Music at Elsewhere

The National: First Two Pages of Frankenstein (digital outlets/vinyl)

30 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

Plagued by writers' block, Matt Berninger of the National opened Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein and read of the narrator heading to the North Pole, invigorated by the promise of the journey: “I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilise the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the... > Read more

Tiny Ruins: Ceremony (digital outlets/vinyl)

30 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

On her 2011 debut album Some Were Meant For Sea, Hollie Fullbrook – as Tiny Ruins – opened with an intimately whispered conflation of Chaucer and Shakespeare: “Lean in friend and I'll tell you a tale . . . as I tread the stage awhile”. Fullbrook had much to tell: in Bristol she'd learned cello and assimilated British folk and James Taylor; the family moved... > Read more

Sam Ford, Trudi Green and the Soulahula Band: OOOEE! (Choice/digital outlets)

24 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

The irrepressible and enthusiastic Sam Ford and Trudi Green make a welcome return with their horn-driven Pasifika-soul. Recorded during lockdown with the musicians sending their various parts for collation, these 11 songs sound freshly minted and anxious to be delivered live – see below – for full appreciation of their Southern swing (the title track, the funky political... > Read more

A Picture of a Palm Tree

boygenius: the record (digital outlets)

23 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

The American alt.folk-cum-rock supergroup of Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker – downplaying with the lowercase band name and the humble title of this debut album – will doubtless find an audience which remembers 90s bands like the Breeders, Throwing Muses and Belly, but who these days prefer their grunge-era aggression more subdued. boygenius cleverly balance the... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Vera Ellen: Ideal Home Noise (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

22 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with an insert sleeve and a download code. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Vera Ellen emerged from the folk and indie.pop scene in Pōneke Wellington, recorded and toured with her high school band Maple Syrup and has established herself in... > Read more

Damien Binder: Bright Side (digital outlets)

21 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

If you consider the artists expat singer-songwriter Damien Binder has been favourably compared with – moody Springsteen, the Triffids, Jackson Browne, Lloyd Cole, the Go-Betweens – you'll see the high level at which he works, and the regard in which he's held. Of his 2016 album New World we said, “he writes songs which in a better world would find themselves all over... > Read more

Don't Know What

Dinner Party: Enigmatic Society (digital outlets)

21 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

When the rock band Cream emerged in the mid-Sixties they were immediately hailed as a supergroup, although outside of Britain few were especially familiar with the credentials of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker other than by repute. Clapton everyone knew. Because jazz musicians move between bands and leaders so frequently many of the line-ups are supergroups by definition: Miles Davis' quartets... > Read more

Adam McGrath: Dear Companions (vinyl/CD/download)

17 Apr 2023 | 3 min read

Lord knows there are any number of artists these days who will tell us on their album of their isolation during Covid or their recent break-up or how they feel outsiders and so on. The album as therapy? Songs asking for sympathy? It is a pleasure – a sad one as you may read – to introduce this extraordinary album by Adam McGrath, the man with the lumberjack physique, the... > Read more

Trouble With This City

Peter Case: Doctor Moan (digital outlets)

10 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

Has it really been 37 years since Peter Case's superb self-titled solo debut (after years in the terrific power-pop band the Plimsouls) crossed our path? And if so – and regrettably it is so – why, when that is one of our favourites and a longtime Essential Elsewhere album, have so few of his subsequent albums come into our view? We only have three or four out of his... > Read more

Josephine Foster: Domestic Sphere (Fire/digital outlets)

9 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

As many would realise, Elsewhere sometimes looks very far afield and elsewhere in its choices: we suspect few other webmags would give space to the sui generis and idiosyncratic sounds of noemienours, Mali Mali, Jandek, John Jacob Niles, Hasil Adkins . . . Let alone have a whole section called Further Outwhere. The music there make Yoko Ono and the Shaggs positively top 40... > Read more

Birthday Song for the Dead

Grecco Romank: Wet Exit (digital outlets)

8 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

Gotta love 'em for the product description of this Auckland-based electronica trio of Billie Fee, Mike Sperring and Damian Golfinopoulos. Their PR says it is “perfectly suited for a European Dungeon Rave” (their debut album Red Tower came with a perfume named Leathery Coward) and they have released “luxuriously bogan techno tracks [of] sewer pop”. These enjoyably... > Read more

