Music at Elsewhere
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Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu: Chiaroscuro (ECM/Ode)
8 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
The album title here perhaps suggest rather more shadowland than is evident in these beautiful, sometimes light-filled duets by acoustic guitarist Towner and flugel/trumpet player Fresu. Certainly they head to the shadows for a lovely treatment of Blue in Green (from Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue), but with Towner's rich and inclusive playing which alludes to his Brazilian influences and... > Read more
Ralph Towner and Paolo Fresu: Postlude
Various: Alice Russell; The Pot of Gold Remixes (Little Poppet)
7 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
This may well be for a minority audience for a few reasons: not as many people liked UK soul singer Alice Russell's late 2008 album Pot of Gold quite as much as I did (but seemed to like her Auckland gig a whole lot more than me, I quit out of despair). And this is a double disc of remixes of those album tracks by the likes DJ Vadim, Mr Scruff, Mocean Worker, Kid Gusto, Shawn Lee and others.... > Read more
Alice Russell: Got the Hunger? (Ticklah remix)
John Morales: The M&M Mixes (BBE)
7 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
Recently I have been reading some interesting political histories of disco: how anti-gay and anti-black elements (notably in white radio and rock culture) conspired to kill the music, and how the combination of cocaine, money and the hijacking of the culture by the Studio 54 types ripped the music away from its roots. When all those factors came into play disco was effectively shut out and... > Read more
Margie Joseph: Move to the Groove
Various Artists: Come Fly With Me; Great New Zealand Rock’n’Roll 1964-72 (Sony)
7 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
A decade ago it wasn’t easy to find collections of local rock’n’roll but today we’re tripping over them: John Baker’s excellent compilations of 60s garage band rock like Pie Cart Rock’n’Roll and Get A Haircut (the latter coming up to the D4 and Datsuns); the Johnny Devlin collection; EMI’s Day in My Mind’s Mind series of... > Read more
Music Convention: Footsteps on my Mind
G. Love and Special Sauce: Long Way Down (Philadelphonic/Shock)
7 Feb 2010 | 1 min read
After the terrific debut single Cold Beverage in the mid 90s (a slice of lazy blues hip-hop for which Sony resurrected the old Okeh label to release), this trio from Philadelphia fell from sight and commercial viability, then broke up for a while. Pity, because they nailed a laidback acoustic hip-hop style which anticipated the folkadelic movement, owed a little to Beck, and were much more... > Read more
G. Love and Special Sauce: Crumble
Pauly Fuemana: RIP
1 Feb 2010 | <1 min read
The passing of Pauly Fuemana (aka OMC) cannot not go un-noted at Elsewhere: but I have said my piece here at Public Address and so need not revisit it. Other than to say this: in the coming months we will doubtless hear the customary gossip, rumour and innuendo about Pauly's recent years. Some of it will be true. None of it however should diminish what he achieved, albeit briefly.... > Read more
OMC: How Bizarre; Instrumental mix
Various artists: Deep in a Dream (Stomp/Rhythmethod)
31 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
At some time in the mid Nineties I spent an afternoon in Melbourne talking with David McComb, the former singer-songwriter with the Triffids then Blackeyed Susans. He was as intelligent as I had expected given the depth of his lyrics in both of those bands, but he was also hesitant, slightly wary and gun-shy, and I left wondering how he might survive the obvious dependencies he had. Not... > Read more
Diving Bell: Tender is the Night
Daniel Johnston: Is and Always Was (Feraltone)
31 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
I'm probably not alone in thinking of Daniel Johnston, not just as some untutored genius and outsider artist, but as someone whose life has often been pitiable and sad. That he is disturbed is beyond question. That said, Johnston's no-fi cassette recordings (some of which have turned up on CD over the years), can be transfixing for their sheer naked honesty -- and sometimes great tunes just... > Read more
Daniel Johnston: High Horse
Jimmy Buffett: Buffet Hotel (Mailboat)
30 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
Buffett has made a career and an excellent living out of writing songs about drinking margaritas, sailing and flying, party moods with good food and better friends, beach bars and so on. He also works in political subtexts which detractors of his freewheeling lifestyle and easy music prefer to ignore. This typically interesting collection addresses the power of waving in friendship, his love... > Read more
Jimmy Buffett: Beautiful Swimmers
Hot Chip: One Life Stand (EMI)
30 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Artists should not be held to their press releases, but after a couple of tracks of wimp-pop for disco-cum-dance clubs you have to wonder why the promo sheet on this album speaks of it being "awash with Hot Chip's trademark creative bravery and a searing emotional intensity from first track to last". Sorry, bullshit on both counts. This is clever and sometimes slightly... > Read more
