Music at Elsewhere
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The Cure: Bestival Live 2011 (Lost/Border)
9 Jan 2012 | <1 min read
Anyone who has seen the Cure recently -- say at the Vector Arena in Auckland -- will know that the band which once played very short songs now plays extremely long sets. For my money you could have snipped 25 minutes out of the middle of their Vector show and not felt short-changed, but definitely less bored. And so it is with this two and a half hour/double disc recorded live before 50,000... > Read more
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011, READERS' CHOICES
20 Dec 2011 | 16 min read | 4
If you're lookin' for trouble, you've come to the right place, sang Elvis. And indeed I was when it came to my Best of Elsewhere 2011 albums list. As always – and rightly so – everyone has their own “best” albums list. Sometimes the readers' selections crossed over with mine (which are here) but, as expected, astute listeners heard what I didn't. So here... > Read more
AND HERE THEY ARE, THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 ALBUMS
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read | 1
Yep, it is utterly subjective (so I can't be right and you can't be wrong, and vice-versa) but here are the best/most durable/most enjoyable/utterly disturbing 30 albums of the past year which I heard. Yes, I missed a few big ones that connected with you or other critics -- but these are the ones I have listened to repeatedly during the year . . . and fully expect to be listening to in years... > Read more
A song for us music writers??
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Adele: 21 (XL)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Adele's debut album of two years ago -- 19, when she was 19 -- announced the arrival of a great British soul voice even if some of her original material wasn't quite as strong as it could have been. Still, she was only 19 -- but she hardly deserved to be lumped in with the new breed of British women singers coming through (notably Amy Winehouse, Duffy et al). Not that she needed to worry,... > Read more
Adele: Someone Like You
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Rumer: Seasons of My Soul (Atlantic)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
There are a lot of wonderful new soul singers around these days -- Mayer Hawthorne, Adele, etc -- and any number of artists who have you reaching for a historical reference in the same territory (Dusty Springfield and Sandie Shaw in the Sixties for the first Duffy album). It is almost to easy to do the same for this British singer-songwriter. So let's do it anyway: Karen Carpenter, Dionne... > Read more
Rumer: Come To Me High
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Lucinda Williams: Blessed (Lost Highway)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Although Lucinda Williams admits things are going well in her life (see interview here), she also adds that no one is ever permanently happy and she lives in this world with all its sadness and misery. And she has had a few encounters with those things herself, notably the estrangement of her brother after the death of their mother, and the death by suicide of Vic Chesnutt a few years back.... > Read more
Lucinda Williams: Ugly Truth
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs: Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs (Full Time Hobby)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Recorded over a two year period and soaked in strings, this folksy rumination on the state of his nation takes its inspiration from Walt Whitman's poem Pioneers! O Pioneers!, a kind of literal and metaphorical reverse-mirror Times They Are A' Changin' of its day when the young America was flexing its muscles across the continent. Hinson uses this starting point to consider, in places, how... > Read more
Micah P. Hinson and the Pioneer Saboteurs: Seven Horses Seen
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Elbow: Build a Rocket Boys! (Universal)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
It's interesting to read the comments at Elsewhere after the previous Elbow album The Seldom Seen Kid in 2008 (which won them the Mercury Award that year): essentially the thread was, how come these guys aren't bigger? Good question, and maybe this one -- more reflective but still as gorgeously delivered as their previous outings -- will rectify the oversight. Guy Garvey here looks... > Read more
Elbow: Ticker Tape (non album track)
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Paul Simon: So Beautiful Or So What (Hear Music)
19 Dec 2011 | 3 min read | 1
One of the things Paul Simon is seldom given credit for is his sense of humor. He too often comes off the kind of earnest New York Jewish singer-songwriter you imagine reads Dostoevsky at night but listens to doo-wop and old soul because he thinks it might be good for him. Yet this is the man who did that clip for You Can Call Me Al with Chevy Chase, and his lyrics are often punctuated with... > Read more
Paul Simon: Dazzling Blue
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
A propos of not much, Fleet Foxes' chief songwriter Robin Pecknold recently recorded New Zealand singer-songwriter Chris Thompson's Where is My Wild Rose? for an EP and it appears on You Tube (just with stills) here. But . . . to the matter in hand. If it's fair to say FFoxes' debut album was unexpected, then we might also observe that this one is highly anticipated. However their... > Read more
Fleet Foxes: Battery Kinzie
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Howe Gelb and a Band of Gypsies: Alegrias (Fire)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 2
