Music at Elsewhere
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Various: Motown 50 (Universal)
17 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 3
It would be very easy to acclaim this -- 50 of Motown's greatest hits over three discs to celebrate the classic soul label's 50th anniversary. Wow, what's not to like, huh? But then you listen to it: the copy that has arrived for Elsewhere consideration (and presumably the one in New Zealand stores) isn't the UK edition but something else. Possibly the French edition? The UK version... > Read more
The Four Tops: Reach Out (I'll Be There)
Alice Russell: Pot of Gold (Inertia/Rhythmethod)
11 Jan 2009 | <1 min read | 2
This white, funky-soul chanteuse from Britain who can sound like Nina Simone as much as having stepped out of the Motown roster, doesn't always pen the most memorable of songs -- but it's all in the gutsy and committed delivery. She can get down'n'gritty or deliver up a sensuous yelp, and she backs it up with a hot band of horns honking, offering stabbing punctuations or great sweeps of... > Read more
Alice Russell: Got the Hunger?
Gotan Project: Live (Shock)
10 Jan 2009 | <1 min read
To be honest I was never that enamoured with the little that I heard of this tango-cum-triphop outfit who seemed to command airtime at dinner parties and restaurants about five years back. (Probably hair salons too, but I never go to them) They seemed like designer wallpaper to me and I've also never got the whole "romance of the tango" thing which many got swept up in. I... > Read more
Gotan Project: Queremos paz
High Places: High Places (Mistletone/Rhythmethod)
10 Jan 2009 | <1 min read
In an article posted at Elsewhere recently I wrote of the seductive charms of the quiet albums on Brian Eno's Obscure label in late Seventies/early Eighties, and of other such albums by the likes of Harold Budd, Laaraji, trumpeter Jon Hassell and others. On one of those lovely Hassell albums -- Dream Theory in Malaya from 1981, an Essnetial Elsewhere album -- there was a piece in which he... > Read more
High Places: Namer
Various: Born to the Breed, A Tribute to Judy Collins (Wildflower)
10 Jan 2009 | 1 min read
These past few years there has been something of a rediscovery of old folkies, what with Springsteen paying tribute to Pete Seeger, the various Woody Guthrie compilations, Bob Dylan's radio show (he's something of an old folkie himself), new albums by Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Larry Jon Wilson, collections like If You Ain't Got the Do-Re-Mi and Sowing the Seeds . . . Not to mention young... > Read more
James Mudriczki: Che
Ginger Brown: Who Scared Who (Ginger Brown)
9 Jan 2009 | <1 min read
Because I've been listening to some old Sixties vinyl -- Sam the Sham, Paul Revere, La De Das, the McCoys etc -- this album by a Wellington outfit which is driven by the organ playing of Lawrence Taula has captured my attention. There's real Sixties pop quality about the songwriting, Taula also sings like less addled Jim Morrison in places, the guitars of Matthew Armitage perhaps... > Read more
Ginger Brown: Blinded by the Light
Jim Noir: Jim Noir (My Dad)
9 Jan 2009 | <1 min read
Some six months ago the English magazine Q hailed this quirky, poppy and delightfully cheerful album as "the surprise soundtrack of summer 2008" -- which means that for us in the other hemisphere it is now we should be tuning in. Jim Noir (known to his family as Alan Roberts) from near Manchester is far from noir and in fact there is a Beach Boys breeziness at work here, married... > Read more
Jim Noir: Happy Day Today
David Byrne and Brian Eno: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (Inertia)
8 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 1
It has been almost 30 years since David Byrne and Brian Eno teamed up for the groundbreaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts which brought sampling, found sounds, world music, trip-hop beats, studio manipulations and much more together in way that really hadn't been heard before. But anyone expecting this collaboration to be in a similar vein hasn't been listening to the work of either in... > Read more
David Byrne and Brian Eno: My Big Nurse
Jeff Beck: Performing this Week . . . Live at Ronnie Scott's (Shock)
8 Jan 2009 | 1 min read | 2
In a recent interview in advance of his Auckland concert next February, I put a quote to this guitar legend whose career started back in the mid-Sixties when he took over from Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds: that of all the guitar heroes his career had been the most slippery to follow. He laughed and agreed -- then I told him that quote came from 1976, over 30 years ago. He laughed even... > Read more
Jeff Beck: A Day in the Life
The Aliens: Luna (Pet Rock)
6 Jan 2009 | 1 min read
Back in the late Ninenties the Beta Band from Britain were, for some of us at least, the most exciting and promising thing around. They released three charming folkadelic EPs -- packaged on CD as, you guessed it, The Three EPs -- and they were heard at the best barbecues. They were pastoral, trippy, sort of hip-hop if you only had acoustic instruments (although they had a turntablist), and... > Read more
The Aliens: Dove Returning
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Van Morrison: Keep It Simple (Lost Highway)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
