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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Viagra Boys: Viagr Aboys (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Set aside the silly band name, because here is a band which is part rocking Beck in slacker-punk mode, part Beastie Boys, part political comedy act and probably a bit more of other things. This Swedish outfit – fronted by US-born singer-writer Sebastian Murphy – are frequently described as dance punk and garage punk. They seem adequate descriptors for a band big on energy,... > Read more
Dirty Boyz
Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The classy songwriting and delivery of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner has been one of the delights and discoveries of the past decade as they weave soul, r'n'b, funk and pop into art-pop. But they also deliver more as on this album which, despite the sheen of the surfaces and the clever music, has something to say about these straitened times. This from the hypnotic and elevated... > Read more
Swarm
Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Labels “indie” and “alternative” haven't meant much since one-time indie bands (R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Husker Du) signed to major labels. But they are convenient shorthand. Seattle-based Car Seat Headrest fronted by singer-writer Will Toledo have remained loyally indie and alt.rock, but for this impressive 13th album they embrace one of rock's most demanding... > Read more
Devereaux
Jensen McRae: I Don't Know How But They Found Me! (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The jury is always out on an album where the artist uses it as public therapy. Of the few successful ones, the most outstanding for its courage was the John Lennon Plastic Ono Band album of 1970 which was cathartic and uncomfortable. It was uncommon at the time – has any other artist of his stature since been that emotionally naked and brave, musically and lyrically? – but these... > Read more
I Can Change Him
Jenny Hval: Iris Silver Mist (digital outlets)
18 May 2025 | 1 min read
Although Elsewhere championed Jenny Hval's excellent The Practice of Love album we're aware that she's probably a hard sell. She has rolled from dark metal, edgy art music and 2016's exacting jazz improvisations of In the End His Voice Will Be the Sound of Paper to alt.folk and experimental sounds under own name, and as Rockettothesky and Lost Girls. She's now 44, and accomplished... > Read more
To Be A Rose
Thom Yorke, Mark Pritchard: Tall Tales (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
Sometimes it's useful for a critic to make clear their position and preferences, especially when it comes to artists with lengthy and diverse careers. We've mentioned this in regard to Pink Floyd whose work before Dark Side is rated much higher at Elsewhere than all which followed; with U2 it is the two albums before Pop Mart (Achtung Baby and Zooropa) and just a few early singles. Very... > Read more
The Spirit
Greta O'Leary: River Dark (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
Let's be clear: this debut album by the local “spook-folk” singer-songwriter is not delivered up as an easy proposition. It opens with three dreamy and melancholy songs – Baby I'm a Singer, The Greatest Peace I've Ever Known and Prelude, all previously released as singles – which certainly establish her distinctively high vocal style and the supportive accompaniment... > Read more
Prelude
Neither Do I: We're Not Known For Anything (digital outlets)
12 May 2025 | 1 min read
What's in a name? Quite a lot I would think. No band named something like Big Fat Possum, Up at Sparrow Fart or Drunken Uncle at a Wedding is making a serious pitch for wide attention. A band name can be an identifier of a sound also, or at least give a clue that it's metal and not gentle folk. Which brings us to this album and artist. With an album title deliberately... > Read more
Recollection
Harry Charles: Movement (Loop/digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | <1 min read
Although he left New Zealand more than a decade ago and his really formative musical influences and growth came in Berlin, we can still claim Harry Charles as our own. And be proud to so because, as he proves on this second album he is a quiet master craftsman in the world of electronic music who effortlessly manages to blend soaring or gentle melodic elements with beats and ambient... > Read more
Titans (2nd Movement)
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Bon Iver: SABLE, fABLE (digital outlets)
5 May 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a double set in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and credits. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . The landscape of popular music is in constant flux and development with new genres emerging all the time (coldwave, grime, folktronica and... > Read more
From
The 2a.m. Orchestra: The Last (digital outlets)
2 May 2025 | 1 min read