The enormously prolific Howe Gelb (interviewed here in depth) is behind the Tucson band Giant Sand (from which Calexico became a more commercially successful split-off) and has also recorded a dozen albums under his own name. And as a reissue programme of about 30 Sand/Gelb albums starts to filter through he also releases this, a beguiling project which saw him taking his dark vocals,... > Read more
Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies: The Hangin' Judge
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Tiny Ruins: Some Were Meant for Sea (Spunk)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
Tiny Ruins is the nom de disque of Bristol-born, Auckland-raised (from the age of 10) singer-songwriter Hollie Fullbrook who recorded these songs in "a diminutive [sic] hall, once the local school of South Gippsland's Morraya, Australia" (which doesn't appear on any map of that region south east of Melbourne that I can see, unless they mean Moyarra). No matter, that perhaps adds... > Read more
Tiny Ruins: Old as the Hills
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Thurston Moore: Demolished Thoughts (Matador)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
The solo projects and collaborations of Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) have certainly covered a lot of musical landscapes from visceral guitar noise to . . . Well, to this which is mostly gentle, dreamy singer-songwriter work with acoustic guitar, harp, violin and producer Beck on synths, vocals and bass. To a great extent -- because of the intricacies of the arrangements which... > Read more
Space
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Charles Bradley: No Time for Dreaming (Daptone)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
The title here is certainly true: 63-year old Florida-born Bradley -- an exceptional soul singer who sounds like a distillation of James Brown, aching Otis Redding, the troubled Marvin Gaye, searching Al Green and the much overlooked Sonny Charles of the Checkmates -- has barely had a chance to dream in a hard-working life. Bradley seems to have been a cook most of his life (from a mental... > Read more
Golden Rule
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Jeffrey Foucault: Horse Latitudes (Signature)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
For his first album of originals in five years – the follow-up to his gripping Ghost Repeater – this beardy and rustic Americana singer/songwriter ups the stakes as his strong, dark brown and assured voice takes on life, loss and love in iron-hard images which bring to mind Leonard Cohen (“strange birds on the fence line, it's going to get cold tonight”) or Tom... > Read more
Last Night I Dreamed of Television
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Marcin Wasilewski Trio: Faithful (ECM/Ode)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Pianist Wasilewski who leads this trio has appeared a number of times previously at Elsewhere, with this group, as a member of Tomasz Stanko's ensemble and with trumpetr Enrico Rava. He -- and his trio -- has impressed every time. But this album finds them really pushing themselves: Night Train to You is a 10 minute piece which swings and is full of sparking, energetic piano; the album... > Read more
Woke Up in the Desert
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Juju: In Trance (Real World)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
That alt.world between late 60s psychedelic blues-rock, frantic village folk, and fiery world music is a strange place. It's where LedZepp, speedmetal-folk, Afro-blues, the Mississippi Delta and a fiddle-playing Jimi Hendrix (who isn't Nigel Kennedy) come together and live in . . . if not harmony, then at least the same bar where they drink moonshine and palm wine. This album is... > Read more
Nightwalk
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Kimbra: Vows (Warners)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
For most people flicking the music channels and being confronted the relentless and facile bump'n'grind r'n'b or ever-so-serious young men with guitars, the clips by Kimbra -- formerly of Hamilton, now based in Melbourne -- come as delightful surprises. They look fresh and eye-catching, intelligent in the face of the sexed-up drivel (her musings on married life in Settle Down) and just... > Read more
Good Intent
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Iron and Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (4AD)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read | 1
The previous album The Shepherd's Dog by Texas' Iron and Wine (Sam Beam) was fully three years ago and was one of the Best of Elsewhere 2007 albums. So anticipation is high for this -- although might have been higher a year ago, but I guess he works at his own pace. And we forgive him because he delivered the excellent Around the Well collection of unreleased song and rarities in mid '09.... > Read more
Iron and Wine: Half Moon
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Wire: Red Barked Tree (Pink Flag)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
In the late Seventies Wire delivered a trifecta of classic post-punk, minimalist and arty albums -- Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 – then called it a day. In subsequent decades they reformed dropping drummer Robert Gotobed to appear as an alt.electro-rock outfit (not much cop), in the past decade their sound became more aggressive and impressive, Gotobed returned -- and now Bruce... > Read more