Music at Elsewhere
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Brian Eno: FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE (digital outlets)
22 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
It has been some while – 17 years in fact – since Brian Eno offered a vocal album and while this is certainly that (eight songs and one instrumental, the beautiful Inclusion) it is, as so often the case with Eno, the sonic landscape he creates which seduces. Here are echoes of his gorgeously weightless ambient works with those translucent synth passages,... > Read more
There Were Bells
Various Artists: Feels Like Home; Songs from the Sonoran Borderlands (Putumayo/Ode)
17 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
Although it is not necessary to have read the memoir by Linda Ronstadt of the same title – available only on Kindle at present – it's likely you would want to after hearing this collection which she has collated with the Putumayo label's founder Dan Storper. In her brief introduction to the useful booklet with the CD, Ronstadt writes of the land of her ancestors in western... > Read more
Barrio Viejo. Ry Cooder with Lalo Guerrero
Goldsmith Baynes: E Rere Rā (digital outlets)
17 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
If we consider the past 40 years a renaissance of Maori culture in the popular arts – approximately from the time bone-carver Brian Flintoff and taonga puoro practitioners Richard Nunns and Hirini Melbourne came to the fore – we can see the evidence in painting, drama, theatre and mainstream popular music. One genre seemed slower on the uptake: jazz. Certainly there were... > Read more
E Taku Tau
Avantdale Bowling Club: Trees (digital outlets)
16 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
In 1995 Auckland saxophonist Nathan Haines' debut album Shift Left opened a door between jazz and hip-hop, delivering sophisticated soul-jazz with beats and scratching from turntablist Manuel Bundy and vocals by Sonny Sagala (aka Dei Hamo) and Pauly (OMC) Fuemana. Shift Left bridged genres, linked South and Central Auckland, won the 22-year old Haines the Jazz Album of the Year... > Read more
Tom Cunliffe: Secret Exhibition (digital outlets)
16 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
This short, elegant, somewhat world-weary third album by Auckland singer-songwriter Tom Cunliffe turns down the tempo and mood of his previous, mostly pop-oriented album Template for Love to find a thoughtful, poetic place between Leonard Cohen and Jim Croce. His pre-Covid travels come through in the oblique mysteries of string-enhanced title track which references Venetian tides, marble... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Sola Rosa, Get It Together (Way Up)
11 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this reissue which comes as a double album with an insert of album credits etc. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Sola Rosa (known to his folks as Andrew Spraggon) frequently recalibrated our expectations of local electronica and for this ambitious 2009 outing,... > Read more
Nikki Lane: Denim and Diamonds (New West)
8 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
If the title doesn't tell you this is a country album then you haven't been paying attention. But 38-year old Nikki Lane out of South Carolina is one of those singer-songwriters a few generations removed from even the outlaw movement. She was born the year that Toto won album of the year at the Grammys and Men At Work were hailed as the best new artist. Yes, a lot has happened in her... > Read more
First High
The Beths: Expert in a Dying Field (digital outlets)
2 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
When the Beths played to a capacity crowd at the Auckland Town Hall in November 2020 an excitable group of late-teen girls waited outside an hour before doors opened. However, despite the band's standing with that demographic, they were in the minority. A large proportion of the crowd were in their late 30s and a considerable number unquestionably fortysomething. But many knew every word... > Read more
TWO FROM THOKEI TAPES (2022): George and Roy at home
2 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has frequently acknowledged the idiosyncratic releases of New Zealand artists on cassette from Thokei Tapes out of Hamburg, Germany. And still they come . . . Fortunately you can hear and buy the music at bandcamp here where a purchase of a tape gets you a free download. So here are the two latest offerings . The GDH Smoke Machine: Booklovers A solo... > Read more
Lou Reed: Words and Music 1965 (digital outlets)
21 Sep 2022 | 2 min read
