Music at Elsewhere

SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases

20 Mar 2017 | 2 min read | 1

Facing down an avalanche of releases, requests for coverage, the occasional demand that we be interested in their new album (sometimes with that absurd comment "but don't write about it if you don't like it") and so on, Elsewhere will every now and again do a quick sweep like this, in the same way it does IN BRIEFabout international releases. Comments will be brief. ... > Read more

Julie Lamb: Ordinary Days (julielamb.co.nz)

15 Mar 2017 | 1 min read

First a big tip o' the hat to Wellingtonian Lamb's packaging of this album: it comes in CD-sized cardboard box which contain the disc in a gatefold cover (with download code), lyrics on 10 playing card-sized illustrated cards in a small envelope, colourful bulldog clips (again in the themed artwork) and a die in plastic pack, instructions on how to make your own traffic cone (funny given... > Read more

Why Do I Forget

Hot 8 Brass Band: On the Spot (Tru Thoughts/Rhythmethod)

15 Mar 2017 | <1 min read

Out of the many guests at this weekend's Womad you can guess that these guys from New Orleans – who deliver up pop-funk classics alongside originals and familiar tunes with their own twist -- will be among the most popular. They offer the danceable solution, wobble-bottom tuba, stacked up horns, jazz solos, handclap beats and pure entertainment. They are also extremely good.... > Read more

Keepin It Funky

Nadia Reid: Preservation (Rhythmethod)

13 Mar 2017 | 1 min read | 1

Although Elsewhere heard both Nadia Reid's debut EP and first album we didn't write about them because . . . Got busy, got distracted or whatever, and in part because we were less impressed than others (here and abroad) seemed to be, so by the time we came to grips with them the time for comment had long passed. The enthusiastic reviews were in, she'd found her audience etc.... > Read more

The Way It Goes

French for Rabbits: The Weight of Melted Snow (Home Again/Southbound)

13 Mar 2017 | 1 min read

The 2014 debut album Spirits by this central duo of Brooke Singer and John Fitzgerald (here with multi-instrumentalist Ben Lent of Trinity Roots, drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa and Penelope Esplin, and guests) was a sheer delight and we described it as “not so much shoegaze as folksy skygaze” for its dreamy folkadelic sound. It is well worth finding even now, and... > Read more

Feathers and Dreams

Citrus Clouds: Imagination (bandcamp)

7 Mar 2017 | 1 min read

Recently Elsewhere has happily noted the resurgence of shoegaze . . . but this band which formed in Phoenix about five years ago has their own variant on that description. Their imprimatur on bandcamp – presumably written by themselves – is “desertgaze”. That'll do these ears . . . because this trio has that wide sonic vista we'd associated with... > Read more

The Sun is in My Eyes

The Courtneys: II (Secretly Canadian/Flying Nun)

6 Mar 2017 | 1 min read

The enjoyably reductive guitar pop of the Courtneys out of Vancouver found favour here for their self-titled debut album with its widescreen strum'n'sing, deliberately breezy teenage-whine sound and what seemed a schooling in early Flying Nun. When the template is that secure (and referenced) there's probably no need to mess with it. And so they don't (much) for this follow-up which... > Read more

Country Song

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

6 Mar 2017 | 3 min read

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. DJ T-Rock:The Sounds in Their Heads (Why) DJ T-Rock appeared at Elsewhere previously with the thoroughly enjoyable Getting... > Read more

Various Artists: Molly; Do Yourself a Favour (Liberation)

6 Mar 2017 | <1 min read

Where the double CD Great Australian Songbook was a handsome package with cover art by Rolf Harris and soaking up big Ocker songs (from Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport through Midnight Oil, the Church, Easybeats and Paul Kelly to Kylie, Delta Goodrem and Wolfmother), this triple set has a broader reach but a narrower focus. These 60 songs across three discs aim squarely at the period when... > Read more

You Just Like Me Cos I'm Good in Bed, by Skyhooks

Lydia Cole: The Lay of the Land (lydiacole.com)

3 Mar 2017 | 1 min read

Elsewhere was more than just ho-hum about Lydia Cole's debut Me and Moon of 2012, we were almost casually dismissive because it sounded like she'd thought no further than her own bedroom where she'd holed up after a relationship breakup. But a couple of advance tracks for this belated follow-up suggested something had happened to her in five years; Call it maturity, a more... > Read more

