Music at Elsewhere

Paul McLaney: The Daylight Moon (digital outlets)

18 Aug 2025 | 2 min read

Regular readers of Elsewhere will be very familiar with Paul McLaney if not the remarkable breadth of all his work, which we have covered quite extensively. Our interest in this polymath from Auckland is because there is a keen guiding intelligence behind his projects, in whatever form they arrive. The Daylight Moon fits somewhere into his folk-ambient output (acoustic guitar, vocals,... > Read more

The Feelings Remain

Roei Hermon: Dálum (digital outlets)

18 Aug 2025 | <1 min read

According to Israel experimentalist and multi-instrumentalist Roei Hermon the title track here comes from a Polynesian word for inside the mind, and he drew inspiration from Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman. We buy the latter but suspend judgment about that former claim. The accent above the “a” raises a few alarm bells in itself not to mention the letter “d” being in... > Read more

Sunshine

Paul Weller: Find El Dorado (digital outlets)

18 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

Although El Dorado is a mythical place made of gold and somewhere in the jungles of South America (possibly given extra embellishment by local tribes to throw off Spanish invaders) it seems Paul Weller is intent on finding it. But his gold are songs that he unearths and covers for this album. Let's be honest however, with a few exceptions – Bowie's Pin Ups, Lennon's Rock'n'Roll... > Read more

Small Town Talk

Fran Barton and the Kevin Clark Group: Dancing on a Wavetop (digital outlets)

18 Aug 2025 | 2 min read

It seems a shame that Kevin Clark is not better known outside of Wellington jazz circles. The pianist, trumpeter and composer won two jazz album of the year awards in 2003 and 2005 for Once Upon a Song I Flew and The Sandbar Sessions respectively. Elsewhere picked up on his 2006 album Zahara where he explored Middle Eastern and Latin sounds with singer Fran Barton. That too won the... > Read more

River

Lachie Hayes: Subsatellite (digital outlets)

11 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

As with any broadly defined musical genre – jazz, rock, rap, blues etc – there are invariably subsets within subsets. Country music contains, among other smaller divisions, white Appalachian music, black Southern country, the cowboy songs of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Western Swing, the rock-influenced hat acts like Garth Brooks, the legendary Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Dolly... > Read more

The Likes of You

The Response: Novel Idea (digital outlets)

11 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

Christchurch's Response had equal billing on the Art School Dropout album by former Goodshirt singer/writer Rodney Fisher two years ago, an album we described as “a sophisticated collection of quiet, crafted, atmospheric guitar-based pop”. That album was pop in its various manifestations (folk-pop, pop-rock, dream pop) so that meant this one had a good entre for us. And... > Read more

Hollow Branches

Elephant Gym: Live in The World, Tokyo (digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025 | <1 min read

This trio from Taiwan have slowly built a reputation for their genre-defying melange of Chinese pop, post-rock, experimental sounds between jazz and rock and . . . You get the picture. Siblings KT -- sister, singer, bass and keyboards – and her brother Tell Chang on guitars and keyboards, were classically trained and met drummer Tu Chia-Chin in high school. The band formed in... > Read more

Shadow

Dusty Springfield: Longing (digital outlets)

4 Aug 2025 | 1 min read

Although she died more than a quarter century ago and her songs – not even her best pop hits of the early-mid Sixties – seldom get radio play these days, most people with an interest in music would have (or know that should have) a Greatest Hits and her 1968 Dusty in Memphis albums in their collection. She came from folk with the Springfields (her voice utterly distinctive on... > Read more

Tom Lehrer; An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

28 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

In one of the university courses I took, I spent a couple of hours on a lecture under the title -- lifted from Frank Zappa -- "Does Humour Belong in Music?" The general point is that most contemporary musicians take themselves so seriously that we can barely imagine them cracking a smile let alone writing a funny song. Talking to you Chris Martin et al. Yet humour has been a... > Read more

Oedipus Rex

Half Japanese: Adventure (digital outlets)

21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Elsewhere's long-term affair with Half Japanese has been something of a hiding to nowhere: I doubt we would have convinced a single reader to dive into the albums we have reviewed. But we persist because they are quirky and a little bonkers but, slowly over the past decade or so, have moved more towards an audience than an audience has moved towards them. The problem is having that... > Read more

