Music at Elsewhere
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Sigur Ros; Hvarf/Heim (EMI) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
3 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
More mysterious loveliness on a double-disc which, in the release schedule of most bands, might have seemed like a stop-gap measure: previously unreleased tracks and rarities, and stripped-back versions of other material. If Eric Clapton or the Arctic Monkeys had done this you'd be yawning. But Sigur Ros from Iceland create such eerie sonic landscapes -- some stretching to an 10... > Read more
Sigur Ros: Von
One Man Bannister: Moth (Powertool)
2 Nov 2007 | <1 min read
Auckland singer-songwriter and sometime member of Don McGlashan's band Matthew Bannister made some of the most charming, slightly unnerving and genuinely lovely music with his Flying Nun bands Sneaky Feelings and Dribbling Darts of Love, and in my opinion never really got his dues. He thought the same and wrote about his music and life in the Nunnery in Positively George Street. It's... > Read more
One Man Bannister
Delgirl: two, maybe three, days ride (Yellow Eye)
28 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
This Dunedin-based, folk-country three-piece of Deidre Newall, Erin Morton and Lynn Vare impressed with an earlier EP Live at the Wunderbar which hinted at something special, but wasn't quite strong enough to be placed on Elsewhere. But that promise has come with this album of close harmony, suggestions of alt.country and Polynesia, understated balladry and smart lyrics. The gentle... > Read more
Delgirl: Promising
Josh Ritter: The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter (Shock) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
27 Oct 2007 | 1 min read | 3
Elsewhere has been around long enough to do a bit of bragging about bringing certain people to your attention long before anyone else: one of them being this American singer-songwriter whose previous album The Animal Years (see tag) was such a gem. I just kept bringing it back and named it as one of the Best of Elsewhere 2006. Then he was discovered by the British press -- although not by... > Read more
Josh Ritter: Rumours
Jim White: Transnormal Skiperoo (Luaka Bop/Shock) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
27 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
White came into something close to mainstream attention with his droll film Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus, a poke around the backroads and backwoods of the American South and the music and characters that make it so distinctive. It was at times uncomfortable viewing, but also an essential documentary if you want to get a handle on "that dark Southern stuff" as Lucinda Williams... > Read more
Jim White: Diamonds to Coal
Peter Case: Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John (YepRoc Records)
27 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
Case used to be the mainman in the Plimsouls, a terrific and slightly ragged power pop band but he has enjoyed a long and diverse alt.country/alt.rock solo career -- as befits a man who was once married to Victoria Williams. On his superb self-titled debut in '86 he had John Hiatt and Roger McGuinn helping out, and down the decades he has worked with Ry Cooder and Sir George Martin, and... > Read more
Peter Case: Some Bright Morning Blues
Joni Mitchell: Shine (Universal)
26 Oct 2007 | 2 min read
Despite critical acclaim and mega-sales for two decades or so after the early 70s, Joni Mitchell was never a happy traveller in the music industry, and frequently denounced it. The most recent crunch for her came when she was told by a music exec that her 2002 album Travelogue (new arrangements of old songs which she did partly as a contractual obligation to her longtime label Warners) was a... > Read more
Joni Mitchell: One Week Last Summer
Zbigniew Preisner: Silence, Night and Dreams (EMI)
22 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
Composer Preisner is best known for his dramatic soundtrack work -- but this gentle exploration of Biblical texts owes more to austere and evocative meditative music, which makes that album title utterly apt. The title track and a couple of others feature the pure and unwavering vocals of the young soprano Tom Cully from Libera (who looks about 12), but elsewhere it is Teresa Salgueiro from... > Read more
Zbigniew Preisner: To Love
Devendra Banhart: Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon (XL)
22 Oct 2007 | 1 min read
Widely credited as the figurehead of the neo-folk movement (which owes more to early jazzy folk-rocking Donovan than Dylan in its encompassing vision and musical ambition), Texas-born Banhart has delivered a series of fascinating albums notable for their diversity. Drawing on traditional folk, world music and trippy psychedelic styles (and lyrics), Banhart has staked out such a broad piece... > Read more
Devendra Banhart: Cristobal
The Phoenix Foundation: Happy Ending (Flying Nun) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
22 Oct 2007 | 1 min read
In a cover so cheap-looking and unpromising that it reminds me of an intermediate school kid's doodle comes one of the best New Zealand albums of the year. Let's hope that godawful "artwork" doesn't put off any prospective buyers because if it does they will be missing one of the most nuanced, textured, seductively melodic and vibrant albums that Flying Nun has released in a very... > Read more
The Phoenix Foundation: Pure Joy
