Music at Elsewhere
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Ned Collette: Future Suture (Inertia/The Label)
1 Dec 2007 | <1 min read
With a flattened and laconic delivery, chiming acoustic folk-styled guitars and some melodic minimalism, this downbeat but widescreen album by Australian singer-songwriter Collette seems to hark back to earlier periods, sometimes sounding like a gentle collision between Nick Drake and Velvet Underground, at others slipping out of a very early Eno vocal album but embellished by horns. But... > Read more
Ned Collette: Winter Holiday
Kevin Drew, Spirit If . . . (Shiny/Rhythmethod)
1 Dec 2007 | <1 min read
It must be galling for certain Flying Nun bands (notably the Verlaines and Sneaky Feelings in this instance) to hear some of what they did appropriated by British or North American bands and, through clout and better press coverage, take it to the wider world. There are elements of classic Nun (and Beatles, Pavement etc) scattered throughout this alleged solo album by Drew who founded the... > Read more
Kevin Drew: Safety Bricks
Mick Turner/Tren Brothers: Blue Trees (Inertia)
30 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
This meandering, loose-limbed, lazy sounding and creaking collection of instrumentals comes from Mick Turner and Jim White of Australia's Dirty Three. These are pieces they recorded over the years and released on vinyl only singles, as limited edition CDs or on now-unavailable compilations. There is nothing here to get your pulse going (the record label name is telling), most tracks amble... > Read more
Mick Turner/Tren Brothers: Sunny Xmas Day
Blanche: Little Amber Bottles (LooseMusic/Shock)
20 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
Think Johnny Cash duetting with Nancy Sinatra; think alt.country from Detroit with Gothic overtones; think Nick Cave with a backwoods twang . . . This band out of the Motor City USA has a real country heart, so much so that Jack White hooked them in to support Loretta Lynn on the Van Lear Rose album he produced for her. Mainman Dan John Miller played Luther Perkins in the Cash bio-flick... > Read more
Blanche: Last Year's Leaves
Rahim Alhaj: When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq (Smithsonian/Elite)
20 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
It may be some time before the soul of Iraq is settled but if anyone can bring the traditional music of that troubled country to international attention it is Baghdad-born Alhaj who fled Saddam Hussein's regime to Jordan then Syria, and now lives in New Mexico. A graduate with honours in music, he has been playing oud since he was nine and has been giving concerts since he was 14. This is... > Read more
Rahim Alhaj: Taqsim Maqam Mukhalif
Jack Penate: Matinee (XL)
20 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
This gritty, rocking album has been floating around for a few weeks but seems to have been passed over by most writers. That's strange given Penate's high profile in the UK where he has been hailed like a Billy Bragg on heat, as a South London soul poet, and "the new darling of pop" (The Sun) There is an undeniable energy to his smartly crafted songs which equally recall the... > Read more
Jack Penate: Learning Lines
Institut Polaire: The Fauna and the Flora (PopFrenzy/Rhythmethod)
20 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
More 60s-framed pop for alternative radio from the PopFrenzy label (Clientele, Camera Obscura, Lightning Dust) which refers to the great bands who never really made it (The Association, Left Banke) as much as big names like Bacharach and the Monkees, as well the slightly psychedelic BeeGees and alt.country. Whatever really works, in fact. This large ensemble out of Perth, Australia... > Read more
Insitut Polaire: East, West and I
Tim Guy: Hummabyes (Monkey)
20 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
This gentle album is so light it makes the Bats sound like Thin Lizzy. Auckland-based singer-songwriter Guy has stripped his music back to airy arrangments for guitar and bass (with ukulele, slide, harmonica and triangle where required) but the whole thing has a summershine spaciousness and the smart production lets these whimsical (but never twee) songs breathe even more gently.... > Read more
Tim Guy: Cater For Lovers
The Low Spark: Out in the Ozone (LowSpark)
14 Nov 2007 | 1 min read
Dunno about you but I'd always rather hear the young, enthusiastic, overstated, lightly misguided, energetic debut from a band than being bored witless by their fourth album. Fact is though that in New Zealand few bands make it to number 4. So we take what we get, right? As I was going into my driveway the other day I saw a battered van pull up and a young guy with unfashionably floppy... > Read more
The Low Spark: Ozone
Robert Scott: Tascam Hits (Powertool Records)
12 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
These low-fi home recordings by Scott -- a member of the Bats and the Clean -- were recorded in the late 90s and those who demand their music polished and honed won't find much of interest here. But these delightful working drawing of songs, eerie instrumentals and sonic ideas -- all put down on a Tascam cassette recorder -- have much to recommend them. Bats fans will hear echoes of that... > Read more
The Broken Heartbreakers: The Broken Heartbreakers (Rhythmethod) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
