Music at Elsewhere

Dudley Benson: Deforestation (Golden Retriever)

17 Nov 2014 | 3 min read

Dudley Benson – who recently received a $25,000 New Generation Artist award from Westpac – has a small, and some might say, perfectly formed catalogue. But it is small. By my reckoning there have been just a couple of EPs (see here and here). And just two albums (this and this), some of which included EP material. Then there was the live album... > Read more

Pipiwharauroa (Iso12 remix

Various Artists: A Day in My Mind's Mind; The Kiwi Psychedelic Scene (Frenzy/Real Groovy)

17 Nov 2014 | 2 min read | 1

A few months ago a friend and I were discussing prog-rock -- it had been a long lunch, this topic doesn't come up often -- and I observed there had been very few great prog statements by Kiwi artists in the late Sixties/early Seventies. I suggested prog by its very nature was expensive music to create and perform. He demurred and I bowed to his greater knowledge. For a couple of... > Read more

Bellyboard Beat

Pink Floyd: The Endless River (Sony)

10 Nov 2014 | 2 min read | 1

Because Pink Floyd have been around so long and went through various phases and stages, it's probably helpful for any reviewer of this album – identified by guitarist/prime mover David Gilmour as their farewell – to say clearly which era was their Floyd-of-Preference. I was there for their first singles and although I can't say I heard every song or album at the time since,... > Read more

Things Left Unsaid

Ry Cooder: Soundtracks (Warners)

10 Nov 2014 | 4 min read | 1

A couple of years ago when Ry Cooder was coming to New Zealand with the charming Nick Lowe, Elsewhere did an interview with him. It didn't go well. Actually, that's not entirely true. It didn't go well until – after some cursory answers to what I thought were decent questions – I realised here was man who needed to be provoked. If you look at... > Read more

Goose and Lucky

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Corben Simpson; Get Up With the Sun

10 Nov 2014 | 1 min read | 3

Although not a classic New Zealand album -- one which starts with a weird one minute kazoo solo perhaps precludes itself from consideration immediately -- this '73 release on the Harvest label by singer-songwriter Corben Simpson is frequently too good, or at least "interesting", to ignore. In another time that kazoo solo might have been replaced by putorino to better effect as a... > Read more

I Beg Your Pardon

Neil Young: Storytone (Warners)

9 Nov 2014 | 2 min read

We've mentioned this before so at the risk of being predictable . . . the problem with “unpredictable” Neil Young these days is that he has become predictable. So after Le Noise (true to what it said on the box) it was Americana (as it says) then Psychedelic Pill (and again). And recently while he's been banging on about some special high-quality sound reproduction... > Read more

When I Watch You Sleeping (solo)

Various Artists: Lost on the River; The New Basement Tapes (Sony)

9 Nov 2014 | 2 min read

The provenance of these hitherto unknown lyrics by Bob Dylan is discussed in our interview with the album's producer T Bone Burnett, but briefly the story is this: Dylan's publishers approached Burnett saying Bob had discovered a box of lyrics from '67 and would he (Burnett) like to do something with them. To hear Burnett tell it, at that point Dylan dropped out of the picture and even at... > Read more

Lost on the River

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

7 Nov 2014 | 3 min read

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. Comments will be brief. Jakob; Sines (Shoot the Freak/Border): The sound of this Napier... > Read more

Harmonia

Darren Watson: Introducing Darren Watson (Beluga)

6 Nov 2014 | 1 min read

After the fame/notoriety which came with his pre-election Planet Key song and video (see here), Wellington singer-guitarist and long-running bluesman Darren Watson reveals further humour in this album's title. Fact is, he's more than half a dozen albums into his career (from Chicago Smokeshop in the late Eighties, through Smokeshop and then albums under his own name), but maybe That... > Read more

Slow Cooker

Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra: Be Mine Tonight (ukulele.co.nz)

6 Nov 2014 | 1 min read

Among the many problems I have with this -- and they start with the cheap looking cover and extend to the sheer obviousness of the project -- is how utterly joyless some of these versions of New Zealand songs sound. Aaradhna's vibrant and uplifting Wake Up and the Swingers' once exciting Counting the Beat here sound barely able to rouse themselves from the hammock. But maybe that's the... > Read more

