Music at Elsewhere
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Tiny Lies: The Oaks They Will Bow (Lyttelton/Southbound)
11 Nov 2013 | <1 min read
Not to be confused with Tiny Ruins (Hollie Fullbrook), this Lyttelton-based duo of Harley Williams and Charlotte Ivey here deliver a debut album of dark and often bittersweet country-folk embellished by lap steel (from labelmate Delaney Davidson), violin (Anita Clark), pedal steel (John Egenes) and other appropriately evocative instruments. Ivey's melodic harmonica playing brings a... > Read more
Old Heart
RECOMMENDED DIGITAL REISSUE: Golden Harvest; Golden Harvest
11 Nov 2013 | 1 min read
With six out of 10 music purchases now being downloads, Elsewhere is happy to recommend albums now available on iTunes which have no physical release (or which may be hard to find or prohibitively expensive). The good people at www.recordedmusic.co.nz who look after licensing, copyright and so forth have a major project underway of trying to get every New Zealand album up online and... > Read more
All Along the Watchtower
Robert Ellis: Photographs (New West)
10 Nov 2013 | <1 min read
Although this album was released two years ago, we bring it to attention now because Ellis from Texas is appearing in Auckland this coming week (details below) and it's never too late to discover a country singer who frequently comes off like a softer version of George Jones. In many ways he is very traditional and also in the lineage of Randy Travis, although there's as much of the LA... > Read more
Westbound Train
Arcade Fire: Reflektor (Sonovox)
10 Nov 2013 | 1 min read | 1
In these times when artists stick with an identifiable sound (Gee, what might the next Coldplay album sound like?) you don't expect anyone to offer a reviewer that humorous line, "Hope you like our new direction?" So it's hats off then to Arcade Fire who here across a double disc get in touch with their inner Eighties and at times conjure up the spirits of Tears For Fears/Duran... > Read more
It's Never Over
Nightmares on Wax: Feelin' Good (Warp)
9 Nov 2013 | <1 min read
Now this is downbeat electronica which effortlessly keeps the beats and pulses moving, but also puts the trip-hop in the same emotional space as touches of reggae (Now is the Time) and the electro-glitch stuff (the very cool Tapestry). NoWax is George Evelyn (first signing to the now legendary English label Warp) and although much of this can drift past you in the manner of the best... > Read more
Luna 2
The Beatles: On Air - Live at the BBC Vol 2 (Universal)
8 Nov 2013 | 2 min read
Just as the Beatles enjoyed that long and rare association with producer George Martin and EMI's Abbey Road studios, so too they had a mutually beneficial relationship with the BBC. The "Beeb" as it is affectionately knows may have been the conservative face of British broadcasting, but it was also aware of its mandate to represent a wide cross-section of British tastes and... > Read more
I'm Talking About You (March 1963)
Barrence Whitefield and The Savages: Dig Thy Savage Soul (Bloodshot/Southbound)
4 Nov 2013 | <1 min read | 2
On the bruising evidence of this album – the energy of British pub-rock in a noisy collision with bluesy Chicago-soaked rock'n'soul – you'd probably crawl across broken booze bottles to see them live. This, the third album by this re-formed (but not reformed) band from Boston, finds classic rock and soul shouter Whitfield in roaring form in front of the band helmed by... > Read more
Bread
David Dallas: Falling into Place (Dirty/Universal)
4 Nov 2013 | 1 min read
In times to come when collections of contemporary New Zealand poetry are written (if not published in the form we have been used to), you'd like to think recent lyrics by Miriam Clancy, Moana Maniapoto, the Veils, Dubious Brothers, Lorde and people like Mareko will be in there as a reflection of who we are/were. And I'd be astonished -- if not outraged -- if lyrics from this sometimes... > Read more
Southside
Males: Run Run Run/MalesMalesMales (Fishrider)
3 Nov 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Attuned to elevating West Coast USA pop – with a twist of power-pop in the manner of the close-harmony Shoes – this Dunedin duo here add an early single (the likably chipper, slightly New Wave So High) and last year's MalesMalesMales EP to a new EP Run Run Run. The result is an economic nine-song collection of mostly brightly summertime pop cramming a lot of melodic hooks... > Read more
Madeline
Blackfield: Blackfield IV (Kscope/Southbound)
2 Nov 2013 | <1 min read
This century has seen the rehabilitation of prog-rock. Generations which weren't around for punk's late Seventis scorched-earth policy towards progressive tendencies are finding something in thoughtful, musically interesting and vaguely philosophical prog. Contemporary prog is often more economic, sometimes hauls in elements from metal as much as whiffily pretentious poetics, and the... > Read more
Firefly
Bond Street Bridge: The Explorers Club: Antarctica (Banished from the Universe)
