Music at Elsewhere

Grawlixes: Set Free (Home Alone/Southbound)

14 Aug 2017 | 1 min read

This debut album for the Wellington indie.folk duo Grawlixes – Robin Cederman and Penelope Esplin, with violinist Alex Vaatstra in places here – appeared while Elsewhere was elsewhere so we missed their tour. Are we disappointed on the evidence here? Although the title track is an uninviting dirge as an opener – even at just two... > Read more

A Fine Rain

Ov Pain: Ov Pain (cocomuse.co.nz)

14 Aug 2017 | 1 min read

In the musical microcosm that is Dunedin/Port Chalmers these days, we might allow ourselves to consider the duo at the core of this multi-referencing Goth-cum-drone-cum-claustrophobically dark-rock-psyche release as something of a pocket-edition supergroup. Partners Renee Barrance and Tim Player are of Elan Vital and the very interesting Opposite Sex respectively. But, with all... > Read more

Cold as Ice

Mermaidens: Perfect Body (Flying Nun)

9 Aug 2017 | <1 min read

This Wellington trio are quite rightly the hip, fashionable and classy name to drop because of their crafted, emotionally tense pop which holds up in the face of easy dismissal. To these ears so many young indie-rock groups lack any sense of bite let alone firepower. But Mermaidens walk a line between ethereal pop and brittle indie.rock which channels some of the essence of... > Read more

Satsuma

Public Service Broadcasting: Every Valley (PIAS)

7 Aug 2017 | 2 min read | 1

The two previous albums by Britain's boffinish PSB – Inform-Educate- Entertain and The Race for Space – had an audience outreach in their sampled themes: voices from the past evoking speed, progress, science, energy and vigour propelling us into the future . . . Couple those themes with energetic music borne out of techno, rock, pop and dance, and the albums were very hard... > Read more

People Will Always Need Coal

This is the Kit: Moonshine Freeze (Rough Trade)

7 Aug 2017 | 1 min read

The previous album Bashed Out by the acclaimed UK alt.folk singer/writer and banjo player Kate Sables (aka This is the Kit) was a frustrating affair. Round my way the cry was always “turn it up” or that she should just punch in a bit harder. However this fourth album (produced by John Parish, with guests who do the punching on electric guitars, cello, saxophones and so on)... > Read more

By My Demon Eye

Maria Dallas: The Best of Maria Dallas (Sony)

7 Aug 2017 | 2 min read

In 2013 – which was what we now know as “The Year of Our Lorde” – there was a huge upset at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards. For the young people in the audience, their new pop-godhead Lorde had dominated their thinking and so a shockwave of “Who . . .?” went around the room when the award for the biggest selling album was announced.... > Read more

Don't Love Me Too Much

Arcade Fire: Everything Now (Sony)

31 Jul 2017 | <1 min read

Always a band with ambition, this Canadian outfit have previously pushed the parameters and for their previous outing Reflektor went the whole double-CD. As we said at the time, like most double discs it was overlong but you did have to admire their willingness to experiment and, in that instance, throw themselves back into the Eighties. In that regard this more economic and... > Read more

Electric Blue

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Isaac Hayes, Shaft

31 Jul 2017 | 2 min read

It's not widely known, but Isaac Hayes was the first black artist to win the Best Song category at the Oscars, and he did with the memorable theme to the film Shaft which also won him a Grammy and pushed the double album soundtrack to become the fastest selling album on the Stax label to that time. If there's any irony it's that on The Theme, Hayes barely sung at all just did his sort... > Read more

Early Sunday Morning

Valedictions: Pieces (valedictions.co.nz)

3 Jul 2017 | <1 min read

While we might bemoan the balkanisation of radio into tightly proscribed formats, at least from an artist's point of view they at least know where to pitch their music. No surprise then that this three-piece Auckland band got an early single Hey Lady on The Rock FM. (The title alone kinda recommends it, right?) They played a Big Day Out years ago, did some gigs more recently with... > Read more

Queens

Benjamin Booker: Witness (Rough Trade)

