Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Sven Olsen's Brutal Canadian Love Saga: Songs from the Bottom of a Hilltop (SOBCLS)
12 Dec 2010 | 2 min read
Recently I heard this collection -- 400 copies only, two CDs, a thick booklet of artfully rendered lyrics, posters and more delivered in medium-sized pizza box -- being described as a cult item, bound to lose money, an ambitious conceit . . . but also pretty terrific. Right on all counts. Naming your ensemble after an obscure Norwegian politician (deceased) and having a group of around... > Read more
Sven Olsen's Brutal Canadian Love Saga: Pizza Hall
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Justin Currie: The Great War (Ryko/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 2
Some of these songs heard at a distance -- just the sharp pop and guitar jangle coming through -- and you'd pin Justin Currie as a smart power pop singer-songwriter who might give the charts some real damage. But my guess is most people don't want emotional pessimism, venomous songs about partners and a seething rage bordering on self-loathing -- not to say a wide misanthropic streak -- as... > Read more
Justin Currie: As Long As You Don't Come Back
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest (4AD)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
After their last album Microcastle (one of Elsewhere's best of '08) this beguiling outfit seemed to go off the map, perhaps in part because of mainman Bradford Cox's side project as the equally fascinating (but different) Atlas Sound. If that last Deerhunter sounded like an astute distillation of diverse influences this slightly more low-key and surreptitious album owes very little obvious... > Read more
Deerhunter: Basement Scene
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Young Veins: Take a Vacation! (One Haven/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Here's my theory about The Young Veins, for what it's worth: they are aliens who crashed landed secretly in California behind a music store, got on the computer late at night and Googled "pop music". Disturbed by the cops they grabbed some band names and songs at random, fled with some instruments and have subsequently launched their pop invasion on the back of a charming hotpotch... > Read more
The Young Veins: Cape Town
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Various Artists: Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers (Crammed Discs/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Subtitled “Alternative Takes on Congotronics”, this well-annotated double disc lets loose alternative and post-rock acts on the lo-fi but compelling music from Kinshasa dance clubs where cheap keyboards and beat-machines were slammed alongside traditional thumb piano, found instruments (pots'n'pans), megaphones, electric guitars and drums. The bands Konono No 1 and Kasai... > Read more
Au Vs Masanka Sankayi: Two Labors
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Bruce Springsteen: The Promise (Sony)
12 Dec 2010 | 4 min read | 3
“You know kids go, 'Hey, when are you gonna make a record?',” Bruce Springsteen said in March 77, “I say, 'One of these days'.” And they were difficult days for the man they call The Boss. After his breakthrough album Born to Run in '75 – which sold around 10 million globally and took him to the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week in October... > Read more
Bruce Springsteen: Ain't Good Enough For You
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Ben Sollee: Learning to Bend (Shock)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Here's a striking opening couplet on an album: "If you're gonna lead my country and you're gonna say it's free, I'm gonna need a little honesty . . . just a few honest words, it shouldn't be that hard". That these spare but blunt sentiments are delivered over cello rather than angry guitars make them even more powerful, and when Sollee says he doesn't need handshakes, fancy... > Read more
Ben Sollee: Bend
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria (ECM/Ode)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
Because music on the ECM label often invites a litany of familiar adjectives -- austere, cool, detached -- it's a pleasure to throw this disc into the player and find yourself thinking more along the lines of . . . muscular, vigorous, assertive. Even the cover here suggests fireworks --- and while the music isn't exactly incendiary this young Swiss group lead by pianist Bartsch... > Read more
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Modul 55
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Neil Young: Le Noise (Warners)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
A preference declared: I've never been as smitten as many by Neil Young's acoustic albums -- never had a copy of Harvest for example, although I hardly needed it, everybody else played it incessantly. But I have always cranked up his rowdy albums with Crazy Horse (most of them) and believe albums like Rust Never Sleeps and Arc-Weld are among his best alongside disturbing albums like... > Read more
Neil Young: Walk with Me
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Jim Jones Revue: Burning Your House Down (Liberator)
12 Dec 2010 | <1 min read
You really gotta love the JJ Revue who deliver hotrod rock'n'roll which draws from the Fifties (Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis) as filtered through the most wild and dissolute of Rod Stewart/Faces (or the Quireboys with more rocking honky-tonk blues in their soul) with the kind of trash energy of Grinderman. Produced by Jim Sclavunos (who has done similar for Cave/Bad Seeds), this one... > Read more
The Jim Jones Revue: Big Len