Hot Chip: Brothers
Brian Jonestown Massacre: Who Killed Sgt Pepper? (Southbound)
30 Jan 2010 | <1 min read | 1
This one-time San Francisco outfit which is most often considered a train-wreck of styles helmed by a career-destroying personality (Anton Newcombe) here weighs in with a pretty terrific crash of trash rock'n'roll, grunge-psychedelics, borrowings from world music beats and much more. In fact, given their musically wayward history (indie-pop drone to electronica) this is a kind of extended... > Read more
Brian Jonestown Massacre: This is the First of Your Last Warnings
Songs: Songs (PopFrenzy/Rhythmethod)
29 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
This young pop band out of Sydney come, not so much trailing influences but shoving them up ahead of them: variously they sound like nasal Dylan '65 doing early Velvets drone (Farmacy), the Bats jingle-jangle (Something to Believe In), the fuzzy end of the Clean (Oh No), more Velvets-in-Dunedin (Retreat) . . . And those are just the first four tracks. You get the picture. No surprises... > Read more
Songs: Different Light
The Horrors: Primary Colours (XL)
24 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
In my blog at Public Address recently on my impressions of Auckland's somewhat dire Big Day Out 2010 (here), I noted that there were very few bands/artists whose albums I'd want to check out afterwards: the Horrors was one of them. I'd only heard bits and pieces previously and so had no overall impression but on the day they were interesting. (A word which suspends judgement, right?)... > Read more
The Horrors: Three Decades
Miho Wada: Postcards to Your Bed (mihowada.com)
24 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
Although the cover says "Miho Wada plays Japanese punk jazz" you'd be hard pushed to locate much of whatever that is here: it sure doesn't sound like Guitar Wolf going all Ornette Coleman your arse. It opens with a rather lame and light reggae groove over which Wada -- who was born in Japan, schooled in Christchurch and Canterbury Uni then went Trinity College in London -- offers... > Read more
Miho Wada: Call Girl
Lyle Lovett: Natural Forces (Curb)
24 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
With this fine country/alt.country singer-songwriter due to play in New Zealand soon, with Kasey Chambers (date and details here) and knowing his albums rarely go reviewed, it is timely to consider his most recent release which came out in the pre-Christmas slew of hits and compilations. Lovett has never been an easy one to pigeon-hole: his music can sometimes be straight from the... > Read more
Lyle Lovett: Empty Blue Shoes
Owen Pallett: Heartland (Domino)
24 Jan 2010 | 1 min read
If you didn't already know anything about Canadian Pallett, from just a couple of tracks here you'd pick him for an arranger more than a singer/songwriter. Here he unloads a container of electronics (strings, keyboards, loops) into his lyrically dense songs. This is an album which can be as oppressive as it impressive. Pallett has done arrangements for Arcade Fire, Mountain Goats,... > Read more
Owen Pallett: Midnight Directives
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Road (Mute)
18 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
The most difficult test for any film score is if it works in the absence of images, and even more so if it does when the listener hasn't seen the movie. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have had a long association (Bad Seeds, the booze-rock blues-rock Grinderman) and here on the score to the forthcoming film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's dark novel The Road they mostly keep things elementally... > Read more
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: Memory
Besser and Bravura: Decadence Live (Atoll)
18 Jan 2010 | <1 min read
The music of Auckland-based, New York-raised pianist/composer Jonathan Besser -- often with the group Bravura -- has long deserved a broader audience than the classical world which it inhabits. Working with guitarist Nigel Gavin, bassist Peter Scott and violin player Miranda Adams (among others) whose reach stretches to experimental music, soundtracks, jazz and contemporary classical, and... > Read more
Besser and Bravura: Hudson River 1
Joe Robinson: Time Jumpin' (Universal)
18 Jan 2010 | <1 min read | 1
Not being a great watcher of mainstream television means I happily get to miss things like Australia's Got Talent. (I didn't doubt it, the Easybeats, the Church and AC/DC are great.) But that also means people like me miss someone like 18-year old acoustic guitarist Robinson who won the "play-off" in 2008. Let it be said immediately this guy isn't like that dance troupe who... > Read more
Joe Robinson: Fleabites
Grant Hart: Hot Wax (Fuse/Southbound)
18 Jan 2010 | 1 min read | 1
Because of the sporadic and sometimes wayward nature of his career after the break-up of Husker Du in '87, it was always going to be hard to predict what this album under their former drummer/singer Hart's own name would come off like. It isn't easy in the sense that it doesn't gives its gifts up readily, and its slightly scattergun nature (it opens with rock blast, next up is a quirky... > Read more