Music at Elsewhere
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Tsyphur Zalan: Oceanic Day (digital outlets)
31 Jan 2020 | <1 min read
American composer Tsyphur Zalan – not his real name, it's Christopher Bono – here offers the second part of his Oceanic Trilogy which began with Oceanic Dawn (on Spotify here) and will conclude with Oceanic Dusk (which he promises will be "darker and moodier"). Essentially there is an ambient quality to these albums where synths and a disembodied, distant voice take... > Read more
Butterflies
Wire: Mind Hive (Pink Flag/Southbound)
25 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
Although Britain's Wire delivered three seminal post-punk albums in the late Seventies, they never let that define them nor that minimalist style become an easy template. In fact, in the past decade they have been prolific and consistently delivering challenging, musically interesting and taut albums. As the title of their 2013 album had it, Change Becomes Us. That said, those who... > Read more
Unrepentant
Black Lips: Sing in a World That's Falling Apart (Fire/Southbound)
25 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
While no artist – as we have said previously – should be held to their press release, someone with a functioning frontal cortex in Black Lips' team might have called a halt to the absurd hype about this band's reductive pop . . . . a band which had apparently gone where “no garage punk band had done before”. Uh-uh. And –... > Read more
Holding Me Holding You
Harry Styles: Fine Line (Sony)
24 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
When Harry Styles – formerly of One Direction – released his self-titled debut album in 2017 we here at Elsewhere were not just surprised by it but actually very impressed. While noting that artists of his generation – we mentioned Lorde, Taylor Swift (once she and Harry were a couple) and Justin Bieber in the context – don't make music for people of my... > Read more
Pinegrove: Marigold (Rough Trade/Rhythmethod/digital outlets)
20 Jan 2020 | <1 min read
New to Elsewhere, this New Jersey outfit here deliver a strangely enticing fourth album of downbeat material which sometimes errs towards worn-down narrative pop-poetry delivered over elemental, almost alt.country settings (Dotted Line, the arresting Alarmist) or gently urgent power-pop (Moment about an unexpected incident on the road). Spiral is a 75 second, wry injunction... > Read more
Moment
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Pale Saints: The Comforts of Madness (4AD 30thAnniversary Edition)
19 Jan 2020 | 2 min read
Although not exclusively the “shoegaze” band they have been tagged as, Britain's alt.rockers Pale Saints could hopefully get some traction for this expanded, 30thanniversary reissue of their debut album, because it seems shoegaze is currently enjoying a resurgence. Maybe this terrific compilation of shoegaze from a few years ago has lead to the renewed interest, and it contained... > Read more
Sight of You
Algiers: There is No Year (Matador/digital outlets)
17 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
The previous two albums by this sometimes incendiary, political, four-piece soul rock-cum-punk experimentalists out of Georgia made Elsewhere sit up and listen for the powerful sonic punch coupled with direct social and historic comment. Of their self-titled debut we simply concluded “extraordinary” and of The Underside of Power we said “although they are not an easy... > Read more
Selena Gomez: Rare (Interscope/digital outlets)
15 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
While Elsewhere always takes considerable amusement in how many writers and producers it takes to shape a mainstream pop album these days (see the screenshot below!), we also believe that if that's what it takes to make a great album then that's what it takes. Is this a great album by onetime Disney child star Gomez . . . who is now 27? Well, actually that gets a very slightly... > Read more
Trentemoller: Obverse (In My Room/Southbound/digital outlets)
10 Jan 2020 | <1 min read
Over time spent with the considerable catalogue of the Danish electronica experimenter Anders Trentemoller, you might conclude it is easier to like what he likes than what he does. By that we mean we would refer (again) to his engrossing Late Night Tales compilation of some years back rather than perhaps direct listeners to his often darkly, monochromatic soundscapes . . . of which this is... > Read more
Sleeper
Marina Bloom: Back Where We Started (digital outlets)
8 Jan 2020 | 1 min read
Very few artists bother to release an album at this time of year because there's just nobody around, the country is on holiday. That said, it is also counter-intuitive to deliver your album in this dead-air time because there is so little competition for attention. So let's tip the hat to Marina Bloom (who previously appeared at Elsewhere here) and this new 12 song album where her... > Read more
