Music at Elsewhere
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Elephant Gym: Live in The World, Tokyo (digital outlets)
4 Aug 2025 | <1 min read
This trio from Taiwan have slowly built a reputation for their genre-defying melange of Chinese pop, post-rock, experimental sounds between jazz and rock and . . . You get the picture. Siblings KT -- sister, singer, bass and keyboards – and her brother Tell Chang on guitars and keyboards, were classically trained and met drummer Tu Chia-Chin in high school. The band formed in... > Read more
Shadow
Dusty Springfield: Longing (digital outlets)
4 Aug 2025 | 1 min read
Although she died more than a quarter century ago and her songs – not even her best pop hits of the early-mid Sixties – seldom get radio play these days, most people with an interest in music would have (or know that should have) a Greatest Hits and her 1968 Dusty in Memphis albums in their collection. She came from folk with the Springfields (her voice utterly distinctive on... > Read more
Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (digital outlets)
28 Jul 2025 | <1 min read | 1
The country-rockin' Tyler Childers is one of those artists who seems to have gone past most people. He has six albums behind him and at 34 sounds like he's reached a peak on this willfully wayward album of psychedelic country, narrative country-folk and more, produced by Rick Rubin. And we should mention he's become engaged by the Krishnas so there's some spiritual depth here too, and... > Read more
Dirty Ought Trill
Tom Lehrer; An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer
28 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
In one of the university courses I took, I spent a couple of hours on a lecture under the title -- lifted from Frank Zappa -- "Does Humour Belong in Music?" The general point is that most contemporary musicians take themselves so seriously that we can barely imagine them cracking a smile let alone writing a funny song. Talking to you Chris Martin et al. Yet humour has been a... > Read more
Oedipus Rex
Half Japanese: Adventure (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere's long-term affair with Half Japanese has been something of a hiding to nowhere: I doubt we would have convinced a single reader to dive into the albums we have reviewed. But we persist because they are quirky and a little bonkers but, slowly over the past decade or so, have moved more towards an audience than an audience has moved towards them. The problem is having that... > Read more
Lemonade Sunset
Ringlets: The Lord is My German Shepherd (Time For Walkies): (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
When I reviewed Ringlets' single I Was on That Roof Once released in advance of this album I quoted what I thought were the lyrics to point out the surreal nature of their imagery. I heard “like the sea I am burning from the algae of tsunamis”. I was corrected, it was “I am foaming from the algae that's inhabited my gob”. I was close, but not close enough.... > Read more
Posh Girl Holds a Whip
Various Artists: A Day in My Mind's Mind: The Kiwi Psychedelic Scene (Frenzy)
21 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
We have passed this way a few times over the years but the CDs in this Mind's Mind series – up to volume five now – disappear from shelves quickly. So it is sensible to get this 30 song collection out there. It appeared as a limited edition double album at the time when Real Groovy celebrated it 33 1/3 birthday 2014 and we pointed to it then. But this is a terrific... > Read more
Nirvana, by 40 Watt Banana
Polar Extremes: Strange Visions (digital outlets)
21 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Okay, this is just odd fun . . . with a sense of smarts and cultural history behind it. And although it came out in 2019, it disappeared and has only now gone back up on digital platforms. so . . . Not too many locals might even recognise the horse-flesh resonance of the opening title, Racing This Time (did the great commentator Reg Clapp coin that phrase?), but the album... > Read more
Captain Zodiac's Dictionary
Jay Epae: The Mercury/Capitol/Viking Recordings (Frenzy)
16 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
The archivist and avid compiler of New Zealand artists' recordings Grant Gillanders has written an excellent and assiduously researched article at audioculture about the remarkable life and career of singer/songwriter Jay Epae, a lightly edited version reproduced as the extensive liner notes for this thorough 29 song (and some soundbite promo pieces) collection. Epae from Manaia in Taranaki... > Read more
I'll Cry Tomorrow
Arcades: Who's Most Lost (Rattle, digital outlets)
14 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
A highly unusual release from Rattle who, let's be honest, release quite a lot of highly unusual contemporary classical and improvised music. That's their thing, really. However here David Prior and Dugal McKinnon – who met at Birmingham Uni while doing PhDs in composition – offer a kind of avant-folk pop on this album which was originally released in 2011 but has been now... > Read more