Expat Californian now resident in Auckland, multi-instrumentalist David Kelley has helmed his long-running and serious-minded “orchestra” (here mostly just him) across four previous albums. Kelley has never lacked ambition, in fact we criticised the lyrics of the Impermanence album for being messianic. But that is in the position he has frequently adopted and his voice... > Read more
Dying Star
Adrianne Lenker: Live at Revolution Hall (digital outlets)
28 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
Outside of the band Big Thief, their singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker runs a parallel solo career which has hit some impressive high-water marks. Notably last year's Grammy-nominated Bright Future (in the folk category) which was also among our best of 2024 picks. (The earlier Big Thief album Dragon Warm New Mountain in our 2022 list.) This enormous collection – two hours, 43... > Read more
Not a Lot, Just Forever (live)
Alisa Xayalith: Slow Crush (digital outlets)
28 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Now this is interesting and raises the usual interesting questions about just how autobiographical about their love life an artist wants to be. The embarrassment of J-Lo putting it all out there – on album, documentary and some weird extended video movie – about her getting back with Ben Affleck should be an object example to anyone. A few months after that blitz of... > Read more
Romance is Dead
Lucy Dacus: Forever is a Feeling (digital outlets)
28 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
When bands break up it's interesting to observe which members go on to the most success: in 1970 would anyone have put their money on George Harrison over McCartney and Lennon? The Stones never actually broke up but when Mick Jagger released solo albums he realised very quickly that his best pathway to more success lay in mending the rift with Keith and getting the band back together.... > Read more
Limerence
Tom Lark: Moonlight Motel (digital outlets)
22 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Two years ago it was Tom Lark's time: the debut album Brave Star under the Lark name -- he also works as Shannon Fowler and Shannon Matthew Vanya -- was in our best of year picks, earned him a Silver Scroll nomination and the album was a Taite Prize finalist for the Auckland singer, songwriter and producer. It was crafted collection of slightlydelic dream pop with intelligent lyrics... > Read more
Dumb Luck
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Think: We'll Give You a Buzz (CD/vinyl)
14 Apr 2025 | 2 min read
One of the many rewards of following the releases on Grant Gillanders' Frenzy reissue label is just how good so many of the bands were at the time but went largely unheard. Sometimes he unearths a band and pulls together an album out of their recordings. Or in the case of the thrilling Grim Ltd he discovers a live tape of their final gig and releases the raw r'n'b garageband rock to... > Read more
Our Children (Think About)
Serebii: Dime (digital outlets/vinyl)
14 Apr 2025 | <1 min read
The multi-instrumentalist and expat producer Callum Mower (AKA neo-soul, folksy singer/songwriter Serebii) has said he draws inspiration from Aldous Harding and his frequent collaborator has been local soul-jazz artist Arjuna Oakes. Although he has moved back to this country from London, he is increasingly connecting with a global audience and recent PR out of the US said he was... > Read more
By Design
Haiku Redo: Disco Summer (Failsafe/digital outlets)
11 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Up there in Japan, Rob Mayes of the Failsafe label goes through the dozens of recordings and albums he made with various bands, many from Christchurch during the Eighties, Nineties and some even beyond the label's heyday. It's a rewarding labour love because here was a label on which was the alternative to the alternative (Flying Nun, Xpressway etc) and mostly held the banner high for... > Read more
It's Just Too Long
Alien Weaponry: Te Rā (digital outlets)
7 Apr 2025 | 1 min read
Lest we forget – and perhaps some never knew – Jamaican reggae was originally a rebel music giving voice to cultural outsiders like Rastafarians and Nyabinghi followers, the marginalised and dispossessed. And those who rejected society. It was adopted as such in this country by bands like Herbs, Aotearoa, Dread Beat and Blood, Unity Pacific and others because it spoke to those on... > Read more
Crown
Japanese Breakfast: For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women): (digital outlets)
31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read
Korea-born, Oregon-raised 35-year old Michelle Zauner is one of those artists who has something to say and more than one way of saying it. She may be the singer-songwriter of the band Japanese Breakfast but her life was of such interest that her 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart spent more than a year on The New York Times best-seller list. It explored, sometimes through food, what it... > Read more