12 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
With a sound which draws equally on the Left Banke, the Everly Brothers, Brian Wilson, Beatles, alt.country harmonies and the Anglofolk tradition, this Auckland group can hardly fail. In songwriter John Guy Howell they also have someone with a genuine gift, and the arrangements here -- minimal guitars, a lovely drone quality in Angels, mellotron and mandolin -- are utterly seductive. Mike... > Read more
The Broken Heartbreakers: Come on Home
Bill Direen: Human Kindness (Powertool Records)
12 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
Bill Direen is an auteur whose work covers pop and experimental music, poetry, European literature and much else. As a graduate of the DIY punk years he has seldom resorted to anything approaching hi-fi -- and these recordings (some mere fragments) from an attic in Switzerland and other such places have a ragged edge as you might expect. Just when things are going along nicely it is in... > Read more
Bill Direen: Romeo's Song
Hobotalk: Homesick for Nowhere (Yellow Eye)
12 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
The Scottish singer-songwriter Marc Pilley who is the hub of Hobotalk has a gentle way with his music: nothing feels forced or false, and the augmentation of his simple tunes by mandolin, violin, female backing singers and the like just bring these songs to life even more. A refined simplicity is the key here and you can hear why he was shortlisted for a Mercury Music Prize in 2000 for his... > Read more
Hobotalk: These Times Sure Could Break Your Heart
Lightning Dust: Lightning Dust (PopFrenzy/Rhythmethod)
12 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
Said it before, will say it again: when albums come from PopFrenzy they rise to the top of the heap, just on the basis of previous albums from the label (the Clientele, Camera Obscura) being so damn good. No major disappointment with this one either where the shimmering, quivering voice of Amber Webber is quietly hypnotic in songs which are cut right back to the bone. Maybe they are trying... > Read more
Batucada Sound Machine: Rhythm & Rhyme (Border)
5 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
The first album by this big and boisterous band was a live outing recorded at Womad in 2005. It didn't do it for me and was one of those "guess you had to be there" albums. But it was clear that aside from energy and enthusiasm (which they had by truckloads) they certainly had some musical chops and their set sounded like an implosion of various South American and Cuban musics... > Read more
Batucada Sound Machine: Rivers of Rhyme
The Darlings: The Cicada Sessions (Ode)
4 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
The Darlings are New Zealand singer Jackie Clarke and singer-songwriter Callie Blood with drummer-to-the-stars Wayne Bell, here mostly playing acoustic guitar -- which makes them somewhat of a Kiwi supergroup given their long pedigrees in various band and studio sessions. Together they make what their bio calls "grown-up pop", which is a very apt description given the classy and... > Read more
The Darlings: So Near So Far
Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (SubPop) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
3 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
Increasingly I am liking contemporary rock albums that annoy me because I can't quickly figure them out -- and this is one of them. Not having heard their "critically acclaimed" debut Everything All The Time I can't say how much this Seattle-based band have changed since they lost their co-founder. But what I hear on this album is often irritating (like that twerp from... > Read more
Band of Horses: Is There a Ghost
James Luther Dickinson: Killers From Space (Memphis/Elite) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
3 Nov 2007 | 1 min read
In a cover which looks like it was thought up by a couple of drug-addled on-line kids -- and with a title from a B-grade movie -- comes the latest album by one of the great ignored/overlooked/wayward talents from the South. This is a man for whom a never-recorded, whiskey-soaked Sun session overseen by a voodoo priestess with Mick'n'Keith (c '72) formed the cornerstone of this album -- which... > Read more
James Luther Dickinson: Eloise
The Pines: Sparrows in the Bell (Elite)
3 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
If these young guys had been around 35 years ago and come out with this album they would have been pegged as yet another "new Dylan". And even now that's a tag they would seem happy with: the opener has the refrain "world gone wrong" which was Dylan album title, and Dylan's slower delivery is everywhere in these country-styled songs. Produced by Bo Ramsey -- who is... > Read more
The Pines: Throw Me in the River
Joan Armatrading: Into the Blues (Shock)
3 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
For years Armatrading - whose job description includes folk, reggae, rock, jazzy pop and so on -- had been promising herself she would write an album of songs within the the same genre. This is it, her "blues" album. But far from being a monochromatic trawl through same-same songs in a blues style she brings her inclusive musical intelligence to 13 songs which reach from... > Read more