You Were Born Into This
Jesse Welles: Pilgrim (digital outlets)
14 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Because we introduced American politico-folk singer Jesse Welles not that long ago – noting he was grounded in Dylan's solo, acoustic protest singer days – we will make this brief, although we do suggest that if you hear nothing else, check out his song War Isn't Murder we posted there. He's still mining a similar vein – one of the songs here is Grapes of Wrath – but... > Read more
Philanthropist, ft Billy Strings
The Reds, Pinks and Purples: The Past is a Garden I Never Fed (Fire/digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
We will admit immediately that we had never heard of the Californian artist Glenn Donaldson who goes by this endearing name and opens this album with the song The World Doesn't Want Another Band. He has apparently written a couple of hundred songs and released eight albums since 2018. Clearly we've got a lot of catching up to do, but before then we are immersing ourselves in this smart... > Read more
Slow Torture of an Hourly Wage
ONE WE MISSED: Trousdale: Growing Pains (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Released in April but flying straight past us, this new album from the LA-based trio of Quinn D’Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones serves up concise, guitar-driven country-rock, harmonies and smart songs mostly recorded live in the studio to capture their energy and integrity. Some of this second album deals with the fatigue and expectations after their... > Read more
Lonely Night
Jazmine Mary: I Want to Rock And Roll (digital outlets)
7 Jul 2025 | 1 min read
Auckland's Jazmine Mary (Australian-born Jazmine Phillips, identifying as they/them) has confounded and impressed over her previous two albums: her downbeat The Licking of a Tangerine picked up Best Independent Debut at the 2022 Taite Prize and their recommended follow-up DOG appeared in many best-of lists in 2023. Their music is along the axis of noir-folk, kinda gloomy but... > Read more
Memphis
Autocamper: What Do You Do All Day? (digital outlets)
6 Jul 2025 | <1 min read
Some days, overcome by the stress of living in the troubled first quarter of the 21st century, you just want an album to play a bit too loud and which isn't therapeutic for the artist whose troubles gets dumped on you. Welcome then to your computer, car or turntable Manchester's Autocamper who like the idea of jangly guitars and alt.rock with slightly melancholy pop inclinations. And... > Read more
Map Like a Leaf
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Annahstasia: Tether (digital outlets)
30 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with full credits on an insert sheet, a fold out lyric sheet and a framable cover. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . If we're honest, few artists are wholly original or have the capacity to surprise. Most work in familiar, codified genres... > Read more
Take Care of Me
Evan Silva: 6IX (digital outlets)
29 Jun 2025 | <1 min read
Those with a very long memory may recall Evan Silva as singer in The Action in the Sixties and as the more soulful man with the large Afro (he wrote his autobiography, Beneath the Afro, a few years back). He's been long gone from this country but had a decent career in Australia and as a committed Christian he has a podcast, has done jingles and intermittently releases albums. We've picked... > Read more
It's Gett'n Late
People of the Sun: People of the Sun (digital outlets)
27 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
Out of New Plymouth, this heavyweight trio of Joseph Anderson, Djordje Nikolic and Tom Scrase don't want for ambition with this debut album which opens with a slow heartbeat and taonga puoro then moves into the relentless, steadily building acid rock on the eight minute Lisurgen. These announce an album of real substance from accomplished musicians who ride the line between punishing metal... > Read more
Elders
Leigh: Empathy for my Future Self (digital outlets)
26 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
This confident and mature debut album by an Auckland-based singer and multi-instrumentalist embraces electro-noise (She's Back), thrusting electro-pop (He's Giving, March of the Cucks), disruptive pop (Purple Pals, the skittering Comfortable?) and classy, swooning pop (Twenty-Two). The album's backstory here is in Comfortable?: “Take another name, 'Ca-me-ron' don’t feel right .... > Read more
I Still Love the Moon
The Bajanaires: The Last Cowboy (digital outlets)
23 Jun 2025 | 1 min read
From the cover to the contents this is damn fine album of Americana (with some local inflections) from musicians with real road miles behind them: multi-instrumentalist Rob Sinclair, writer/singer Ann Frances Woolliams and writer/ multi-instrumentalist Bevan Revell. The Bajanaires – like Gary Harvey who takes a more tough Texas blues approach – are grounded in America because... > Read more