Music at Elsewhere

Various: Eccentric Soul, The Big Mack Label (Big Mack/Southbound)

23 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

The Big Mack label out of Chicago -- launched on a dollar and a dream by entrepreneur Ed "Big Mack" McCoy -- lasted 20 years from the early 60s without a hit, or even the suggestion of one. While Motown ruled, Big Mack struggled on the margins, and yet it also produced some exceptional if cheaply recorded and somewhat ragged singles. The deal for performers was simple: pay... > Read more

Edd Henry: Your Replacement is Here (1961)

The Ruby Suns: Sea Lion (Lil'Chief/Rhythmethod)

23 Jan 2008 | 1 min read

My theory goes like this: there is a unique sound emerging from Auckland -- and specifically from a house just around the corner from me, actually. The sound is quirky pop which isn't ashamed to acknowledge craftsmen such as Paul McCartney, has its ears turned to the more odd arrangements on Brian Wilson's Beach Boys albums in the late 60s, likes to bewilder or bemuse with strange lyrics but... > Read more

The Ruby Suns: Adventure Tour

Jacob Young: Sideways (ECM/Ode)

22 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

With the same refined band as on his ECM debut of three years or so ago, this Norwegian-American guitarist has once again crafted an album of subtle shades, gentle lyricism and persuasive melodies. At times you may hear suggestions of Pat Metheny at his most quietly romantic, at other times Young steps aside to let trumper Matthias Eick or tenor player Vidar Johansen move into the foreground... > Read more

Jacob Young: Gazing at Stars

Patrick Watson: Close to Paradise (Secret City/Elite)

22 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

This one has risen without a trace which is disappointing -- and also somewhat of a surprise given it picked up Canada's Polaris Music Award late last year (beating Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and the Feist album The Reminder -- both Elsewhere-listed) and Patrick Watson (the name of the singer-songwriter but also this Montreal-based band) were nominated in the Juno awards for best new artist.... > Read more

Patrick Watson: The Storm

Norman Meehan: Modigliani (Ode)

20 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

Pianist/composer Meehan may well be a scholar (he teaches jazz history and composition at the New Zealand School of Music, and is working on a biography of pianist Mike Nock) but there is nothing academic in his approach here. These angular, spacious compositions can be gutsy and deep or spry and flighty, and with bassist Nick Tipping (from Wellington pianist Charmaine Ford's award-winning... > Read more

Norman Meehan: Birthday

John Mayall: Live From Austintx (New West/Elite)

20 Jan 2008 | 1 min read | 1

John Mayall (whose Blues From Laurel Canyon in '68 appears as an Essential Elsewhere, see tag) was undeniably the man who founded the British blues boom in the early 60s and on his albums at the time he covered classic and often little known blues material. His bands during those years included Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (who went on to form Cream, among other things); Mick Taylor (later... > Read more

John Mayall: Maydell

Amy Speace and the Tearjerkers: Songs For Bright Street (Wildflower/Elite)

20 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

Here is another album (like that by the wonderful Jimmy Norman, see tag) which has appeared long after its US release: this from singer-songwriter Speace came out mid-06. No matter, this alt.country/folk/Americana collection confirms why she has been a critics' favourite everywhere from Nashville to New York folk clubs. Speace has a classic contemporary country voice and she has obviously... > Read more

Amy Speace: Not the Heartless Kind.

Cat Power: Jukebox (Matador)

20 Jan 2008 | 1 min read | 3

Covers albums can be uneven and most often uncalled for: usually they represent some stopgap measure for an artist, and at their worst seem pretty pointless, like Patti Smith's recent Twelve in which she covered songs which had influenced her but she brought nothing to them other than her stylistic signature. Or Bryan Ferry's recent Dylanology which only seemed to exist because way back... > Read more

Cat Power: Lost Someone

Ray Davies: Working Man's Cafe (V2/Shock)

12 Jan 2008 | 1 min read

Ray Davies -- formerly of the Kinks (see tag to an Essential Elsewhere Kinks album) -- has had a busy time of it lately: in late 2003 the great English songwriter (of Englishness) was awarded an OBE, a week later he was shot in the leg in New Orleans, his Other People's Lives solo album in 2006 was much praised (it also comes with insightful liner notes on the songs), and now this new one in... > Read more

Ray Davies: Morphine Song

Jimmy Norman: Little Pieces (Wildflower)

12 Jan 2008 | 1 min read

Quite why and how this 2004 album has turned up only now is a mystery to me, but here it. Better late than . . . This old journeyman r'n'b singer co-wrote eight songs with Bob Marley in early '68 (a few appear on the Soul Almighty collection) and Marley recorded a number of his originals, and Norman apparently wrote some lyrics for the Irma Thomas/Rolling Stones hit Time is On My Side... > Read more

