Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Black Keys: El Camino (Nonesuch)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Although Black Keys' previous album Brothers was on the Best of Elsewhere 2010 list and this one will certainly be in this year's final countback, the two albums are very different. Where Brothers was grounded in classic soul and old school r'n'b and blues, this one kicks up the primal rock'n'pop from the get-go. As a touchstone consider Gold on the Ceiling which sounds like the Glitter... > Read more
Run Right Back
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Azam Ali: From Night to the Edge of Day (Six Degrees)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Nominally lullabies from around the Middle East, this breathy and exceptional album by the Iranian-born Canadian-resident Ali -- singer in the band Niyaz -- becomes something much more hypnotic as here keening voice explores those delightful microtones common in the music of the region. Very much the global citizen -- she lived in India as a child, relocated to LA with her mother in '85,... > Read more
Dandini
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Glen Campbell: Ghost on the Canvas (Inertia)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 2
Alongside his Alzheimer's diagnosis and a farewell tour comes this self-announced “final studio album” by the 75-year old legend whose career spans from LA session guitar work in the late 50s as one of the famous Wrecking Crew on Phil Spector productions, to being a touring Beach Boy, solo hits with Jimmy Webb songs and movies all before the close of the Sixties.... > Read more
Hold on Hope
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Blitzen Trapper: American Goldwing (Sub Pop)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Still sounding like they were breast-fed equal parts Grateful Dead, early Neil Young, White Album-era Beatles and Elton John's country-flavoured Tumbleweed Connection-gone-grunge, Blitzen Trapper -- an always interesting outfit from Portland -- constantly defy expectation but shift easily from songs about drinkin' whisky in a car to casually psychedelic country, and aren't ashamed to kick... > Read more
Girl in a Coat
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Ryan Adams: Ashes and Fire (Sony)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read | 1
Those with a passing interest in Ryan Adams' highly productive career -- which most recently stretched to published books of poetry -- will be understandably bewildered that there is a new album, given he announced his retirement in '09 . . . and subsequently kept releasing albums from his not inconsiderable song vaults. This solo album however is a return to his career with an album... > Read more
I Love You But I Don't Know What To Say
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Bats: Free All the Monsters (Flying Nun)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
The rolling, aural signature of the Bats' guitars and locked-in rhythm section has always sounded at its best when it drops the tempo and engages with a romantically woozy sound which -- when married to lyrics of optimism and gentleness -- just brings a smile. This lovely album - which doesn't stray far from their template -- will have you smiling with recognition and warmth as it unveils... > Read more
When the Day Comes
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Tom Waits: Bad As Me (Anti)
19 Dec 2011 | 3 min read | 4
At the end of the local edition of this exceptional album -- Tom Waits' first studio album in seven years -- there is a disconcerting litany of images entitled with seeming certainty After You Die, but which in fact asks the more pointed question, "what is it like after we die?" Waits yowls through it like a man broken on a rack, and it's a scary ending to an album which touches... > Read more
Satisfied
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Fatoumata Diawara: Fatou (World Circuit)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
Yet another artist out of Mali who confirms that country -- alongside only Jamaica perhaps -- seems to have more gifted and distinctive performers per head of population than any other country on the planet. This debut from the ear-pleasing, hypnotically melodic and folk-framed Diawara is given subtle, warm and clean studio production by label boss Nick Gold in conjunction with Diawara and... > Read more
Bissa
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 The Checks: Deadly Summer Sway (Pie Club)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Auckland's Checks could easily have sat on their Sixties rhythm and blues-based style (think young Stones, Yardbirds, Who etc) and won themselves a wide audience, but they were always destined for something bigger than the familiar. Now 10 years on from their first but enormously impressive gigs as teenagers (I think I first saw them in a kitchen at a flat?) they have shifted their ground... > Read more
Winter Sun
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Jonathan Besser: Campursari (Rattle)
19 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Since coming to New Zealand more than 30 years ago, the pianist-composer Jonathan Besser has enjoyed a highly successful and diverse career, first with violinist Chris Prosser in the Besser and Prosser duo, with electronic artist Ross Harris in Free Radicals, then his own ensemble and latterly with the small group Bravura. His works have been performed by the NZSO, the New Zealand String... > Read more
