Music at Elsewhere

Lou Reed: Hudson River Wind Meditations (vinyl release, CD)

4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read

The title of the latest Lou Reed biography probably confirms how many see him. It is The King of New York (by Will Hermes) and immediately we picture Lou in leather on the dirty boulevard, being aggressive and cantankerous as he strides out sneering at lesser intellects, goes on about the poet Delmore Schwartz and somewhere in the background Waiting for the Man is playing as an image of Andy... > Read more

Hudson River Wind (Blend the Ambience)

Cat Power: Sings Dylan; The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert (digital outlets)

4 Dec 2023 | 1 min read

Reports from Bob Dylan's sold out North American tour are almost unanimous in their acclaim: at 82 Dylan is in good form, sometimes speaks to the audience (rare), mixes up older songs or deep cuts with his last studio album Rough and Rowdy Ways and in many places pays tribute to a local hero by singing one of their songs: Leonard Cohen's Dance Me to The End of Love in Montreal where he is... > Read more

Bob Dylan: The Complete Budokan 1978 Live (digital outlets)

30 Nov 2023 | 2 min read

There's plenty of evidence to support the view that when Bob Dylan considers “popular music” (as opposed to pop music) he thinks of the songs before Elvis. And his idea of rock music is formed by the notion of electric country music more than Led Zeppelin. It's also noticeable that after he retreats into the past to find inspiration he re-emerges with somethings special and... > Read more

Chris Stapleton: Higher

27 Nov 2023 | 1 min read

When Elsewhere profiled singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton back in mid 2016 he was already an enormously successful artist and we noted he was in the lineage of crossover country artists like Garth Brooks in the Nineties. In many ways Brooks prepared the ground for a dozen “hat act” artists and Taylor Swift to move from country into the mainstream. Stapleton had fronted the... > Read more

Glen Hansard: All That Was East Is West Of Me Now

27 Nov 2023 | 1 min read

For those who haven't followed the extensive solo career of Ireland's Glen Hansard, he was the barely memorable guitarist in The Commitments but better known as the one of the two central characters in the 2007 film Once where he played the aspiring singer-songwriter/busker in a rather charming love story. However he was also in bands, the Frames and Swell Season but here again appears under... > Read more

Grayson Gilmour: Holding Patterns (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

25 Nov 2023 | 2 min read

For much of its lifespan the of Flying Nun could best be described as spluttering. In the first decade it outgrew itself within a couple of years – too many artists, too much music and not enough business smarts, organisation and forward planning. As the label's great helmsman Roger Shepherd observed in his book In Love With These Times, "In the ten years from 1981 to the end... > Read more

A Crude Mechanical: Discourse (Public Witness/digital outlets)

24 Nov 2023 | 1 min read

Now this is interesting: the solo, multi-tracked guitar, instrumental debut by Shane Warbrooke which is billed as “experimental”. But that's a word which will have some hiding under the bedsheets. So let's quickly sidestep that – and his “accumulated noise” description – to pin down a couple of more appealing and appeasing touchstones: Phil Manzanera... > Read more

And We Bleed Metrics

Ebony Lamb: Ebony Lamb (Slow Time/digital outlets)

20 Nov 2023 | <1 min read

Elsewhere readers will be familiar with the name: Ebony Lamb was formerly of the long-running indie.folk/alt.country outfit Eb and Sparrow whose albums we have reviewed (and she answered an Elsewhere Questionnaire some while back). She was a recent long-list finalist in the Silver Scrolls – for last year’s Take My Hands at Night –and has developed into a... > Read more

Paige: King Clown (Sony/digital outlets)

12 Nov 2023 | <1 min read

This debut from the chart-busting Paige – who won Best Māori Female Solo Artist’ at the 2021 Waiata Māori Music Awards – confirms what so many have already recognised, that she is a rare singer and songwriter. And an established collaborator who has worked with Balu Brigada and JessB. She appeared on the song Dawn which featured on the soundtrack of the Korean TV series... > Read more

Black Pumas: Chronicles of a Diamond (digital outlets)

8 Nov 2023 | <1 min read

One of the first singles from this second album by the multiple Grammy-nominee duo of Adrian Quesada and Eric Burdon (no, not that one grandma) was, Mrs Postman, the slice of slinky R’n’B soul with jigsaw-puzzle jazzy piano. The earlier single from the album, More Than a Love Song, was more than a little Marvin Gaye. They helped set up this sequel to their 2019 self-titled... > Read more