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Giant Sand: Blurry Blue Mountain (Fire/Southbound)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The next few months sees the re-presentation of the Giant Sand back-catalogue, the Tucson-based band helmed by singer-songwriter Howe Gelb for these past 25 years which has had among its ranks the core of Calexico (John Convertino and Joey Burns) and a guest list which has included M. Ward, the late Vic Chestnutt and Rainer Placek, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate, Neko Case and many other... > Read more
Giant Sand: Better Man Than Me
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Great North: Newfoundland (GNMR)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 2
This Auckland band impressed mightily with their Soldiers EP of last year and this debut album really steps up to the plate. Coming from an alt.country end but with discreet influences from the likes of Springsteen, Dylan, Neil Young and the Waterboys as much as muscular poetry and indie.rock (the landslide of guitars which bury All Eyes right at the end), this album has a broad reach.... > Read more
Great North: Hands
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Eva Prowse: I Can't Keep Secrets (Eva Prowse/Rhythmethod)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Prowse -- here with her debut album -- has probably crossed more people's paths than they might think: she has toured with Fly My Pretties, opened for Wanda Jackson and appeared on the excellent album Trouble on the Waterfront by her father Chris Prowse. That is emblematic of her musical dexterity, and the fact she has the Phoenix Foundation's Samuel Flynn Scott producing and playing here,... > Read more
Eva Prowse: Complacency
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Dear Time's Waste: Spells (DTW/Isaac)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The previous EP in '08, Room for Rent, by this Auckland singer/writer Claire Duncan was notable for its droning and hypnotic qualities (guitar washes) alongside delicately realised folk, and you detected a talent which could stretch in many directions, from a constrained Bjork-meets-JAMChain to slightly disconcerting meditations on love . . . and throughout pastel shadings which were quite... > Read more
Dear Time's Waste: Son of a Fright
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Robert Scott: Ends Run Together (Flying Nun)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
The last time Robert Scott (of the Clean, the Bats and Magick Heads) appeared at Elsewhere it was for the cupboard cleanout of tapes which made up the lo-fi Tascam Hits. This collection of much more polished, expansive and augmented songs from the sagging shelves of his tapes enjoys assistance from Clean guitarist David Kilgour and Lesley Paris on drums in places, and production by... > Read more
Robert Scott: The Moon Upstairs
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Black Crowes: Croweology (Silver Arrow)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Two decades ago when the Black Crowes launched their career with the swaggering Shake Your Money Maker they came off as a version of Rod Stewart and the Faces with a little of the Allman Brothers thrown in: theirs was party-style rhythm'n'booze played out in front of a marijuana leaf banner. But more recently – with vocalist Chris Robinson back after some solo years – they... > Read more
The Black Crowes: Soul Singin'
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Richard Thompson: Dream Attic (Proper)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Quite what has enraged the exceptional and much admired English guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson we can only guess, but let's hope he stays angry because this blistering live album -- of all new material, recorded at various venues in the States -- finds him in top form. With a small band -- guitarist Pete Zorn also pulling out saxes, mandolin and flute; Joel Zifkin on violin --... > Read more
Richard Thompson: Sidney Wells
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 The Black Keys: Brothers (Shock)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read
Albums are usually far too long these days, and this is no exception -- but just when you think you might lose interest here the Keys pull out another angle: around the midpoint there are some superbly dark and soulful blues (Ten Cent Pistol, Sinister Kid) which sound steeped in Howlin' Wolf/Muddy Waters, then a new classic on The Go Getter (a moody barroom creeper which Etta James should... > Read more
The Black Keys: The Go Getter
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 John Grant: Queen of Denmark (Shock)
12 Dec 2010 | 2 min read
Although he recorded three albums with the band the Czars, we should perhaps treat this quite exceptional, moving, funny, droll and heart-breaking singer-songwriter as a new artist. And on those terms he immediately places himself in the company of early Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and a more humorous Rufus Wainwright for songs like Sigourney Weaver in which he laments his life in terms of... > Read more
John Grant: Queen of Denmark
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2010 Midlake: The Courage of Others (Inertia)
12 Dec 2010 | 1 min read | 3
This quintet from Texas -- now on their third album -- has only appeared once previously at Elsewhere, a wonderful track on the collection Secret Love 4. That piece (the sample track posted with that album) was so impressive their name imprinted itself on my memory -- and then this album turns up. In the absence of hearing much else by them this one seduces on a first hearing and it has... > Read more