Harry Nilsson: Losst and Founnd (Omnivore/digital outlets)
21 Dec 2019 | 1 min read
Even Harry Nilsson's biggest fans – Elsewhere counts itself among their number – reluctantly concede that he never made a truly satisfying album. Nilsson Schmilsson came very close, close enough for it to have been a longtime Essential Elsewhere album. His was a flawed genius where lapses of taste, poor song choices and lesser material were propped up by... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: A Winged Victory for the Sullen: The Undivided Five (Ninja Tune)
15 Dec 2019 | <1 min read
Amusingly, we previously said of this ambient-cum-soundtrack-cum-classical duo who were on the fascinating Erased Tapes label that their work ensured anything on that label would grab our immediate attention. They are now on Ninja Tune. This stately and sometimes funereal music opens with Our Lord Debussy where sweeping slo-mo strings and dark piano chords set the tone for pieces... > Read more
Juliana Hatfield: Sings the Police (American Laundromat)
6 Dec 2019 | <1 min read
Here's a conversation starter or stopper: that given their diverse backgrounds in prog-rock, jazz and pop the Police were akin to the Cream -- another aggregation of trio talent -- of their period. Where Cream had blues and LSD the Police had reggae, a touch of dub and dope. Discuss among yourselves. The Police certainly sprung hits but they expanded the contract of post-punk pop... > Read more
Murder by Numbers
Various Artists: The Kiwi Music Scene 1969 (Frenzy)
6 Dec 2019 | 1 min read
By the end of the Sixties – a decade which began with a musical whimper – New Zealand pop and rock was recognised as a business and cultural force. The APRA Silver Scroll awards launched in 1965 acknowledged local writing talent, there were music and entertainer awards, Radio Hauraki was playing local music, a thriving live scene and local pop stars were all... > Read more
Hayride, by Dedikation
Prince: 1999 Super Deluxe Edition (Warners)
1 Dec 2019 | 1 min read
In 1982 when Prince invited us to “party like it's 1999” he didn't so much anticipate some Y2K apocalypse as invite us into millennial hedonism at a New Year's Eve party like no other. And drove it home in the sexual-imagery of Little Red Corvette. The double album 1999 tipped him into the Serious Contender category after his sometimes alienating overt salaciousness on... > Read more
Jimi Hendrix: Songs for Groovy Children; The Fillmore East Concerts (Sony)
30 Nov 2019 | 2 min read
The Jimi Industry shows little sign of slowing down and since Eddie Kramer – his longtime engineer and designated producer of posthumous albums – announced the vaults of studio recordings were now emptied, attention has turned to releasing live sets. And lord knows there were enough of those in his short lifetime. Many of course have been released (about 30,... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Brian Eno: Apollo, Atmospheres and Soundtracks; Extended Edition (Universal)
29 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Although Brian Eno's Before and After Science was the album we launched our Essential Elsewhere series with, it has always been his Apollo and Music for Films albums we have returned to in quieter moments. The whole music for imagined films has become a bit played out in recent decades but in '78 when Brian Eno delivered his album it was revelation for its discreet sounds and evocative... > Read more
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Ghosteen (Awal)
26 Nov 2019 | 2 min read
Audiences at secular concerts can have a spiritual, almost religious, experience at times. Consider when people sang quietly along with Leonard Cohen when he performed Hallelujah, or even when Paul McCartney sings Here Comes the Sun in tribute to George Harrison. The former song has an in-built spirituality to it, in the case of the latter it is that collective emotion... > Read more
Leonard Cohen: Thanks for the Dance (Columbia/Sony)
25 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Posthumous albums can be dodgy affairs: the cash-in of incomplete songs or those the artist refused to have released in their lifetime . . . You can understand the paired imperatives: death is good for business and also fans just want that little bit more. Commerce and art can be fulfilled concurrently, although mostly the art – such as it is – finishes well... > Read more
The Magick Heads: Intakes and Outtakes (Thokei Tapes)
24 Nov 2019 | <1 min read
Robert Scott (Bats, Clean and other projects) teamed up with vocalist Jane Sinnott as the core of Magick Heads in the late Nineties, with various members of 3Ds at one point. Their recording career on Flying Nun was short (there were limited releases on other labels) but their increasingly folksy sounded was ideally suited to Sinnott's voice and Scott's acoustic-framed songs, as witnessed... > Read more