Music at Elsewhere
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Various: While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Universal)
12 Sep 2008 | <1 min read | 1
There's a lot wrong with this double disc compilation: the title track is from the late Jeff Healy not by its author George Harrison; Thin Lizzy's Still in Love With You is the studio version rather than the far superior live one; you get soft-rockers Bread (Guitar Man) and Matthews' Southern Comfort (Woodstock) jammed between Fleetwood Mac's Black Magic Woman and Peter Frampton's live Show Me... > Read more
Doobie Brothers: Long Train Running
The Rosie Taylor Project: This City Draws Maps (Bad Sneakers/Ode)
8 Sep 2008 | <1 min read
This six-piece from Leeds have a charming alt.folk/indie.pop thing going which also has one ear on Americana. Okay, you've heard all that before, right? But there is something quite beguiling and emotionally disarming about their understatement, the wee splashes of colour from trumpet and French horn, the haiku-like lyrics ("cut from paper/a line of dolls/drawn-on dresses/ a biroed... > Read more
A Good Cafe on George Street
The Dutchess and the Duke: She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke (Rhythmethod)
8 Sep 2008 | 1 min read
About 20 years ago there was a short-lived but interesting "new folk" movement which emerged out of New York's Downtown. Following the success of Michelle Shocked's Texas Campfire Tapes ('86) came Roger Manning, Cindy Lee Berryhill and Kirk Kelly who sometimes rapped like Beat poets, pulled in a fair swag of young Dylan and Woody Guthrie, and dressed like they were auditioning for... > Read more
Back to Me
Various: The Empire Strikes Back! (Glitterhouse)
8 Sep 2008 | 1 min read
Compilations and samplers don't often get a look in at Elsewhere (except for this week I note!) and this double disc stood even less of chance: it arrived about two months ago but after I listened to it and enjoyed it I lost the damn thing down the side of the bookcase. Which is where i found it last week.Ah well, better than . . .This is an excellent collection from the Germany-based... > Read more
Michael J Sheehy: Company Man
Sonny Day: The Collection (Ode)
8 Sep 2008 | <1 min read
It's a shame that it took Sonny Day's death last year to prompt this compilation, as one of this country's great journeyman musicians his career spanned from the early days of rock'n'roll and then through the Beatles/Motown era when he effortless shifted his style, taking in country and soulful material, and in '85 covered Springsteen's little known Saving Up.Sonny Day was a man who moved with... > Read more
Sonny Day: Things Will Be Different (1964)
Everest: Ghost Notes (Vapor/Elite)
8 Sep 2008 | <1 min read | 1
We can make this easy, a kind of tick-the-boxes thing: this LA band of indie.rock-cum-alt.folk people are signed to Neil Young's label (yes, they have a slice of his brittle and stuttering guitar solo-style), have performed alongside or been in bands with John Vanderslice and the Watson Twins (Elsewhere favourites), Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, and they sometimes nod towards mid-period Wilco.If... > Read more
Everest: Reloader
Miracle Mile: Coffee and Stars (Miracle Mile)
26 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
As with the equally wonderful Blue Nile, this UK band (of Marcus Cliffe and Trevor Jones plus guests) take a leisurely approach to albums and only release something when it is refined and ready.Miracle Mile too work the treacherous -- and often casually dismissed -- area of "adult pop", that is music based around memorable and sometimes delicate melodies, and lyrics that don't talk... > Read more
Miracle Mile: Yuri's Dream
Death Vessel: Nothing is Precious Enough For Us (SubPop/Rhythmethod)
26 Aug 2008 | <1 min read
Just bringing this one to your attention because the band name might sound like a warning to many.Nope, this isn't death metal or anything much louder than acoustic guitars (mostly) -- but even if you get past that misconception another may get you.I listened to this right through before I realised that it was actually a man singing, a guy called Joel Thibodeau (the singer/songwriter etc) who... > Read more
Death Vessel: Bruno's Torso
Paddy Free: Karekare: Te reo o te whenua (Dub Conspiracy)
26 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
Despite being one of the founding fathers of New Zealand electronica -- in the ambitious multi-media outfit Pitch Black with Mike Hodgson -- Paddy Free is perhaps largely unknown to a new generation of musicians.I believe he makes much of his living off-shore these days and has always struck me as preferring to be out of the spotlight if he isn't performing (which has been infrequent as Hodgson... > Read more
Paddy Free and Richard Nunns: Whai Atu
Jonathan Richman: Because Her Beauty is Raw and Wild (Vapor Records)
26 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
Some people know Jonathan Richman for being the singer-songwriter in the terrific New York new wave band The Modern Lovers -- although their "terrific" period was short-lived, in truth just the debut album which was produced by John Cale and spawned the classic songs Modern World (the title track), Pablo Picasso ("never got called an asshole"), Old World, Roadrunner and the... > Read more
