Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
The Eastern: Arrows (Social End Product/Rhythmethod)
22 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The Eastern out of Christchurch are new to me although for the past few months their name has been mentioned a lot, always along the lines of, "Oh, you gotta hear the Eastern." Now I have and I too am saying, "Oh, you gotta hear the Eastern". Part arse-kickin' Steve Earle (for whom they have opened), part reflective old time country, part Old Crow Medicine Show (for... > Read more
The Eastern: The Steeple
Various Artists: Introducing Townes Van Zandt via the Great Unknown (For the Sake of the Song)
22 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The late Van Zandt is hardly the little-known cult artist he once was: there are many tribute albums (Steve Earle most recently) and his estate must coin it in from all the covers alt.country artists do. Most of Van Zandt’s originals were spare, lowkey and acoustic -- so the surprise here is what an embellishing or reconfiguring approach some of these largely unknown artists or cult... > Read more
Loophole and Ciaran Kirby: Lungs
Graham Parker: Imaginary Television (Bloodshot)
22 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
In Britain’s post-punk era Parker and the Rumour emerged with an urgent, often angry sound that owed as much to pub-rock and venomous Bob Dylan as it did to American soul, r’n’b and rocked-up country. They were real contenders and their early albums still sound full of bile’n’fire. Parker’s solo career became more measured when he relocate to the US and... > Read more
Graham Parker: Weather Report
Fionn Regan: The Shadow of an Empire (Inertia/Border)
21 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
On the cover he may look like one of the more camp American Idol finalists, but Irish singer-songwriter Fionn Regan occupies that appealing musical territory between Dylan in '66, Pete Molinari and lo-fi Chris Knox with his urgent, lyrically twisting songs which are punctuated by ear and heart-gripping lines. Catacombs here suggests a story in just a few lines: "I've been noticing... > Read more
Fionn Regan: Protection Racket
The Watson Twins: Talking to You, Talking to Me (EMI)
21 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
This album might be surprisingly short -- a mere 33 minutes -- but it represents a significant and reasonably impressive shift in direction for Chandra and Leigh Watson who here call on friends from My Morning Jacket and Everest for an album that is by turns moody bluesy and soulful, all delivered with a pop economy. The folk and rootsy blues which was their hallmark on Southern Manners... > Read more
The Watson Twins: Midnight
Hayseed Dixie: Killer Grass (Cooking Vinyl)
21 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
You might have thought the Hayseed Dixie joke -- a band from the fanciful Deer Lick Holler playing bluegrass treatments of (mostly) rock songs, interviewed here -- would have run its course by now. But eight albums in they are still going. And of course it is still kinda fun: here they knock off Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody), Black Sabbath, Mozart, The Prodigy and others (as well as seven... > Read more
Hayseed Dixie: Won't Get Fooled Again (the Who)
Eden Mulholland: Music for Dance (Isaac)
21 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
Probably this shouldn't work. Music for dance pieces have to be special to exist without the moving images -- and yet in theory they should be able to do exactly that. These do. Eden Mulholland has written for numerous New Zealand dance productions and is the singer-songwriter in the rock band Motorcade, but here he collects 23 discreet, mostly electronic pieces which utilise backward... > Read more
Eden Mulholland: False Waltz, 2nd Movement
Hollie Smith: Humour and the Misfortune of Others (EMI)
19 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
This can be extremely brief given that Smith's story, travails and so on have been much canvassed. But what hasn't been said too often or too loudly is that while her previous album Long Player sold exceptionally well it came encumbered with two shortcomings which probably didn't go unnoticed by those at Manhattan/Blue Note with whom she parted company. It lacked coherent songs (aside from... > Read more
Hollie Smith: Before This Day is Gone
Gorillaz: Plastic Beach (EMI CD/DVD)
15 Mar 2010 | 2 min read
Gorillaz aren't the first to make "world music" of no fixed cultural abode (Elsewhere has noted 1 Giant Leap and the Laya Project among others) -- but there is something so diverse yet coherent, musically ambitious yet delivered with a pop sensibility, and just so damn clever and enjoyable about Gorillaz that they stand apart from all other contenders. Mainman and driving force... > Read more
Gorillaz: Broken
The Durutti Column: A Paean to Wilson (Kooky)
15 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
In the brief liner notes here Durutti Column's Vini Reilly notes how close he had been to the late Tony Wilson who had almost single-handedly founded and shaped the scene which came out Manchester. Reilly notes that Wilson was his close friend (he was at the hospital when Wilson died in '07) and that Durruti Column was the first act signed to play at Wilson's Factory club and the first on... > Read more
