Music at Elsewhere
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BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Johann Johannsson: Fordlandia (4AD)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
Part romantic and lyrical classical music, part minimalism of the early La Monte Young kind, and deftly orchestrated in the manner of albums on Eno's Obscure label of the Seventies (Gavin Bryars' Sinking of the Titanic comes to mind), this emotionally downbeat but eerily beautiful album is probably of as much appeal to those who like a bit of Mahler as anyone coming from Eno's ambient music end... > Read more
Johann Johannsson: The Rocket Builder
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride (4AD)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 3
Co-produced by John Vanderslice, the typically opaque lyrics by John Darnielle are given space and clarity so as to bewilder and bemuse you by turns. Not many people write songs with titles like Sax Rohmer #1, How to Embrace a Swamp Creature, Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident and Michael Myers Resplendent. But here augmented by some discreetly dramatic strings and the small band, and with... > Read more
The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Moana and the Tribe: Wha (Black Pearl/Ode)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
Across her previous three albums Moana Maniapoto confirmed her status as one of New Zealand's most significant voices whose sound could just as comfortably incorporate politics and culture as seduce with her flowing lyrics in te reo and her astute ear for using the traditional within a contemporary context. This album might lack the obviously powerful and overt statements of material like... > Read more
Moana and the Tribe: Te Apo
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Ryan Bingham: Mescalito (Lost Highway)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
We live and we learn -- and I have been living and relearning by repeat plays of this exceptional debut by someone called Ryan Bingham of whom I know nothing. And in a way, I'm grateful he has lived whatever he has in my place. The hard lessons he seems to have learned, I'm happy to just hear from this distance. I hear dark alt.country, brittle back-country, outsider art, folk-framed... > Read more
Ryan Bingham: Sunrise
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: James Hunter: The Hard Way (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
This Englishman with an unexpectedly soulful voice was one of the first artists posted at Elsewhere back in mid 2006 and that astonishing album People Gonna Talk was easily among the best of that year. But in this country with very little publicity (I saw none) it rose without a trace. Still, those who heard it got a wonderful slice of Sam Cooke/soul-reggae -- and it went on to be in... > Read more
James Hunter: Til the End
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Emmylou Harris: All I Intended To Be (Warners)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
The crystalline quality of Emmylou Harris' voice is often so admired that people can look past that she is also a great interpreter of a lyric and has effortlessly brought traditional or familiar songs together with her originals.This time out she calls on kindred spirits (the McGarrigle sisters, Mike Auldridge, Buddy Miller) with her band which includes keyboard player Glenn D Hardin, drummer... > Read more
Emmylou Harris: Not Enough
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Coldplay: Viva la Vida or Death And All Her Friends (EMI)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 3
One advantage of not listening to commercial radio is that you don't start going off songs or bands through over-familiarity. Which might explain why I quite like this new album by a band which seems to annoy most right-thinking people and serious music writers.But I hear so little of them -- I rarely play the albums I have -- that this one sounds intelligent and like a band prepared to take a... > Read more
Coldplay: Yes
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Paul Weller: 22 Dreams (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
A couple of months ago I was invited to give a lecture to Auckland Uni music students about a contemporary songwriter of my choosing whose catalogue of work was interesting and worth studying.I picked Paul Weller on strength of this quote from him about his forthcoming album: "It takes in soul, rock'n'roll, there are some folky moments, some psych bits, a classical piece, some avant free... > Read more
Paul Weller: Echoes Around the Sun
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: The Felice Brothers: The Felice Brothers (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
These three actual brothers (and a friend) weighed in with the Tonight at the Arizona which made the Best of Elsewhere 2007 list and turned up as many a critic's favourite Americana album.This long-awaited sequel follows an interim album sold at gigs, and a few of those songs are now available on this self-titled album (and some other tracks were, confusingly, recorded before their debut... > Read more
Felice Brothers: Murder by Mistletoe
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Radiohead: In Rainbows (XL)
22 Dec 2008 | 2 min read | 3
Over the Christmas 07-08 period I heard a radio interview with a young musician denouncing the gross villany of major record companies -- about which I expect he had no personal experience -- and pointing to Radiohead's on-line/download release in October 2007 of In Rainbows (with buyers paying what they liked for it) as evidence the music industry was tottering like a mortally wounded... > Read more
Radiohead:Nude