Time is a Healer

Brian Jonestown Massacre: Don't Get Lost (Southbound)

27 Feb 2017 | 1 min read

Many years ago in writing about the new BJM album Revelation, Elsewhere mentioned the well-known doco DIG! In which BJM mainman Anton Newcombe infamously seemed to be losing the plot, if he ever knew there was one. Not long afterwards he wrote, politely, asking why that needed to be mentioned. The explanation was simple: it was notorious, a ready reference point for readers and added... > Read more

Groove is in the Heart

The Bats: The Deep Set (Secretly Canadian/Flying Out)

24 Feb 2017 | 1 min read

Elsewhere has long been of the opinion – considered and/or humble, if you will – that for the past couple of decades the Bats have taken incremental steps into a more focused, discreetly diversifying style from their signature sound of the Eighties. Certainly their gentle chiming guitars and slightly droning but melodic vocals remain in place (both given presence in the... > Read more

Walking Man

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard: Flying Microtonal Banana (Heavenly)

24 Feb 2017 | 1 min read | 1

One of the most useful and enjoyable books on Elsewhere's shelves is quite dated but always a pleasure to pick up. It is Ian McFarlane's Encyclopaedia of Australian Rock and Pop which dates from the late Nineties. The fun to be had is in some of the band names, Australians seem to have a penchant for the odd: Ku Klux Frankenstein, Scary Mother, Kiss My Poodles Donkey, Sadistik... > Read more

Doom City

Ghost Town: Sky is Falling (Ghost/Southbound)

22 Feb 2017 | 3 min read

Perhaps because he moved on fast, offered seriously disturbing music and performances with often terrifying visual effects and then left New Zealand, Jed Town never really got the recognition he deserved in the punk and post-punk era. As a key member of the Features (City Scenes) he might have transitioned from punk rock into more mainstream rock, but the band didn't last much beyond... > Read more

Make It

Bing and Ruth: No Home of the Mind (4AD)

20 Feb 2017 | 1 min read

In the late Sixties the most interesting and influential composer in New York – whose students and colleagues included Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Cale – was a guy called LaMonte Young. And even today you'd be forgiven for not having heard of him. He might have been the godfather of the avant-garde/minimalism movement but he was overtaken by his... > Read more

To All It

Sampha: Process (Young Turks)

20 Feb 2017 | <1 min read

This mostly impressive but slightly unfocused debut announces the arrival of another post-rap soul singer from Britain – think a less wimpy James Blake crossed with the musicality of Michael Kiwanuka – who mixes electronica, Marvin Gaye, innercity blues (the fear-filled Blood On Me about “grey hoodies, they cover their eyes”) and some outer space consciousness.... > Read more

Timmy's Prayer

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: John Cale; Fragments of a Rainy Season, expanded edition

16 Feb 2017 | 2 min read

Last year a great wedge of Lou Reed's solo albums from the Seventies and Eighties were reissued, 17 CDs in a box set between his self-titled outing from early '72 through to Mistrial in mid '86. You'd think this would have been an opportunity for a reconsideration of his work and to elevate it. But most critics were scratching for something to say about these albums which slewed from... > Read more

Chinese Envoy

Neil Watson: Studies in Tubular (neilwatson.co.nz/Southbound)

16 Feb 2017 | 1 min read

Guitarist Neil Watson is a man with an impeccable track record of appearances on albums by Mel Parsons, the Finn Brothers, Caitlin Smith and more than a dozen others. He's a man who can sit in, and comfortably fit in, with visiting jazz artists (Mike Nock, Michael Brecker) or people at the mainstream centre of spectrum he commands, and his day job at the University of Auckland in the... > Read more

Kerala

Jesca Hoop: Memories Are Now (SubPop)

13 Feb 2017 | 1 min read

Now half a dozen albums into a career (one with Sam Beam aka Iron and Wine) this transplanted American -- who lived in Manchester for a while then returned to the US -- is almost emblematic of the world we live in, where musical information from diverse sources (plus static, the surface noise of life etc) can all collide equally in our subconscious. Hoop's gift is in her ability... > Read more

Animal Kingdom Chaotic

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

13 Feb 2017 | 3 min read

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. Strand of Oaks: Hard Love (Dead Oceans) Further proof never to judge an album by its cover; the tattooed biker and jagged lettering... > Read more