Another year and another Van album on yet another label . . . And with the reissue of his earlier albums drawing attention to great work like It's Too Late to Stop Now (read about it in Essential Elsewhere) it would hardly be surprising if this one was ignored by even longtime followers, many of whom might be picking up the remastered back-catalogue or one of the new greatest hits... > Read more
Van Morrison: No Thing
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Lucinda Williams: Little Honey (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
After her last, quite exceptional but largely melancholy album West (in part influenced by death in the family) it is almost as if Williams is here staking her claim again to some sassy rock'n'roll threads. The opener Real Love blazes off the disc and the closer is a cover of AC/DC's It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll) which, it must be said, she delivers in her... > Read more
Lucinda Williams: Little Rock Star
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 TV on the Radio: Dear Science (4AD)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 5
There are very few bands in rock culture that you could describe as genuinely avant-garde, but this ambitious New York outfit certainly fits the job prescription: they are musically ambitous, possess a sense of history but also a 21st century grandeur in their sonic approach, and write on a big scale. It's enough to observe that there are elements of Prince and Bowie-funk in here as much as... > Read more
TV on the Radio: Golden Age
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Bond Street Bridge: The Mapmaker's Art (Monkey Records)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
Opening with an arresting, one minute challenge of scraped and stabbing violin you could be forgiven for thinking the one-man band of Sam Prebble who is Bond Street Bridge is being beamed at you from the Contemporary Classical department. It’ll certainly grip you, as will dark alt.folk drone Black Market Soul Transplant which follows (“the devil got me drunk . . . woke up... > Read more
Bond Street Bridge: Rain
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes (SubPop/Rhythmethod)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 2
With its references to late 60s folk-rock, baroque pop flourishes, close harmonies, art-rock progressions and the jigsaw-puzzle of arrangements for voices and a small array of instruments (all deployed with precision, skill and understatement), this extraordinary album seems an unlikely one to have been embraced by hip rock magazines.It is is complex and yet poppy, sometimes oddly... > Read more
Fleet Foxes: Ragged Wood
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Samuel Flynn Scott and Bunnies on Ponies: Straight Answer Machine (Loop)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
Sam Scott is the singer and main songwriter of the Phoenix Foundation (alongside Luke Buda) and wrote the music for the feature Eagle Vs Shark but this, his second solo album, sounds like a man thoroughly enjoying himself (in a somewhat serious way) out of the confines of both of those. As with the PF this is pop which has a light'n'loose feel (soft drugs I suspect) and a sense of... > Read more
SF Scott and BOP: Sodium Ions
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Hayes Carll: Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
You'd think with strip malls, fast food franchises, saturation low-cost reality television and the widespread levelling out of mainstream culture that guys like Carll would have been ironed out of American life But he's one of those crinkles in the texture, an alt.country-cum-trad.country guy who is a little early Steve Earle and Joe Ely, and a bit of Basement Tapes Bob Dylan, but also very... > Read more
Hayes Carll: Girl Downtown
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: James McMurtry: Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod/Elite)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
The murky photo of a small, barroom audience on the inner sleeve of this brittle and typically dark album by singer-poet McMurtry might have included me. It looks like it was taken in the Continental Club in Austin where I caught him and his band the Heartless Bastards a couple of years ago playing their regular gig. Since his remarkable debut Too Long in the Wasteland at the opening of... > Read more
James McMurtry: Ruins of the Realm
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: MGMT: Oracular Spectacular (Sony/BMG)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
As regular visitors to Elsewhere are aware, not everything posted here is a work of unalloyed genius which will be treasured down many lifetimes. (Although there are however more than a few like that I would hope.) But sometimes albums just come along that you are very glad to have heard and simply enjoy for what they mean to you on some odd subconscious level. I suspect this one is like... > Read more
MGMT: The Youth
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Duffy: Rockferry (Rough Trade)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 2
Funny how the UK rock press works, innit? Just a month or so ago this soulful, young Welsh singer who has a mainline to Dionne Warwick, Spector girl groups and Motown was being hailed as the next big thing/one to watch etc. Her record company had slipped out an advance sampler CD/7 inch which was so terrific it was posted here at Elsewhere about three months back as a very early heads-up.... > Read more