Music at Elsewhere
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Pet Shop Boys: Electric (x2)
22 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
The PSBoys' aural fingerprint is so distinctive that it might be possible to go two ways on this one. You could say "heard it all before" in terms of dancefloor-directed beats, cool observations, themes of ennui and loneliness . . . Or you could say you love these dancefloor-directed beats, cool observations, themes of ennui and loneliness . . . You cannot deny how much... > Read more
Axis
Steve Gunn: Time Off (Paradise of Bachelors/Southbound)
22 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
In the late Sixties/early Seventies there were many acoustic/electric guitarists working the territory between British folk, Indian raga tuning and Middle Eastern sounds. But there are fewer today, which makes this album by New York-based Philadelphian Gunn – who is in Kurt Vile's touring band – quite refreshing. And he brings a slightly trip-folk style to his dreamy... > Read more
New Decline
Guided by Voices: English Little League (Fire)
22 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
Longtime loyalists of this once important alt-rock band from Ohio (b. 1983) enjoyed their exciting outsider pre-grunge rock then endured indifferent albums, line-up changes around core characters Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout, the inevitable break-up and farewell tour a decade ago, and the equally inevitable reunion these past few years. So, even for fans, they've tested patience.... > Read more
The Sudden Death of Epstien's Ways
Various Artists: Greatest Hits from Outer Space (Ace/Border)
22 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
Aside from the broad theme there's little to determine what “outer space” music might be, given this opens with Richard Strauss' dramatic Also Sprach Zarathustra (the 2001 theme and Elvis' intro music) then moves into the Ames Brothers' close-harmony 50s pop hit Destination Moon and the Les Baxter Orchestra with Lunar Rhapsody (featuring Samuel Hoffman on theremin).... > Read more
Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer
Various Artists: Late Night Tales; Royksopp (Southbound)
22 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
Another installment in the “you are feeling sleepy” series, this time music chosen Norway's premier electronica duo Royksopp who offer an eclectic selection and numerous nods to MOR with Australia's polished-smooth Little River Band (the startlingly lovely seven minute Light of Day), France's F.R. David (not his electro-pop hit Words but the similar ballad Music), English... > Read more
Blade Runner Blues
Masaaki Hirao and His All Stars Wagon: Nippon Rock'n'Roll (Big Beat/Border)
21 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
How global was Fifties rock'n'roll? In New Zealand we had Johnny Devlin, "the Wanganui Elvis" and within four months of Heartbreak Hotel and All Shook Up, Kazuya Kosaka and the Wagon Masters in Japan had covered them. Rock'n'roll went global very quickly. Kosaka wasn't alone in Japan either. Or in his use of a band name with "wagon" in it. This 23... > Read more
Jailhouse Rock
Bannerman: Clawhammer (bannerman.com)
15 Jul 2013 | 1 min read | 1
As in most countries, New Zealand musicians can usually be placed in a genre or style. Not so Richard Setford who is Bannerman. His two previous albums (considered "outstanding" at Elsewhere) were so musically diverse you would be unwise to attempt any kind of labelling. And in places they sounded nothing like his EPs. It is an impressive back-catalogue and now Bannerman... > Read more
Echoes
Rose Windows: The Sun Dogs (Sub Pop)
15 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
Credit where it's due. Few bands simultaneously conjure up broody Black Sabbath, prog-pomp King Crimson, desperate Siouxsie Banshee and the hippie-vibe of the Incredible String Band . . . and expect to get away with it. Especially not if they add – to pile-driving metal guitars and the Middle Eastern exoticism of their singer Rabia Shabeen Qazi – wide swathes of... > Read more
Native Dreams
Tom Odell: Long Way Down (Sony)
15 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
In Britain this critically favoured, chart-topping 22-year old pianist/singer has made no secret of his admiration for Elton John and that's hardly surprising: the opening piano passages in the sentimental Grow Old With Me are pure Elton, later he includes the line “I sat on the rooftop” (he watched birds, didn't kick off the moss) and occasionally gets within a whisper of... > Read more
Can't Pretend
Chris Priestley: Unsung Heroes (Ode)
12 Jul 2013 | 2 min read
The firmly held belief here at Elsewhere -- which is a quorum of one, and I have the deciding vote -- is that New Zealand folk music has never been cool or interesting for most of the Sixties Generation And Beyond People because this musical tradition became uncoupled from popular music (ie. pop music) at about the time we were slightly embarassed about our origins and were looking to engage... > Read more
