Music at Elsewhere

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Vampire Weekend: Contra (XL)

18 Jan 2010 | 1 min read

Coming to this second album by a very buttoned down and upper crust outfit from New York (who met at Columbia University) will be a surprise if you took from their name they were some dark and moody emo outfit. When the second track White Sky kicks in you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd spent their vacation on Long Island sipping iced tea and immersing themselves in Paul Simon's Boy in... > Read more

Vampire Weekend: Run

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

Kris Kristofferson: Closer to the Bone (New West)

18 Jan 2010 | 1 min read

Although his previous album This Old Road won some critical plaudits, it is hard to hear Closer to the Bone as much other than a collection of sentimental songs, some of which border on the trite. Kristofferson, especially in recent years, has never been much of a singer (he concedes that) but here his voice really has lost most of its gritty and gruff appeal as he wobbles uneasily and... > Read more

Kris Kristofferson: Good Morning John

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

Pink Martini: Splendor in the Grass (Inertia/Border)

18 Jan 2010 | 1 min read

The soundtrack for a sophisticated, cocktail-sipping summer afternoon starts here with the classy amalgam of pop and classical by the ensemble out of Portland, Oregon lead by pianist Thomas Lauderdale and featuring the pristine, unassuming voice of China Forbes. The title track, by way of example, lifts the melody of Lalo Schifrin's Burning Bridges (the theme to Kelly's Heroes if I recall),... > Read more