young woman rapper. But from the first time I saw her at an Auckland City Limits festival in 2018 I was struck, and over the years was always delighted to introduce her music – and her as a role model – to my uni students.... > Read more
Power, ft Sister Nancy and Sampa the Great
Cassandra Jenkins: My Light, My Destroyer (digital outlets)
29 Jul 2024 | <1 min read
It has become quite a recognisable phenomenon: women like Georgia Lines, St. Vincent, The Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman), Weyes Blood, Julia Jacklin and many others pushing the parameters of contemporary music and redefining poetic art-pop for adults. Brooklyn-based Cassandra Jenkins is in their ranks too. Her previous album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature was skilfully arranged,... > Read more
Petco
Lime Cordiale: Enough of the Sweet Talk (digital outlets)
29 Jul 2024 | 1 min read
As we have noted previously in reference to the Australian brothers Oli and Louis Leimbach, we are shameless in our love of pop music which does little more than entertain and make us feel good for the running time of the song. Therapeutic music, stuff where an artist faces their demons or deals with emotional isolation in lockdown are all very well and we take them seriously, but sometimes... > Read more
Cold Treatment
Beechwood Sparks: Across the River of Stars (digital outlets)
26 Jul 2024 | <1 min read
Looking for that album which brings to mind the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, the solo careers of Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark, maybe even some of Tom Petty's country-flavoured Southern rock? Then Beechwood Sparks out of California are your band because they recognise that the wheel is pretty serviceable as it is and doesn't need reinventing. With jangling country guitars, close... > Read more
High Noon
Gracie Abrams: The Secret of Us (digital outlets)
22 Jul 2024 | 1 min read
The internet is a cauldron of hatred, cruel comments, racism (most -isms in fact) and poison. And that's just the comments it lets you see, there is so much worst floating around in the dark corners, feeding like minded nasty bastards, conspiracy morons and lunatic political or religious groups. It even infects the most ordinary of aspects of culture, like pop music which for the most... > Read more
Blowing Smoke
Linda Thompson: Proxy Music (digital outlets)
22 Jul 2024 | 1 min read
People of “a certain age” speak of Linda Thompson with some approaching awe and reverence. Her albums with her former husband Richard Thompson – who has appeared frequently at Elsewhere in reviews and interviews – are the stuff of legend: marriage, love, separation all distilled into songs. However you read it, albums by the Thompson entitled I Wanna See the Bright... > Read more