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Beck: Modern Guilt (DGC)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read
For my money there are only two indispensible Beck albums: Odelay of '96 and Mutations of two years later. That said, there are another couple I'd prefer not to live without -- and this one produced by Danger Mouse shapes up to be one of those, and is still climbing in stature on repeat plays.As always this gifted, musical changeling and sonic shapeshifter filterfeeds his way through... > Read more
Beck: Replica
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Micah P Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra (Inertia)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 3
This slight American singer-songwriter impressed hugely on a brief New Zealand tour a few years ago when he delivered his reflective acoustic songs and wry between-songs banter to very small but appreciative audiences.Cult figure then -- and much the same today I am guessing.Here with a small string section (and his own impressive catalogue of keyboard and string instruments) he takes his dark... > Read more
Micah P Hinson: Sunrise Over the Olympus Mons
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Eli Paperboy Reed and The True Loves: Roll With You (Shock)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 2
For the past week or so I have been listening to old vinyl by Dusty Springfield and Southside Johnny (a New Jersey bar-band chum of Springsteen and Stevie Van Zandt) and have been reminded again just how many white singers have been immersed in soul/r'n'b.And there seems to be a new wave again with James Hunter, Duffy and Beth Rowley, all of whom have been Elsewhere favourites. Of course Van... > Read more
Eli Paperboy Reid: I'll Roll With You
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Willard Grant Conspiracy: Pilgrim Road (Southbound)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
For some people the radar-avoiding WGC are like an alt.country version of the late and lamented Australian band the Go-Betweens. Not for any similarity in sound, but in that if you discovered the songwriting skills early you tended to follow the central members' every move (solo or with the band).WGC has largely been the vehicle of Robert Fisher with now-departed Paul Austin and the 2004... > Read more
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Malpensa
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006, The Bootleg Series Vol 8
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 4
After the less-than-essential Vol 7 which accompanied the brilliant Martin Scorsese Dylan-bioflick No Direction Home (if you got the DVD you could probably pass on the CD) this on-going series of unreleased/rare/alternative versions hits another peak with this exceptional collection. There are a number of reasons for that: look at the period it covers and you may see it is the late-career... > Read more
Bob Dylan: Tell Ol' Bill
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Emiliana Torrini: Me and Armini (Rough Trade)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
Only the most diligent Elsewhere reader with perfect recall might remember this Icelandic singer who appeared on the Next Brel compilation/tribute to the singer-songwriter Jacques Brel which appeared here some time last year. Torrini was one of the standout performers on that album and she has certainly drawn enormous praise for her previous albums released in he UK. Of her last one the... > Read more
Birds
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Mavis Staples: Live. Hope at the Hideout (Anti)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
The last album by the great Mavis Staples, We'll Never Turn Back was picked as one of the best albums of 2007 at Elsewhere, and that was no sympathy vote for one of life's survivors who had grown up with the civil rights movement and has now lived long enough to see Obama heading for the White House. So when she sings "keep your eyes on the prize, hold on", Freedom Highway and... > Read more
Mavis Staples: This Little Light
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008 Luke Buda: Vesuvius (Arch Hill)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read | 1
This exceptional album by Buda of the Phoenix Foundation may take some getting used to for a few people: it is ambitious (and often lyrically funny or provocative) wide-screen pop which unashamedly doesn't shy from a McCartney-like hook, or deploying lap steel to fine effect -- as well as conjuring up the innocence of mid 60s pop (Electric Waterfall has a melody, guitar solo and vocal harmonies... > Read more
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Teddy Thompson: A Piece of What You Need (Verve)
22 Dec 2008 | <1 min read | 1
This son of Richard and Linda keeps good company: among his friends and fellow travellers are the Wainwrights (Rufus, Martha, and their father Loudon), guitarist Marc Ribot, the Band's Garth Hudson and other hip congnoscenti.His last album Upfront and Down Low was mostly a country covers outing. And despite possessing the same kind of effete world weariness and post-sexual languor that infects... > Read more
Teddy Thompson: In My Arms
BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2008: Loudon Wainwright: Strange Weirdos (Universal)
22 Dec 2008 | 1 min read
Longtime cynic, straight-shooter and occasionally misanthropic singer-songwriter Wainwright shows no sign of losing his touch even though he is now in his 60s. His subjects will always provide plenty of material: they are life in general, himself, his family, and sometimes astute socio-political observation. He is a sensitive singer-songwriter -- if that also means being sensitive to... > Read more