Lemonade Sunset

Various Artists: A Day in My Mind's Mind: The Kiwi Psychedelic Scene (Frenzy)

21 Jul 2025 | <1 min read

We have passed this way a few times over the years but the CDs in this Mind's Mind series – up to volume five now – disappear from shelves quickly. So it is sensible to get this 30 song collection out there. It appeared as a limited edition double album at the time when Real Groovy celebrated it 33 1/3 birthday 2014 and we pointed to it then. But this is a terrific... > Read more

Nirvana, by 40 Watt Banana

Polar Extremes: Strange Visions (digital outlets)

21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Okay, this is just odd fun . . . with a sense of smarts and cultural history behind it. And although it came out in 2019, it disappeared and has only now gone back up on digital platforms. so . . . Not too many locals might even recognise the horse-flesh resonance of the opening title, Racing This Time (did the great commentator Reg Clapp coin that phrase?), but the album... > Read more

Captain Zodiac's Dictionary

Jay Epae: The Mercury/Capitol/Viking Recordings (Frenzy)

16 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

The archivist and avid compiler of New Zealand artists' recordings Grant Gillanders has written an excellent and assiduously researched article at audioculture about the remarkable life and career of singer/songwriter Jay Epae, a lightly edited version reproduced as the extensive liner notes for this thorough 29 song (and some soundbite promo pieces) collection. Epae from Manaia in Taranaki... > Read more

I'll Cry Tomorrow

Arcades: Who's Most Lost (Rattle, digital outlets)

14 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

A highly unusual release from Rattle who, let's be honest, release quite a lot of highly unusual contemporary classical and improvised music. That's their thing, really. However here David Prior and Dugal McKinnon – who met at Birmingham Uni while doing PhDs in composition – offer a kind of avant-folk pop on this album which was originally released in 2011 but has been now... > Read more

You Were Born Into This

Jesse Welles: Pilgrim (digital outlets)

14 Jul 2025 | <1 min read

Because we introduced American politico-folk singer Jesse Welles not that long ago – noting he was grounded in Dylan's solo, acoustic protest singer days – we will make this brief, although we do suggest that if you hear nothing else, check out his song War Isn't Murder we posted there. He's still mining a similar vein – one of the songs here is Grapes of Wrath – but... > Read more

Philanthropist, ft Billy Strings

The Reds, Pinks and Purples: The Past is a Garden I Never Fed (Fire/digital outlets)

7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

We will admit immediately that we had never heard of the Californian artist Glenn Donaldson who goes by this endearing name and opens this album with the song The World Doesn't Want Another Band. He has apparently written a couple of hundred songs and released eight albums since 2018. Clearly we've got a lot of catching up to do, but before then we are immersing ourselves in this smart... > Read more

Slow Torture of an Hourly Wage

ONE WE MISSED: Trousdale: Growing Pains (digital outlets)

7 Jul 2025 | <1 min read

Released in April but flying straight past us, this new album from the LA-based trio of Quinn D’Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones serves up concise, guitar-driven country-rock, harmonies and smart songs mostly recorded live in the studio to capture their energy and integrity. Some of this second album deals with the fatigue and expectations after their... > Read more

Lonely Night

Jazmine Mary: I Want to Rock And Roll (digital outlets)

7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read

Auckland's Jazmine Mary (Australian-born Jazmine Phillips, identifying as they/them) has confounded and impressed over her previous two albums: her downbeat The Licking of a Tangerine picked up Best Independent Debut at the 2022 Taite Prize and their recommended follow-up DOG appeared in many best-of lists in 2023. Their music is along the axis of noir-folk, kinda gloomy but... > Read more

Memphis

Autocamper: What Do You Do All Day? (digital outlets)

6 Jul 2025 | <1 min read

Some days, overcome by the stress of living in the troubled first quarter of the 21st century, you just want an album to play a bit too loud and which isn't therapeutic for the artist whose troubles gets dumped on you. Welcome then to your computer, car or turntable Manchester's Autocamper who like the idea of jangly guitars and alt.rock with slightly melancholy pop inclinations. And... > Read more

Map Like a Leaf

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Annahstasia: Tether (digital outlets)

30 Jun 2025 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with full credits on an insert sheet, a fold out lyric sheet and a framable cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . If we're honest, few artists are wholly original or have the capacity to surprise. Most work in familiar, codified genres... > Read more