Music at Elsewhere
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Lucid 3: Dawn Planes (EMI)
22 May 2007 | <1 min read
You will doubtless soon hear and read about this elsewhere, but this Elsewhere likes to alert you early to a good thing -- and this third album by the Auckland-based trio is definitely a good thing. Lucid 3 have steered an interesting course between indie-rock and mainstream acceptance: their 2002 debut Running Down the keys did well largely due to word of mouth and student radio play, and... > Read more
Lucid 3: Oh Sister
Feist: The Reminder (Universal)
22 May 2007 | <1 min read
Leslie Feist, the former indie-rocker from Calgary in Canada (she fronted Broken Social Scene) has created considerable interest recently for her diverse alt.pop sound which also has one foot in the soul camp and the other in a place somewhere between breathy ballads and lo-fi folk-rock. This time out -- recording in an old house on the periphery of Paris -- she charts a curiously... > Read more
Feist: The Limit To Your Love
King Wilkie: Low Country Suite (Zoe)
19 May 2007 | <1 min read
Although nominally a bluegrass band, this six-piece from Virginia (here produced by Jim Scott who did similar duties for Johnny Cash and Tom Petty) have staked a claim in alt.country and country-rock, so it is no surprise to see some overseas writers namechecking the late-period Byrds, the Band and early Wilco in articles. King Wilkie certainly aren't up-beat banjo-pickin' bluegrass boys... > Read more
King Wilkie: Millie's Song
Russel Walder: Rise (Nomad Soul/Ode)
19 May 2007 | <1 min read
Walder was the producer/arranger and oboe player on Whirimako Black's exceptional Kura Huna album of two years ago, and if there had been any justice it would have appeared in "best of the year" lists. My guess was too few critics heard it, some were put off by Black singing in te reo (the Maori language), and even fewer understood just what a breakthrough album it was. For... > Read more
Russel Walder: The World Goes Through My Mind
Carla Bruni: No Promises (Filter/Shock)
19 May 2007 | <1 min read
The gorgeous Bruni is the woman -- so my wife tells me -- at whom Jerry Hall once shouted, "Keep yo' hands off ma man". (Jerry and Mick Jagger divorced not long after, although it would be unfair to blame this model-cum-singer for that). Bruni is undeniably beautiful -- which in some eyes will preclude her from also being a singer. Models who make albums aren't usually... > Read more
Carla Bruni: Lady Weeping at the Crossroads (words by WH Auden)
JJ Grey and Mofro; Country Ghetto (Southbound) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
18 May 2007 | <1 min read
Of course there is white country soul -- and here is the evidence, a voice from the white trash ghetto which aches like a Southern soul singer. There is a backwoods quality here -- real steamy Georgia funk -- but it is offset by the spirit of Memphis soul, the Allman Brothers, James Brown and the blues. Quite a meltdown and if it isn't always musically original Grey makes up for it in... > Read more
JJ Grey and Mofro: War
James Yorkston: The Year of the Leopard (Domino)
13 May 2007 | <1 min read
You probably won't hear a quieter, more surreptitiously beguiling album this year than The Year of the Leopard, an exceedingly understated collection by this Scottish alt.folk singer/songwriter who moves in the same circles as Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch and the like. Nick Drake and the Incredible String Band are also reference points. And I can tell you nothing more than that, not that you... > Read more
James Yorkston: 5am
Rand and Holland: Caravans (Spunk)
11 May 2007 | <1 min read
And the sum total of my information is that these guys are from Sydney -- oh, and that neither of the duo at the core of this small acoustic-based band are called Rand or Holland. R&H apparently grew out of home recordings by singer-bassist Brett Thompson who initially teamed up with guitarist Stuart Olsen, and now have invited other like-minded players into the fold. This is pop... > Read more
Rand and Holland: Oh My Love
Koko Taylor: Old School (Southbound)
11 May 2007 | <1 min read
Some years back this fog-horn voiced blues singer released an album under the title Force of Nature: and that's what she is. Now 71, Taylor can still drive in nails across the room with her gutsy blasts, and she has never shied away from having a beefy rockin' guitar-driven band behind her because she knows if they get too loud she can just bellow right across the top of them. She is... > Read more
Koko Taylor: Better Watch Your Step
Guster: Ganging Up On The Sun (Ryko/Elite)
10 May 2007 | <1 min read
Gentle pop with overtones of Crowded House, Brian Wilson, alt.folk and Paul McCartney? Is there still a place for it? On this their fifth album, which came out last year Stateside and gets belated release here now, this American quartet have honed their songcraft down to those key elements of acoustic-based pop: effortless chord changes, a foot-tapping beat, memorable melodies, harmony... > Read more
Guster: Empire State
Jesse Malin: Glitter in the Gutter (Shock)
9 May 2007 | <1 min read