Arthur and Yu: In Camera (Stomp)
21 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
On a first hearing I thought this would have been the album that Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood might have made if Nancy had been more like Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched and Lee more like Karl Wallinger from World Party. Sort of pop but not, as it were. There is a dreamy and disconcerting quality to much of this pairing of Seattle's Grant Olsen and Sonya Westcott, but the seductive... > Read more
Arthur and Yu: 1000 Words
Jenny Owen Youngs: Batten the Hatches (Shock)
21 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
This album has floated to the top of the pile quite frequently in the past three months and it has only been distractions which have meant it hasn't made an appearance here earlier. Let's rectify that oversight and tell you what prompted it: a line I saw somewhere which said that if KT Tunstall could be big why not this woman. Fair point. Youngs is an acoustic-framed rocker with... > Read more
Jenny Owen Youngs: Fuck Was I
The Felice Brothers; Tonight at the Arizona (Shock) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
21 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
Although perhaps too referencing of Dylan and the Band holed up in the basement of the Big Pink, that doesn't mean this shakily delivered collection of Americana from these three brothers and a bassist isn't without considerable charm and lowkey impact. And nope, there is no problem with your stereo during Hey Hey Revolver, that drop-out is where lightning hit their cheap studio and the... > Read more
The Felice Brothers: Hey Hey Revolver
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True, Deluxe Edition (Universal)
21 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
Elvis had a fair run here on Elsewhere when the recent reissue of his first 11 albums prompted a consideration of his quite remarkable career (see tag). But this Deluxe double disc edition of his debut album adds extra texture to that exceptional album with its touchstones in Phil Spector, country-rock, beat pop, Chuck Berry-meets-Dylan and so on. Here is the original album on the first... > Read more
Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Stranger in the House (out-take)
John Fogerty: Revival (Fantasy)
19 Oct 2007 | 1 min read
Now back on his original label after decades of litigation, animosity and a refusal to play the Creedence Clearwater Revival hits that made his repuation, Fogerty sounds like a man at peace with himself -- but as angry as ever about his country being involved in yet another foreign war. On this album which doesn't stray far from that winning CCR template of short, sharp swamp-rock and... > Read more
John Fogerty: I Can't Take It No More
Johnny Devlin: How Would Ya Be (Ode)
19 Oct 2007 | 1 min read
I was too young to be swept up in the fervour surrounding Johnny Devlin, New Zealand's first shirt-rippin' stage-ragin' rock'n'roll star. But my older sister certainly had a Devlin EP -- sponsored by Coca-Cola as I recall -- which I later poured over. When I think about it though my sister was more into beatnik cool in the late 50s than rock'n'roll, so maybe it was my parents who had the... > Read more
Johnny Devlin: Nervous Wreck
Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer (Vanguard) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
18 Oct 2007 | 1 min read
If anyone has won the right to sings songs of life on hard scrabble farms it is Levon Helm, the former drummer/singer/mandolin player in the Band who grew up on a cotton farm near a town called Turkey Scratch in Arkansas. His group -- called for a time Levon and the Hawks -- backed Ronnie Hawkins, linked up with Bob Dylan and became simply The Band. Many consider Helm the authentic voice... > Read more
Levon Helm: The Mountain
Trip to the Moon: Welcome to the Big Room (Ode)
18 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
This astral-ambient and very trippy outfit from Auckland record far too infrequently for my liking, and this seductive offering is further evidence of the singular path they have been travelling on: deliciously textured music which refers to space-flight jazz and the most refined aspects of 70s prog-rock, but is never over-indulgent. Trip are multi-instrumentalists Trevor Reekie and Tom... > Read more
Trip to the Moon: Long Lost Days
Beirut; The Flying Club Cup BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
18 Oct 2007 | <1 min read
Ambitious and slightly eccentric pop music doesn't come much more ambitious and eccentric as this, the second album by Zach Condon (aka Beirut), an American with a European sensibility whose musical reach encompasses indie Anglopop, French chanson, nods to Scott Walker, hints of Spanish or mariachi music, snippets of conversations, swooning choruses, quasi-choral passages . . . There is an... > Read more
Beirut: Cliquot
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss; Raising Sand (Rounder) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
18 Oct 2007 | <1 min read | 1
From what seems a most unlikely pairing -- the former Led Zepp frontman and the "new bluegrass" singer/fiddle player -- comes one of the best albums of the year: an often eerie folk-framed collection in which the duo engage the heart of songs by Townes Van Zandt (the other-world sound of Nothing), Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan (Trampled Rose), the Everly Brothers (Gone Gone Gone),... > Read more