Shine
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Gin Wigmore: Gravel and Wine (Universal)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Although the remarkable Gin Wigmore mostly co-wrote here, you'd have to say it is her voice -- not just her musical voice -- which comes through with utter clarity. And yes, this extraordinary album is full of her stylistic vocal signature . . . but there is something much more interesting and exciting going on here. These days many young artists drown themselves in references: the... > Read more
If Only
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Keith Jarrett: Rio (ECM)
19 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
In one of the most colourful ECM covers in memory comes this equally vibrant solo piano set by Keith Jarrett, recorded live in Rio in April 2011. This richly textured double disc -- six unnamed pieces on the first, nine on the second -- finds the pianist in total command of his gift for rhythmically complex and melodically unpredictable improvisation. Jarrett dips (and frequently dives... > Read more
Rio Part IX
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2011 Wilco: The Whole Love (Warners)
19 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Artists who make lurching changes of direction often revert to prior form after a while: Certainly after U2's darker trilogy -- Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop -- they went back to their familiar stadium-shaped mainstream ballads, and Radiohead's most recent output has been more accessible than the unsettling Ok Computer and Kid A. Even David Bowie -- after the "Berlin trilogy" of... > Read more
Sunloathe
Roy Harper: Songs of Love and Loss (Union Square)
12 Dec 2011 | <1 min read | 3
English folk-rocker Harper – now 70 – is much eulogised by senior (male) British rock critics and has latterly been hailed by the neo-folk movement (Fleet Foxes, Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom etc). Led Zepp acknowledged him with Hats Off To Harper (on Led Zeppelin III) and he sang on Have a Cigar on Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. Schooled equally in American... > Read more
Another Day
Paley and Francis: Reid Paley and Black Francis (Cooking Vinyl)
12 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
After the Pixies split in the early 90s, Black Francis became Frank Black for enjoyable power-pop and post-punk solo albums with odd lyrical content of no fixed direction, and later worked with various Nashville musicians, among them songwriter/pianist Spooner Oldham. Francis/Black was unpredictable, as was that Pixies reunion. But this is an odd, sometimes likably ramshackle... > Read more
On the Corner
America: Back Pages (Shock)
9 Dec 2011 | <1 min read
There's a slight irony here perhaps -- America covering other people's songs? But weren't they the band many thought had covered a Neil Young song with their huge hit Horse with No Name? Certainly sounded like a Young song at first hearing. This time out though Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley pick up material by Paul Simon (his America oddly enough, which is the oopening track), Joni... > Read more
Caroline No
Amy Winehouse: Lioness; Hidden Treasures (Island)
7 Dec 2011 | <1 min read | 1
The title of this posthumous album considerably oversells its 12 song contents, most of these are not treasures or even offer much in the way of new material she was working on at the time of her death. Rather, this is a cobbling together of some excellent material alongside stuff which wouldn't have made the cut to any album, just maybe footnotes in some future box set. Now that there... > Read more
Wake Up Alone (2002)
Gold Medal Famous: 100 Years of Rock (Powertools)
7 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
Out of Wellington, New Zealand -- where people like to put on fancy dress for parties -- comes Gold Medal Famous who recently recorded a song, John Key is a Dick (BBQ Reggae Version) which might help you get a bead on them. If they are serious they certainly disguise it well, especially on this album with songs titles like Don't Just Text Me, Call Me, I Want to Make You Come, They're... > Read more
100 Years of Rock
Various Artists; Where the Boys Are; The Songs of Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield (Ace/Border)
6 Dec 2011 | 2 min read
Right at the end of Captain and Tennille's huge pop hit Love Will Keep Us Together in '75-- written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield -- you can hear Toni Tennille spontaneously weave in the line "Sedaka is back". In fact Sedaka -- who had been writing pop hits with lyricist Greenfield since Connie Francis' Stupid Cupid in '58 -- had never really been away. The previous year... > Read more
Get Rid of Him
Marilyn Crispell, Richard Nunns, Jeff Henderson: This Appearing World (Rattle)
6 Dec 2011 | 1 min read
These days it's not uncommon to see a Japanese restaurant offering “tapas”, people to speak of pan- Pacific fusion food (Japan-meets-Polynesia-meets-California?) or for one of the best Italian restaurants in Sydney to have a chef trained in New Zealand. (True, Lucio's in Paddington). But if music be the food of love then let's talk about pan-Pacific fusion sounds where... > Read more