Fever Ray: Radical Romantics (bandcamp)

8 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

Given we've listened to a fair bit of the dark but poppy electronica by Sweden's Fever Ray (Karin Dreijer) -- one half of The Knife and now close to 50-- it surprises us they/them (was married, has two daughters, identifies as gender fluid) hasn't appeared at Elsewhere before. That said, they've hardly been prolific under the Fever Ray moniker: their self-titled debut was in 2009, the... > Read more

Even It Out

ONE WE MISSED: The Golden Dregs: On Grace and Dignity (4AD/digital outlets)

3 Apr 2023 | 2 min read

Although some Americana artists work in the area of social observation and comment, it has been British writers who have a deep and abiding engagement, probably because of a culture steeped in class and social division. From the Beatles, Stones, Who, Ray Davies and the Small Faces through the Sex Pistols, Clash and Crass to Blur, Paul Weller, Pulp and Madness and up to recent releases... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Mali Mali: Spirit Tide (Home Alone/digital outlets)

3 Apr 2023 | 2 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with an all-important lyric sheet. Very limited edition (70 copies only) and comes with unlimited streaming and MP3 download. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . As Mali Mali, singer-songwriter Ben Tolich has created his own path in literate, sometimes... > Read more

Piano Ringing On

Shana Cleveland: Manzanita (digital outlets)

2 Apr 2023 | 1 min read

Reviewers of this intimate folk album by California-based Shana Cleveland invariably mention she leads the indie surf rock band La Luz, implying she's moved from the twang'n'tremolo sound of West Coast surf groups as she embraced British folk artists of the late 60s and early 70s. However 2021's self-titled La Luz album was a thoughtful affair, some distance from their earlier sound and... > Read more

Van Morrison: Moving On Skiffle (digital outlets)

2 Apr 2023 | <1 min read

The master of Celtic soul from the late 60s into the 80s subsequently alienated his audience with decades of disappointing albums. More recently his curmudgeonly, often spiteful, persona morphed into conspiracy nonsense and bizarre pronouncements about Covid restrictions, so it's hard for many to return to him with goodwill. Van Morrison is best when reaching for the spiritual sky or... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Aftab, Iyer and Ismaily: Love in Exile (Verve/digital outlets)

31 Mar 2023 | 1 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes as a double album in a gatefold sleeve. No download code unfortunately. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . When Arooj Aftab's album Vulture Prince appeared in 2021 it so utterly seduced Elsewhere that we made one of our year's best albums (we... > Read more

To Remain To Return

Andy White and Tim Finn: AT (Floating World/digital outlets)

31 Mar 2023 | 1 min read

Tim Finn's past has been very present in recent years: the 2021 album Caught by the Heart with Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera (who produced Split Enz' '76 album Second Thoughts); the '22 expanded double vinyl reissue of the 1995 Finn Brothers album (which reminded what a fine collection it was and important in both Neil and Tim's separate careers) and the Forenzics' Shades and Echoes... > Read more

Extra Virgin Orchestra: Dust of Angels (digital outlets)

30 Mar 2023 | 1 min read

Behind this amusingly whimsical band name are some serious talents: multi-instrumentalists David Bowater and Rob Sinclair were in Schtung in the late Seventies then Big Sideways and 3 Voices in the Eighties and much more recently delivered the quirky Price of Fish album. Also here are classical composer Helen Bowater (piano, vocals) and lyric writer Andrew Caldwell. Needless to say... > Read more

Humans Are Stupid

Unknown Mortal Orchestra: V (digital outlets)

26 Mar 2023 | 2 min read

To begin at the far end. The final track, Drag, on Ruban Nielson's Unknown Mortal Orchestra album V is a loose, six minute jam. It's of the kind you'd expect to hear on a bootleg of the early 80s Stones in a New York studio as Nielson, his brother Kody on drums and bassist Jake Portrait close this double album with a lazy, funky bluesy shuffle. It's a wayward journey to this point, the... > Read more