Anjimile: The King (digital outlets)

6 Nov 2023 | 1 min read

Anjimile – a 33-year old American-born singer/songwriter who identifies as they/them – has been described as a folk musician, which is all Elsewhere knew before this album arrived unexpectedly. Well, this ambitious, elevating, spiritually-inclined and highly dramatic collection is a very long way from folk as most understand it. Not just if you think of acoustic guitars and... > Read more

Dick Move: Wet (digital outlets)

30 Oct 2023 | <1 min read

Like a ram-raid through the window of a guitar shop, this local band tap into a bratty, stroppy and furious celebration of reductive rock'n'roll which at times – seven of their 13 songs clocking in under 90 seconds, the others not much more -- make the Ramones seem long-winded. It sounds like a joke but their debut album Chop! came in at just 18 minutes, this one is a full four... > Read more

ONE WE MISSED: Brown Spirits: Solitary Transmissions (Soul Jazz/digital outlets)

29 Oct 2023 | <1 min read

This album by a Melbourne, Australia instrumental trio with footholds in the rolling groves of Can, a touch of spaced-out pop came to our attention quite by chance. There was an ad on the back of a copy of The Wire from June and the description ticked a lot of Elsewhere boxes: Can meets Hawkwind, psyche/krautrock, DIY attitude and punk/post-punk intensity . . . The reference to Hendrix... > Read more

Dinah Lee: The Collection (Frenzy)

27 Oct 2023 | 2 min read

There is terrific footage of Dinah Lee performing the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne in 1965 before an audience of predominantly young women, many of them barefoot in the front rows. In extended footage however the moment belongs to a girl who is asked what she likes about Dinah Lee. “She's a goat, not a sheep,” she says in a wonderfully Australian analogy meaning Lee went her... > Read more

Summertime

Graeme Jefferies: I'm Not Listening to Your Station (Jefferies/vinyl/digital outlets)

23 Oct 2023 | 2 min read

Few people could have been more surprised than Graeme Jefferies when his album Canary in a Coalmine scraped into the top 20 charts for New Zealand albums for a week in late August. How it managed that is a mystery, especially in the absence of reviews. It may be that this by Elsewhere was the only one. Whatever, it was a pleasure to see it there, albeit briefly. Jefferies (who with... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Dimmer: Live at the Hollywood (digital outlets)

22 Oct 2023 | 1 min read | 1

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this double which comes in a gatefold sleeve and a classy cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . In 2021 Elsewhere wrote an article about the Dimmer album I Believe You Are a Star which had been released 20 years previous. We said it was “a... > Read more

The Chills: Brave Words Spoken Bravely, The Remix (Fire Records/digital outlets

21 Oct 2023 | 2 min read | 1

About 36 years after its original release Martin Phillipps get to include the Chills debut album Brave Words – by the addition of Spoken Bravely in the reissue's title – into his SB family alongside Submarine Bells, Soft Bomb, Sunburnt, Silver Bullets, Snow Bound and Scatterbrain. When Brave Words was released on Flying Nun in 1987 it was much praised for Philipps... > Read more

Wet Blanket (from Brave Words Spoken Bravely)

Wilco: Cousin (digital outlets)

21 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

It could be said that Wilco -- now almost 30 years into a career and Cousin being their 13th studio album -- have been on a roll lately. But weren't they always? On the release of last year's Cruel Country, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy said they'd never been comfortable about being considered “alt.country”. Fair enough, because their 1999 album Summerteeth was along the axis of... > Read more

Meant to Be

The National: Laugh Track (digital outlets)

20 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

Right about now if you've heard the previous National album First Two Pages of Frankenstein which came out just six months ago and have picked up on Laugh Track you are probably checking the state of lyricist Matt Berninger's marriage to Carin Besser. You might just leap to the idea that maybe the guy needs to get on Tinder or be set up with a blind date. That's because First Two Pages... > Read more

Albi and the Wolves: Light After the Dark (AAA/digital outlets)

16 Oct 2023 | 1 min read

Albi (singer/guitarist Chris Dent) and the Wolves (fiddle player Pascal Roggen, bassist Michael Young) won best folk artist in 2018 for their debut album One Eye Open and have come a long way musically since then. Through their This is War (2019) and into this especially impressive and diverse third album they have constantly extended themselves. They are folk Jim, but not always... > Read more