Jonathan Richman: No One Was Like Vermeer
Bonnie Prince Billy: Lie Down in the Light (UKSpin)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read | 1
After establishing himself as the downbeat and somewhat gloomy singer-songwriter living in a half-lit corner of oldtime Americana, Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace, Palace Brothers etc etc) sounds like he has changed his listening habits and maybe gone into a sun-soaked cornfield.Some will find this disappointing and it does need to be said that this feels very lightweight in... > Read more
Bonnie Prince Billy: Keep Eye on Other's Gain
The De Sotos: Cross Your Heart (Ode)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
If CDs are dead as we keep being told you do wonder why people not only keep making them, but also why record companies put so much effort into their expensive packaging -- like this from an Auckland-based band which shaves off a generous slice of Americana country rock (a mighty crowded genre) and wrap it up in an attractive package with a lyric sheet.Well, I guess Ode heard these crisp,... > Read more
De Sotos: '59 Cadillac
Hacienda Brothers: Arizona Motel (Southbound)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read | 1
A sad shadow hangs over this album by a traditional country outfit whose two previous albums have found a place at Elsewhere: singer-songwriter and frontman Chris Gaffney died of liver cancer in April after this album was completed.With his musical partner Dave Gonzalez, Gaffney formed the Hacienda Brothers six years ago and their exceptional debut album What's Wrong With Right was produced by... > Read more
Hacienda Brothers: Used to the Pain
Tyler Ramsey: A Long Dream About Swiming Across the Sea (Shock)
25 Aug 2008 | <1 min read
In equal parts drawing from early acoustic Neil Young, ambient Brian Eno and a touch of the Jackson Browne singer-songwriter tradition, this album by the guitarist in Band of Horses (an Elsewhere favourite) redefines understatement.With a small and often barely present band (upright bass, drums, violin, cello, pedal steel etc) he eases his way through a dozen songs notable for his deft... > Read more
Tyler Ramsey: These Days
Hammond Gamble: Ninety Mile Days (Liberation)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
Two years ago when this Auckland singer-songwriter and very special guitarist released his Recollection album (acoustic treatments of Street Talk and solo songs) I noted that it served to remind what a great songwriter he was.He'd long been acknowledged as an expressive bluesy singer and guitarist, but it had been too easy to forget just how crafted songs such as Whistling the Blues in the... > Read more
Hammond Gamble: You Cheated Me
John Clarke: The Fred Dagg All-Purpose DVD and Music CD (Screenline)
25 Aug 2008 | <1 min read
The genius of John Clarke in channeling rural culture and dry observations through his character Fred Dagg hasn't diminished in the two decades-plus since Dagg made his first appearance.In part that is because there was a droll social and political observation woven into Dagg's view of the world. Dagg was a character with limitations of course so it was inevitable Clarke would take off to... > Read more
Fred Dagg: The Phone Call
Travis & Fripp: Thread (Southbound)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read
By coincidence this disc turned up as I was reading David Sheppard's fascinating (if fruitily written) biography of Brian Eno, On Some Faraway Beach.I was at the chapters about his work with avant-guitarist Robert Fripp on two of my favourite albums No Pussyfooting ('73) and Evening Star ('75) which seemed to define an art music within a rock context, even though they owed nothing to rock... > Read more
Travis & Fripp: Before Then
Renee-Louise Carafice: Tells You To Fight! (Monkey)
25 Aug 2008 | 1 min read | 3
Frankly I'm always suspicious about the whole music-as-therapy thing: most often the music is godawful, and the lyrics so tortured and self-referential that they rarely reach any further than the bedroom or hospital ward that spawned them.Which is why I come to Carafice -- institutionalised in Auckland with severe depression in 2005 -- with considerable reservation. And it cuts no ice with me... > Read more
Renee-Louise carafice: Sweet, The Leaves of Jamestown
Neil Worboys and the Real Time Liners: Some Day Soon (Ode)
25 Aug 2008 | <1 min read | 1
The blues gets short shrift in the New Zealand critical community (see comments about Billy TK Jnr) and my guess is that most writers think it is somehow easy to play. Or is sort of "imported" (and reggae, indie.rock and alt.country ain't??)Anyway these guys from Wellington play that terminally unhip music -- and play it well.Singer Worboys has a career which goes back to the Bulldogs... > Read more
Silver Jews: Lookout Mountain Look out Sea (UNSpin/EMI)
25 Aug 2008 | <1 min read
This US indie-rock band with loose links to early Pavement might not be to everyone's taste -- but singer-songwriter David Berman's easy blend of the occasional Johnny Cash gravitas in his delivery, his shaggy-dog stories, unexpected metaphors and rhymes, skewed stories and memorable alt.country pop has had this one on steady Elsewhere play at home and in the car (his stories make good... > Read more