Captain Lorraine
These New Puritans: Fields of Reeds (Infectious)
11 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 1
Start as you mean to go on, they say. And TNP's Jack Barnett certainly leads you into this project gently with an opening track where the slow piano and horns are in the foreground and somewhere down a long corridor a woman seems to be singing her way through something akin to Bacharach-David's This Guy's in Love With You. This isn't a collar-grabbing start but one which immediately makes... > Read more
Dream
Gray Bartlett: The Sixties Collection (Frenzy/Ode)
10 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
Although Gray (Graeme) Bartlett is best known today by that lovely old catch-all word "entrepreneur" -- he promotes concerts, discovers talent, tours national and international acts etc -- he was and remains a very fine guitarist, which was how he got his start in "show business". At the end of the Eighties I accompanied him and his small band on a brief tour into... > Read more
Surf Rider
Eric Lichter: ELKS in Paris (Diamond Market)
9 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
Any New Zealander hearing the downbeat chorus-cum-hook of the opener on this album -- "how could a plan so beautiful go so pitifully bad" -- might think they have tuned in to a Greg Johnson album. It's all there in the seemingly effort marriage of words and melody, the balance of sentiment between yin and yang, the worn-out but tuneful delivery . . . And then the rhythm picks... > Read more
I Still Insist
The Map Room: All You'll Ever Find (Rhythmethod)
8 Jul 2013 | 1 min read | 1
The Auckland duo of recording engineers/producers and sound mixers Simon Gooding and Brendon Morrow (York St, television and film work etc) craft the most unfashionable music. And it's some distance from what their professional careers might suggest. Far from deploying all the technology available to them, here they offer up 10 atmospheric, frequently weightless and often delicate songs... > Read more
Memory
Mark Mulcahy: Dear Mark J Mulcahy I Love You (Fire)
8 Jul 2013 | <1 min read
Neither Mulcahy's previous band, the US indie.rock outfit Miracle Legion, nor his solo albums created a ripple here, but this new direction might just get traction. Following the death of his wife five years ago he took time out and has reappeared as an abrasive streetwise singer-songwriter who even references the Velvet's I'm Waiting for the Man in the acerbic opener I Taketh Away.... > Read more
He's a Magnet
Fat Freddy's Drop: Blackbird (The Drop)
8 Jul 2013 | 1 min read
Given this album debuted at #1 on the New Zealand charts -- and deservedly so, it sounds extraordinary -- it hardly needs any comment at Elsewhere. But . . . And there is a "but". Because despite the fact it will be warmly embraced by longtime fans, that these long and loping songs (the opener 9.30, only one of the nine coming in under five minutes) will doubtless get the... > Read more
Bones
John Murry: The Graceless Age (Universal)
1 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 2
With all the high-profile, well-marketed albums around it's inevitable small players from darker corners go overlooked, but this extraordinary debut of original material by a Tupelo-born survivor deserves serious attention if damaged singer-songwriters have any appeal. Somewhere between backroads alt.country, early Leonard Cohen and the storytelling of James McMurtry, The Graceless... > Read more
John Murry
Various Artists: Sing Me the Songs; Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle (Nonesuch/Warners)
1 Jul 2013 | <1 min read | 7
Kate McGarrigle (of the McGarrigle Sisters, with sister Anna) who died in January 2010 not only wrote a remarkable body of songs and sang them beautifully (and sometimes with saltiness) but – with her then-husband Loudon Wainwright III – gave us Rufus and Martha Wainwright. Joe Boyd (who'd produced the sister's first albums and their live McGarrigle Hour with family and... > Read more
Southern Boys
Larry's Rebels/The Rebels; A Study in Black/Madrigal (Frenzy)
30 Jun 2013 | 2 min read
Among the many interesting and unreleased things I have at home is a CD burn a friend made of the original versions of songs which Kiwi acts turned into homegrown hits. And the remarkable thing is -- and I will safely say this without pulling some reflexive bullshit Kiwi/nationalistic stroke -- the local versions waaaay oustripped the originals. Frankly, you don't want or need to hear the... > Read more
Painter Man
Mavis Staples: One True Vine (Anti)
28 Jun 2013 | 1 min read | 3
The great Mavis Staples – now 74 – has been immersed deep in the spiritual waters, and therefore has more to draw on, than most singers. She was a child of the church and well before her teens was singing in the Staple Singers lead by her father Pops. They sang of spiritual redemption, the civil rights struggle for equality and dignity, recorded material by contemporary... > Read more