28 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
Auckland's Sam Prebble of Bond Street Bridge admits to something approaching obsession after reading about Robert Falcon Scott's fatal expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Immersing himself in Scott's diary, books about the journey (they arrived at the South Pole to find Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them) and looking at photographs of brave but doomed men in that aridly icy... > Read more
The Wreck of the Endurance
Paul McCartney: NEW (Universal)
21 Oct 2013 | 1 min read
After his previous pop-rock album Memory Almost Full six years ago which included songs that seemed to be farewells or self-penned eulogies (“On the day that I die I'd like bells to be rung . . .”), this one by 71-year old McCartney comes with a title that exudes capital letter optimism and in a cover radiating assurance. Working with smart young producers (Paul Epworth... > Read more
Appreciate
Julian Cope: Revolutionary Suicide (Head Heritage/Southbound)
21 Oct 2013 | 1 min read
When Julian Cope emerged in the late Seventies/early Eighties as the singer-writer with the often thrilling and melodramatic Liverpool band Teardrop Explodes, few could have guessed -- perhaps not even Cope himself -- what a life he would make for himself. He has written knowledgeably and with passion on Krautrock and Japanese rock, was very early on an advocate for the rediscovery of Scott... > Read more
Paradise Mislaid
Gareth Edwards: Nowhere To Go Nothing To Do (garethedwards.co.nz)
20 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
Although few -- actually none -- would hail UK-born singer-songwriter Edwards as an exciting new voice in New Zeaand music, his unpretentious and often rather simple take on country-rock and pop has some charm for the ordinariness of his worldview which takes straight shots at just hanging around, relationships and a laid-back existence. On the singalong Friends he sings; "Where would... > Read more
Sitting in the Sun
Tamikrest: Chatma (Glitterbeat/Southbound)
14 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
More than a decade ago what became known as “Sahara blues” or “desert blues” -- the mesmerising sound of mercurial guitar, drone-like vocals and rolling rhythms – floated into consciousness via bands like Etran Finatawa and Tinariwen, and great female singer Malouma, out of North Africa. The next generation are represented by Terakaft and Tamikrest who have... > Read more
Toumast anlet
Lee Ranaldo and the Dust: Last Night on Earth (Matador)
14 Oct 2013 | 1 min read
With the indie-rock generation's favourite aunt and uncle – Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth – having separated after more than 25 years of marriage and the band officially breaking up we might actually expect even more from various, and prolific, Youth members. Gordon's new project Body/Head has just released a debut album, Moore continues to record (check the... > Read more
Late Descent #2
Elton John: The Diving Board (Universal)
14 Oct 2013 | <1 min read | 1
The resurrection of Elton John continues as he approves of younger talent (recently praising Lorde) and gets remade/remixed by Pnau, yet also hooked up with seventysomething Leon Russell for The Union and goes the whole Las Vegas at Caesar's Palace. Here again with longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin (and produced by T Bone Burnett) the piano-man and pals don't adjust the successful... > Read more
A Town Called Jubilee
Tony Joe White: Hoodoo (Yep Roc/Southbound)
7 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
Perennial Southern swamp-rocker and the Louisiana man who defined the genre (although John Fogerty of Creedence got there around the same time, albeit from San Francisco), doesn't change his winning formula here. It's still low-growl'n'mumble vocals, rolling grooves and razor-sharp guitar on these nine tracks which look to his own life for source material. Which means a rich vein... > Read more
Alligator Mississippi
Bill Callahan: Dream River (Drag City/Universal)
7 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
The final song on this short, emotionally dense album finds our weary, baritone narrator driving home in winter, listening to a Donald Sutherland interview on the truck radio as “time itself means nothing”. In this simple moment – as a slow fiddle keens supportively – he realises when things are beautiful you should just keep on with it. If Callahan's... > Read more
Spring
Various Artists: Good Vibrations; A Record Shop, a Label, a Film Soundtrack (Ace/Border)
4 Oct 2013 | <1 min read
We'll have to wait for the acclaimed bio-pic to get the full measure of the life and times of Belfast's Terri Hooley who started his record shop Good Vibrations at the height of what is euphemistically called "the Troubles" and, as self-confessed hippie, found himself a convert to punk. His shop spawned a label and gave us, among other classic songs, the Undertones Teenage Kicks.... > Read more