The Durutti Column: Brother
Salon Kingsadore: Mountain Rescue (Sarang Bang)
14 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
Salon Kingsadore is another vehicle for Auckland guitarist Gianmarco Liguori whose earlier albums under his own name (with stellar guests) have appeared at Elsewhere, and who seems a hard man to pigeonhole. Here for example he leads the instrumental group of keyboard player Billy Squire, bassist Hayden Sinclair and drummer Steven Tait (with guests saxophonist Brian Smith and trumpeter Edwina... > Read more
Salon Kingsadore: The Warm War
The Raincoats: The Raincoats (We Three/Southbound)
14 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
I'm pretty sure I shared an elevator with some of the Raincoats at a hotel in New York in the mid Nineties, but I may be wrong. And that's the end of my anecdote. This is a reissue (The second? Third?) of their important '79 debut album when this London group of Ana da Silva, Gina Birch, Palmolive and Vicky Aspinall were hailed as the first all female post-punk band. Owing a little to... > Read more
The Raincoats: In Love
Moriarty: Gee Whiz but this is a Lonesome Town (Carte!l/Border)
14 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
In an odd reversal of the journey Marianne Dissard took -- from France to Arizona to create Fanco-alt.country -- this group fronted by Rosemary Moriarty out of Ohio (they are Ramones-like all called Moriarty) have an established following in France where they reside for their alt.country, old time folk. With harmonica, double bass, acoustic guitars, a suitcase played as a drum, Jew's harp,... > Read more
Moriarty: Fireday
Goldfrapp: Head First (Mute)
14 Mar 2010 | <1 min read
If Rip Van Winkle had nodded off a few decades ago and was woken by the sound of this album he'd be forgiven for thinking nothing much had changed: on this, the fifth album by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, you've got a checklist of electro-pop and Euro-disco which includes Abba, Laura Branigan, Giorgio Moroder, bits of ELO, Eighties soundtracks . . . It's interesting in a kind of... > Read more
Goldfrapp: Dreaming
Edwin Derricutt: Three Hours South (Freefall/Pure)
14 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
The debut by this New Zealand singer-songwriter, Symmetry, found immediate favour at Elsewhere a couple of years ago, but this album is big step up in maturity of songwriting and musicality. There's a depth and muscularity to these songs (the urgent tone of Life Boat, the sharp folk-pop of 30 Seconds, the holy stillness of Soldier) which is immediately affecting and if on the previous... > Read more
Edwin Derricutt: Life Boat
The Fourmyula: The Complete Fourmyula (EMI)
13 Mar 2010 | 3 min read
In his recent book 100 Essential New Zealand Albums, the writer/broadcaster Nick Bollinger lists three albums by the Fourmyula (1967-71) out of Upper Hutt. Not bad for a band that only released three -- and one of those Bollinger cites was the unreleased Turn Your Back on the Wind. Confused? Bollinger doesn't list their self-titled debut but includes Turn Your Back because it has... > Read more
The Fourmyula: Please Take Me (1969)
Various Artists: The Gerry Goffin and Carole King Songbook (EMI)
13 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
While Carole King went on to greater fame, it is worth remembering that of the songs she wrote with her writing partner-then-husband Gerry Goffin in the early Sixties it was he who penned those memorable and often extremely adult lyrics: think of the pre-sex doubt in "will you still love me tomorrow", the post-sex pleasures of "you make me feel like a natural woman" and then... > Read more
The Byrds: Wasn't Born to Follow
The Avett Brothers: I and Love and You (American)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
This trio (and guests) is fronted by North Carolina brothers Scott and Seth Avett who recorded five albums before this major label debut on Rick Rubin’s American label. Rubin -- producer of the Beastie Boys, recent Johnny Cash albums and now the Avetts -- was taken by this band’s honest emotions whose music is framed by acoustic guitars, fiddles, banjo, upright piano and the... > Read more
The Avett Brothers: January Wedding
13th Floor Elevators: 7th Heaven; Music of the Spheres (Charly/Southbound)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
As with Syd Barrett, the music of 13th Floor Elevators has been overshadowed by the story of the madness, in the case of the Elevators the increasingly bizarre behaviour of their frontman Roky Erickson. Out of Austin, Texas in the mid Sixties, the Elevators were a raw and elemental garageband along the lines of England's Downliners Sect and Pretty Things, or Paul Revere and the... > Read more
The Thirteen Floor Elevators: It's All Over Now Baby Blue
Memory Tapes: Seek Magic (Inertia)
8 Mar 2010 | 1 min read
This hazy and sometimes hypnotic album is the project of Dayve Hawk out of New Jersey who also works under a number of other names. Memory Tapes is his sweeping, electronica-pop personae and this MT debut hits an unusual ground between the less outre Mika, MGMT and Empire of the Sun at the poppy end, and the more interesting experimental types like Atlas Sound (Branford Cox of Deerhunter) at... > Read more