Anyone who has heard the audition tape the Beatles did for Decca Records on January 1, 1962 isn't surprised at the label's Dick Rowe turning them down. He might not have said “groups of guitarists are on their way out” as the band's manager Brian Epstein would later say. Rowe signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes at the time. But the Beatles' tapes, a ramshackle selection of... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Te Kaahu: Te Kaahu O Rangi (digital outlets)
19 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes in a beautiful and framable cover (as we said in the following review). The album was released in May but the vinyl has just arrived. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Amidst the landslide of local albums released in the current New... > Read more
Rangirara
Module: The Best of Module 2003-2022 (Loop/digital outlets)
19 Sep 2022 | 1 min read | 1
Wellington's Jeremiah Ross (aka Module) has released some of the most soulful, downtempo electronica across – by our loose count – half a dozen critically acclaimed studio albums (including the live Pattern.Dot.Life and singles) in addition to touring with Rhian Sheehan and Fly My Pretties, collaborating with the likes of Paul McLaney (on among other things the superb... > Read more
Marlon Williams: My Boy (digital outlets)
18 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
In a recent interview with Moana Maniapoto on Māori Television's award-winning Te Ao programme, singer-songwriter Marlon Williams observed, “All songwriting is posturing in way. Acting, I guess.” Given Williams (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāi Tahu) was named for Brando, has had a parallel screen career — most recently A Star is Born, True History of the Kelly Gang and the Netflix... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Mel Parsons: Slow Burn (Cape Road Recordings/digital outlets)
17 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . It's tempting to impute meanings onto the title of this fifth album by the much-travelled local artist and Elsewhere favourite Mel Parsons who has moved from country music to the... > Read more
Headland
Julian Lennon: Jude (digital outlets)
16 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
Few would chose Julian Lennon's life: an absent or indifferent famous father whose murder severed any further possible contact when he was 17; his own musical career always inviting a comparison he couldn't win or, worse maybe, the expectation of his father's slavish loyalists expecting him to be something he never could . . . Then there was the money, Yoko, step-brother Sean ascendant . . .... > Read more
Julia Jacklin: PRE PLEASURE (digital outlets)
11 Sep 2022 | 2 min read
One of the most important and interesting Australian talents of the past decade, on her two previous albums -- Don't Let the Kids Win and Crushing -- Julia Jacklin proved herself a writer of poignant ballads, self-analytical but never self-indulgent lyrics and sometimes offering skeletons of narratives for the listener to fill in the details. On Iushing of 2019, the then-28 year old... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Motte: Cold + Liquid (Ba Da Bing/digital outlets)
7 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a brief insert essay by Bruce Russell on the back of a 12'' photo which echoes the lovely cover art (both photos by Oliver Briggs). Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . In the dark waters west of atmospheric ambient music, where... > Read more
Cass McCombs: Heartmind (bandcamp)
5 Sep 2022 | 2 min read
Although the name might not be familiar, if we judge people by the company they keep we'd be impressed by Californian singer-songwriter Cass McCombs' pals: singer-guitarist Steve Gunn (playing Auckland, Wellington and Hastings in October), Arizona's psyche-desert rockers Meat Puppets, Angel Olsen, acclaimed pedal steel player Greg Leisz (touring with Jackson Browne next year) . . . And... > Read more
Karaoke
ONE WE MISSED: Picky Hippers, Full Flavour Behaviour (bandcamp)
30 Aug 2022 | <1 min read | 1
We forgive ourselves for not knowing about this album which came out in May. Not a lot from Kaikoura comes to our attention, and it was only last month that a friend of the band got in touch but somewhat undersold it: “Would love you to take a listen of this and perhaps critique it. Picky Hippers are Kaikoura based and rocking our piece of paradise”. In the great tradition of jam... > Read more
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Joseph Petric: Seen (Redshift Records/digital outlets)
20 Aug 2022 | 1 min read
The accordion is a much maligned instrument, the punchline to many jokes by musicians. Probably a hangover from relentlessly cheerful polka bands (although not this one!). Yet in the right hands the accordion – and its cousin the bandoneon – is not only capable of great expression (think of the tango music of the late bandoneon masters Dino Saluzzi and Astor Piazzolla) but in... > Read more