Jimmy Norman: Little Pieces

John Vanderslice: Emerald City (Longtime Listener)

10 Jan 2008 | 1 min read

You have to admire someone who kicks off their solo career with a hoax in which it was suggested that Microsoft (whose logo he had mimicked on his first single Bill Gates Must Die) was getting litigious. Vanderslice was obviously a smart fellow with a sense of humour. (Although that's what is says at Wikipedia, and that could be one of his hoaxes too?) Since then this highly acclaimed San... > Read more

John Vanderslice: Time to Go

Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levin: Asturiana (ECM New Series/Ode)

9 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

Although subtitled "Songs from Spain and Argentina" and Levin saying these pieces are "unabashedly flamboyant", there is little of that passionate looseness here in these viola and piano duets, rather a more stately drawing room feel is brought to these transcriptions of folk-influenced songs, seven by Manuel de Falla. This has all the feel of an especially sensitive... > Read more

Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levin: Triste

Jake Shimabukuro: Gently Weeps (Hitchhike)

2 Jan 2008 | <1 min read

Shimabukuro is a young Hawaiian ukulele player who is wowing people across the globe with his dexterity and style. The New Yorker called him "a phenomenon", the San Diego Union-Tribute said his live show was "dazzling" and the All Music Guide said he was that rarity, someone who "re-imagines the possibilities of given instrument". For this album he takes a... > Read more

Jake Shimabukuro: While My Guitar Gently Weeps

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007 Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (EMI)

30 Dec 2007 | 1 min read | 1

Yes, after the towering success of their debut album Funeral, you will be reading any number of reviews of this lavishly orchestrated, dramatic follow-up by this big Montreal-based ensemble. Let me be the first to say then that there are as many resonances of Echo and the Bunnymen/Teardrop Explodes here as there are of stadium-shaped Springsteen. Like the Killers' second album, this seems... > Read more

Arcade Fire: Keep The Car Running

BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007 Iron and Wine: The Shepherd's Dog (SunPop/Rhythmethod)

30 Dec 2007 | <1 min read | 1

Sam Beam -- who is Iron and Wine -- really sounds like he has hits his stride with this exceptional, engaging and folkadelic outing, and he's achieved that by just continuing on the same, mildly eccentric and determined path as he has taken on his previous albums and EPs. This time however the songs sound more full and fully formed, the array of instruments in support -- sitar and tabla,... > Read more

Iron and Wine: Lovesong of the Buzzard

Grinderman: Grinderman (EMI) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007

6 Dec 2007 | <1 min read

In which Nick Cave takes a break from his dark and Biblical stuff and just gets down and dirty with a raw, edgy band to make music which seems to come with machine oil on its hands and blown through with thick diesel smoke. Cave is also obviously having fun with his persona, but that doesn't stop some of the raucous, simple and often aggressive songs here sounding like he's gone back to the... > Read more

Grinderman: No Pussy Blues

Danny McCrum Band: Awake and Restless (McCrum)

2 Dec 2007 | 1 min read

Here's a guess, this smart pop-rock album from an Auckland singer-songwriter and his tight, crackling band won't get much attention. The reason? There's not been much sympathy or space for well-crafted adult pop-rock in New Zealand, the Finns and Dave Dobbyn aside. Critics generally prefer something with a little more quirkiness and edge, and straight-ahead bands like this one don't... > Read more

Danny McCrum Band: What's Wrong With Trying To Live Right?

Timothy Blackman: Modern Sprawl (Home Alone)

2 Dec 2007 | <1 min read

This lo-fi singer-songwriter recorded the six songs on this impressive EP at his Auckland flat, so as a result he sounds like he's singing in your own home. Very much in the folk-rock tradition (you can imagine the title track being pumped out by band), Blackman comes of as a melancholy soul on a first hearing, yet there are flickers of optimism and the result is a highly promising... > Read more

Timothy Blackman: The Great Extinction

Jude: Redemption (Naive/Elite)

1 Dec 2007 | 1 min read

There are those of us old enough/smart enough/obsessed enough to know that Paul McCartney's Ram album of '71 -- his first fully-fledged album after being in His Previous Band -- was among the three best albums of his very long post-Beatles career. (see tag) So maybe only we few might fully appreciate this album by a man called Jude. Okay, even in his darkest days Macca never wrote an... > Read more

Jude: End of my Rainbow

Various: Secret Love 4 (Sonar Kollektiv/Rhythmethod)

1 Dec 2007 | <1 min read

I'm guessing by the title that this is part of a series, the three previous volumes of which have gone right past me -- as I imagine they have with most people. Only a pre-release copy of this, a lazy Sunday and it being close to hand got me to it -- and I'm very glad of that. With the likes of Andrew Bird and Findlay Brown represented (see tags) alongside the hoarse-but-easy Lawries, the... > Read more