Slippin' Away

The Flaming Lips: With a Little Help From My Fwends (Warners)

4 Nov 2014 | 2 min read

Now here are some words you wouldn't expect to read in the same sentence: "Miley Cyrus" and "the Beatles' A Day in the Life". Or even "Miley Cyrus" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds". But when you add "The Flaming Lips" into the equation things start to make some kind of bent sense. The Lips -- that is, the eccentrically... > Read more

A Day in the Life Of

Mark Lanegan Band: Phantom Radio (Heavenly)

3 Nov 2014 | <1 min read

Former Screaming Trees singer Lanegan isn't shy putting himself about. Alongside recent impressive solo albums (Blues Funeral and his covers album Imitations) he's appeared with Soulsavers, QOTSA, guitarist Duke Garwood and Isobel Campbell, as well as guesting for Moby, Unkle, Martina Topley-Bird . . . He has that go-to dark baritone freighted with gravitas which others want. This... > Read more

Torn Red Heart

French for Rabbits: Spirits (Lefse)

31 Oct 2014 | 1 min read

This dreamscape debut album opens with such an elegantly simple guitar and piano part that it's hard not to be quickly seduced, and when vocalist Brooke Singer wafts in there is a lovely weightlessness at work above the undercurrents of drums and cymbal splashes. It sounds tidal and elemental. From their homebase at Waikuku Beach in New Zealand's South Island the duo of Singer and John... > Read more

Lean

Ha The Unclear; Bacterium, Look At Your Motor Go (bandcamp)

30 Oct 2014 | 1 min read

And now for something completely different . . . Singer-songwriter Michael Cathro who fronts this oddly-named band is a real one-off. His accent is unashamedly antipodean: He pronounces the Dunedin suburb "Core-sto-feen" as is the habit there, in Edinburgh it's the suburb I was born in and is "ki-store-fin". And his vocal limitations have a real charm as he... > Read more

Mortality (A Million Years Ago)

Various Artists: Cold Cold Heart; Where Country Meets Soul Vol 3 (Kent/Border)

29 Oct 2014 | <1 min read

The crossover between country and soul has long been acknowledged but this excellent series brings classics and obscurities together just to gently push the point home further. Elsewhere has hailed the previous two volumes and this one continues the thread, but to even greater effect. Here are some extraordinary black soul versions of songs you might only have heard as whitebread... > Read more

Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man

Scott Walker + Sun O))): Soused (4AD)

27 Oct 2014 | <1 min read

Scott Walker's setting a breathless pace these days: it was usually a decade between albums but after The Drift (06) just six years before Bish Bosch and now only two years since that typically demanding, commanding art music. For newcomers, London-based American-born Walker was the romantically brooding baritone on Walker Brothers pop hits in the Sixties, moved towards European... > Read more

Brando

IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent releases

27 Oct 2014 | 2 min read | 1

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. This week people you know from elsewhere (and maybe Elsewhere) Johnny Marr; Playland (Warners): Marr's first solo album The Messenger post-The Smiths... > Read more

One Lost Year

Sola Rosa: Magnetics (Way Up)

20 Oct 2014 | 1 min read

Andrew Spraggon, the man behind the ever-morphing Sola Rosa, is a clever fellow. His albums are astutely focused and when he stretches himself he never strays too far from exactly where you think the beat-driven music should be. As the song here -- featuring singer Georgia Anne Muldrow -- says, "You're never too far from the ground". Even when Sola Rosa aim for soulful pastures,... > Read more

Til the Sun

Lenny Kravitz, Strut (Roxie)

20 Oct 2014 | <1 min read

With two new Prince albums, the reissue of two Hendrix albums (Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge) and the next installment of Hunger Games pending (in which continues his role as Cinna), it seems timely to mention Lenny Kravitz, a man whose musical career often seems incidental to his image. You would rarely accuse him of originality and his reference points remain somewhere between... > Read more

Happy Birthday