26 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

This may only be Booker's second album but he has already proven the capacity to surprise, born out o his punk background in Florida coupled with a love for r'n'b', gospel and classic soul. Throw them into the blender – you can almost hear the blades grinding on the throaty opener Right On You which comes at you out of a thumping pulse and the assertive “I'll be damned if... > Read more

Believe

Stevens, Muhly, Dessner, McAlister: Planetarium (4AD)

19 Jun 2017 | 3 min read

Elsewhere is of the firm opinion that the education system has failed young people if, by the age of 15, they haven't been introduced to some Shakespeare (Julius Caesar is an easy sell to teens), Picasso/Cubism and some start-off classical music (Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Peter and the Wolf perhaps?). These are things in the arts which extend across all cultures... > Read more

Kuiper Belt

Algiers: The Underside of Power (Matador)

19 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

Two years ago the incendiary, distorted and angry self-titled debut album by this US political powerhouse spent some weeks in and out of our Favourite Five Recent CDs column. At that time we wrote: “Out of the torn traditions of America's gospel'n'blues Deep South but shot through with post-punk fury, this trio take a hammer to politics, religion and race but couch it in... > Read more

Cry of the Martyrs

The Miltones: The Miltones (miltones.com/Rhythmethod)

13 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

As we have observed previously, for a very long time in the Eighties and into the Nineties New Zealand musicians shunned the idea of being “pop” when indie was so much more cool, and it often has seemed that since then the idea of appealing to a more mainstream and even slightly older audience was anathema to many. The success of Dave Dobbyn, Brooke Fraser, Bic Runga, Anika... > Read more

Gypsy Queen

Harry Styles: Harry Styles (Sony)

12 Jun 2017 | 1 min read | 2

There is a saying around Elsewhere's way which we deploy against ourselves when confronted with certain kinds of music, and we pass it on sometimes to correspondents who are railing against an artist, usually in the teen pop idiom. It is this: “Just remember, they aren't making music for you”. When Lorde released her new single a few months back, my... > Read more

Carolina

Chris Stapleton: From a Room, Vol 1 (Mercury)

12 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

Because we essayed this superb songwriter and gruff-voiced singer on the back of his debut album Traveller last year we won't revisit that ground . . . only to say here is a guy whose music has been covered by Adele but whose audience would also reach from Springsteen fans to Merle Haggard devotees and those with an appreciation of how he can also touch on something akin to Southern soul.... > Read more

Broken Halos

Infinity, Infinity (infinitymusic.co.nz)

12 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

Infinity are guitarist/bassist, keyboard player Pateriki Hura and drummer Cameron Budge from, I believe, Hastings and this is their all-instrumental debut. And you have to hand it to them, the opener is a spacious 11 minute piece entitled Infinity (they do seem to have a penchant for that word) which is three-part slice of enjoyably free-floating space rock which get tangentially David... > Read more

Caris' Land

Roger Waters: Is This Really the Life We Want? (Sony)

11 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

Elsewhere is of the unwavering opinion that most of Roger Waters' recorded output and ideas – most notably Pink Floyd's The Wall, a demandingly bleak and pretentious concept album – are more an endurance test or aural torture than they are insightful music. Yes, we know that The Wall is HUGE and popular, and knowing that we try sometimes to have another go at it, but to no... > Read more

Picture That

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Bob Marley; Exodus (Universal)

2 Jun 2017 | 1 min read

Rightly considered among Marley’s finest albums, some say the finest, Exodus was released six months after the attempt on his life and was recorded in London where he forced to hole up after getting out of Jamaica. It found him extending his musical palette (the deep martial beat of the title track, the poppy Three Little Birds which was “the most charming and stupidest... > Read more

Dodson and Fogg: Follow The Path (wisdomtwins)

29 May 2017 | <1 min read

In which Elsewhere once again hopes to draw your attention to the very prolific Dodson and Fogg – aka Chris Wade – from Leeds (music, books, artwork, articles, film, see here!) whose releases come wrapped in interesting cover art by his wife Linzi Napier. They are quite the cottage industry . . . and very industrious. On this collection Wade plays everything himself and as... > Read more

Leave (Feel the Wind Blow)

Los Straitjackets: What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Los Straitjackets (YepRoc/Southbound)