With Malin sometimes sounding like a young Mick Jagger, mostly like a slurry and coked up Tom Petty (before he went soft-rock), and with the urgency of Springsteen's Born to Run period mixed with the Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll, this album fairly leaps out at you as Malin hauls in supporters such as Ryan Adams, Jakob Dylan, the Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and the Boss himself.... > Read more
Jesse Malin: Love Streams
Warren Zevon: Preludes (Elite)
8 May 2007 | 1 min read
Among the very few autographs of stars that I have is one sent to me, unsolicited, by Warren Zevon after I'd interviewed him. On it he wrote: "To Graham. Good luck!" Given Zevon was something of a dark and mischievious character I wondered if that "good luck" suggested he might know of something disconcerting lurking in my future. When he died of lung cancer in... > Read more
Warren Zevon: Don't Let Us Get Sick
Warren Love Band: Warren Love Band (Elite)
5 May 2007 | <1 min read
Former busker Love leaped straight into the foreground of New Zealand music on the strength of this impressive album released a year ago: it is drawn to your attention now because the singer-songwriter is one of the three finalists for a Tui award in the country music awards to be held in June*. If there's any justice . . . Love's voice is languid, measured and gets deep inside the... > Read more
Warren Love Band: Autographed Picture of Jesus
John Prine and Mac Wiseman: Standard Songs for Average People (Oh Boy)
5 May 2007 | <1 min read
Elsewhere has never pretended to be fashionable, and this one certainly ain't. Two salty old pals just a-sittin' and a-playin' a bunch of tunes from their back pages: Bob Wills' Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age; Charlie Feathers' I Forgot To Remember To Forget; Saginaw Michigan; Old Cape Cod; The Blue Side of Lonesome; Old Rugged Cross . . . It doesn't come much more unfashionable -- or... > Read more
John Prine and Mac Wiseman: Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine
DateMonthYear: 7 Ghosts (DMY Records)
5 May 2007 | <1 min read
Many are sent and few are chosen, and despite this album coming out in 2005 it has been chosen here because . . .? Well, there is something relentless, driving, ambitiously epic and genuinely atmospheric about this eight-track album by this flexible line-up from Hamilton, New Zealand. It doesn't surprise me that they performed three of their songs with the Waikato Symphony Orchestra... > Read more
DateMonthYear: Ghost3
Ayo: Joyful (Polydor)
3 May 2007 | <1 min read
The background to this itinerant singer-songwriter would make a good if slightly grim novel: she was born in Germany to a Nigerian father and a Romany mother; grew up in a gypsy community; spent time in Nigeria as a child; came back to Europe and mother became a junkie; ended up in London at 21; moved between New York and Paris; started singing in clubs around Les Halles; had a child . . .... > Read more
Ayo: Down on my Knees
Explosions in the Sky; All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone (EMI) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
3 May 2007 | <1 min read
Billy Bob Thornton has made some pretty bad movies, but among his best is Friday Night Lights in which he played a football coach at a small town in Texas. It is a wonderful movie full of small telling detail about dreams, promise denied and the expectation a small town places on its college football team. Thornton is a man under pressure as much as his players. The film also boasts... > Read more
Explosions in the Sky: catastrophe and the cure
Cowboy Junkies; At the End of Paths Taken (Zoe) BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2007
2 May 2007 | 1 min read
When the Cowboy Junkies' breakthrough album The Trinity Sessions arrived in '87 music was getting noisy and Guns'N Roses stomped the planet. But the Junkies' famously cheap album -- recorded in a church for a couple of hundred dollars apparently -- captured the imagination, especially their version of Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. The mood of the album was all of a piece: subdued, intimate and... > Read more
Cowboy Junkies: Cutting Board Blues
Sayulee: April Fool (Pure)
29 Apr 2007 | <1 min read
Elsewhere has a habit of getting in quickly when it comes to new music, but I'm sure some subscribers have caught this Japanese-born,Kiwi-bred singer-songwriter in her low-key live appearances in small clubs and bars. This six-track debut EP is more like a calling card than a fully-fledged album, but it exudes effortless talent and great potential. She has already impressed any number... > Read more
Sayulee: Love Me Like This
Various: If You Ain't Got The Do-Re-Mi (Smithsonian)
29 Apr 2007 | <1 min read
Subtitled "Songs of Rags and Riches" this 27-track collection pulls together the likes of bluesmen Lead Belly and Josh White, folk singers such as Pete Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers, and others on songs (mostly) born in the Depression. So here are classic songs such as Brother Can You Spare A Dime? and Nobody Knows You When You Are Down And Out. Okay, not the most... > Read more