Music at Elsewhere

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)

Marlon Williams: Te Whare Tīwekaweka (digital outlets/vinyl)

14 Apr 2025 | 1 min read

In June 2021, the soul singer Teeks appeared in concert at Auckland's Civic Theatre before a large and appreciative audience. It was a significant event beyond being a concert. Here was a young, bilingual gay Māori man singing to a broad cross-section of mainstream Kiwis and, as I noted in a review, the enthusiastic response her got was emblematic of how far we've come and encouraging... > Read more

Kōrero Māori

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

Winter in LA

D'Animal: Hedonistic Pillow (Thokei Tapes/digital outlets)

31 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

Elsewhere has sometimes had an affection for amusing band names and album titles like this one, a play on Jefferson Airplanes' Surrealistic Pillow. It may be irrational but it can lead you to an artist you might otherwise gone past or not even heard of. That explains an album by Manchester's Jefferson Airhead in our collection. In this case after the amused smile faded we were into the... > Read more

Hollywood Moment

Jay Clarkson and the Containers: Falling Through (Zelle/digital outlets)

30 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

Christchurch's Jay Clarkson has had a music career which dates back more than four decades, but it has been intermittent as she juggled other interests: a personal life, a literary career as a poetry and fiction writer, writing her memoir, ill-health . . . With her band of excellent and well-known musicians – keyboard player Alan Haig, drummer Mike Dooley and bassist Tenzin... > Read more

1000 Hours

ONE WE MISSED: Skyscraper Stan and the Commission Flats: Those Were the Days (digital outlets)

27 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

This album by Australia-based expat Stan – released in February – didn't so much go past us but was overtaken by other releases on the final sprint to the finishing tape. Although written a few years ago, many of the songs here speak to the times we find ourselves in: Run the Game pokes a sharp stick at the privileged and ambitious (“to you, all of life's a race and... > Read more

Run the Game

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Various Artists: American Baroque (Ace double LP)

24 Mar 2025 | 2 min read | 1

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 extensive liner notes and credits. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . The words “baroque pop” may be inexact but most people get the meaning: pop songs embellished by... > Read more

Barefoot Gentleman, by the Association

JASON ISBELL. SOLO AT LAST ON HIS NEW ALBUM, THE ACCLAIMED 'FOXES IN THE SNOW'

24 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

Available now on CD and vinyl from JB Hi-Fi stores nationwide. Just click here to be taken to JB Hi-Fi. What Elsewhere has said of Foxes in the Snow: "Words of wisdom in song from someone who's been through it . . .and is seeing his failings and the possibilities of the future with clarity. And who has crafted it all into a terrific album." To read the full Elsewhere... > Read more

THE LONG AWAITED NEW ALBUM BY ALISON KRAUSS AND UNION STATION, ON VINYL AND CD

24 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

"exceptional musicianship" says Elsewhere. To read the full review go here. To order direct from Southbound Records go here. > Read more

Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes: Live at the Greek (Vinyl, CD and digital outlets)

17 Mar 2025 | 3 min read

On the face of it, it looked like a case of what Father John Misty had observed on his recent, excellent Mahashmashama album, “Time makes fools of us all”. When reflecting on the 2000 double album Live at the Greek where Jimmy Page joined the Black Crowes for blues classics and a bunch of Led Zeppelin songs, Crowes singer Chris Robinson was dismissive. "I didn't really... > Read more

Whole Lotta Love (live)

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Nico: Chelsea Town Hall, Live (digital outlets)

14 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

Recorded in 1985, released in '92 as Chelsea Girl/Live and now reissued (CD and vinyl), this often startling concert caught the Velvet Underground chanteuse three years before her death and, although having been ravaged by the effects of heroin, in remarkably fine form. In her own way. Her final album Camera Obscura (produced by longtime supporter John Cale) provided the opener... > Read more

Tananore

THE PATRON SAINT OF HUMMINGBIRDS: Environmental Music Vol 1 (digital outlets)

13 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

This Californian artist – who prefers to remain anonymous – appeared at Elsewhere last year with her ambient Environmental Music Vol 2 and promised Vol 1 would follow. And here it is, a collection of atmospheric pieces recorded during the lockdown era and a restful response to the stresses that some were feeling. Well, stress didn't just evaporate at the end of that time and... > Read more

Meditation V

The Tubs: Cotton Crown (digital outlets)

10 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

This London-based Welsh band come off as a smart marriage of REM's indie.rock jangle, slightly yobby British post-punk pop and a revved up version of Scotland's Proclaimers. In other words, they make smart and memorable folksy power-pop. And there's a real sense of desperation in places (the nervy Illusion, the Pogues-punky Chain Reaction). Singer Owen Williams has some of Richard... > Read more

Illusion

Bunchy's Big Score: Happy Birthday, Daniel Johnston!!! Don't Be Afraid (digital outlets)

5 Mar 2025 | 1 min read

The album title's reference to the late American eccentric and somewhat emotionally damaged pop artist Daniel Johnston – and the childlike cover art – flag that this album is a kind of left-field inspired amateurism by this self-described art-rock trio from Otepoti lead by singer/writer Max White. As with Johnston's often bizarre and sometimes very moving songs, the songs here... > Read more

Harold Budd

Squid: Cowards (digital outlets)

3 Mar 2025 | 2 min read

When Edith Sitwell – no slouch herself in the peculiarity stakes – wrote her 1933 book The English Eccentrics she wasn't short of material. Britain has long had a lineage of the mad, strange, amusing or inventive eccentrics. And they are often celebrated. Being different – even if you are difficult – is more accepted in Britain than, say, in the US. Simply... > Read more

Building 650

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: The Purple Bird (digital outlets)

3 Mar 2025 | <1 min read

What has Beyonce wrought? Seems everyone is going country, everyone from octogenarian Ringo to young kids putting their first single into the world and hoping to be the next Kaylee or Luke. Will Oldham (AKA Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) has sailed close to country music many times in the past three decades, most obviously on his 2004 Sings Greatest Palace Music recorded in Nashville with... > Read more

Wide angle reviews, interviews and opinion
on music, travel and the arts by writer Graham Reid