THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
BB and the Bullets: High Tide (digital outlets)
24 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
A volatile and impressive mix of originals and covers (Born Under a Bad Sign, Walking the Dog and Lennon's I Want You among them) from an unexpected source: Whanganui. That shouldn't really be a surprise, outside of the main centres hard rocking blues has never gone away, it's the music of bars, clubs and in this case the Whanganui Musicians Club where the seasoned... > Read more
Seven Ways to Sin
The Syndicats: Crawdaddy Simone (1965)
22 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
The short-lived Syndicates were one of those raw R'n'B bands out of Britain alongside the young Rolling Stones (before they wrote their own songs), the Downliners Sect (whose debut The Sect is an Essential Elsewhere album), Pretty Things, Animals, Yardbirds and others. In many ways there's not much of great interest and their story, such as it was. But they did... > Read more
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram: Hard Road (digital outlets)
22 Sep 2025 | <1 min read
Every generation gets its own blues revival and a hero out front who – at best – takes the music forward but also reminds people where it came from. The young Kingfish – just 20 when his Grammy-nominated, self-titled debut album appeared six years ago – was grounded in the blues, literally. His hometown in Clarksdale, Mississippi where the... > Read more
Crosses
AN ESSENTIAL ELSEWHERE ALBUM: Brian Eno, Before And After Science (1977)
22 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Of the many dozens of diverse albums by Brian Eno -- who flared onto the music scene for the first two glam-louche Roxy Music albums -- this is the best window into his remarkable career. As a producer he was pivotal in the work of David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads, U2 among many others. But he also created seminal albums of ambient music (music as ignorable as it is... > Read more
Here He Comes
Blood Orange, Essex Honey (digital outlets)
22 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
As mainstream pop has moved back the preeminence of single songs – largely driven by the need to get ears onto streaming platforms – the notion of an album its more pure sense has been steadily eroded. It's not uncommon now for an artist to drip-feed three and sometimes more songs from their forthcoming album, and so the album becomes more like a compilation.... > Read more
Westerberg
Mumbai, India: When terror called on the Taj
22 Sep 2025 | 3 min read
In many places – notably around the higher end hotels which accommodate foreign tourists, and at popular attractions – Mumbai is a city on lazy high alert. The apparent languor and good humour of many security guards and police doesn’t change the fact most are armed with seriously powerful weapons, stand before impassable barricades and usher... > Read more
DON'T KNOCK THE ROCK (2025): Rock'n'roll movie posters from the Fifties
22 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Get hip to that jive, daddy-o. Rock'n'roll is here to stay . . . and here is where it began for a generation looking for something more liberating in their lives. Teenagers weren't invented in the Fifties but in popular culture it was their time, a time of hot rods, motorcycles, dancing and rock'n'roll. New pop heroes were manufactured quickly and some stars just... > Read more
Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow, by the Rivingtons
HOWARD BLAKE. THAT HAMMOND SOUND, CONSIDERED (1966): But who's that in the fine print?
22 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
Very much one of those book/cover/judge moments when this album came to hand for this on-going column where we pull a record off the shelf at random. We can alight on classics, half-forgotten moments and real stinkers. But this one defies expectation: the cover suggests a bit of bachelor pad exotica or at least Playboy Club cool, the name Howard Blake doesn't spring... > Read more
David Byrne: Who is the Sky?
22 Sep 2025 | 1 min read | 1
Right from the time he appeared on the global screen, David Byrne was the man who made the normal seem weird. If not in Talking Heads' music (think about Once in a Lifetime and The Big Country) then certainly in his quirky film True Stories. Byrne is the everyman out of kilter with the times, viewing it through his own lens and seeing strangeness in the mundane and... > Read more
She Explains Things To Me
Grant-Lee Phillips, In the Hour of Dust (digital outlets)
19 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Grant-Lee Phillips – formerly of Grant-Lee Buffalo -- holds a special place in Elsewhere's heart because we once started a three month drive across the US with one of his albums in CD player. It was Mobilize and the opening track was See America, a weary song with poignant lyrics: “We're asking for directions, yes. We're off to see America, we're tumbling in... > Read more
Closer Tonight
YOKO ONO, REVISITED AND RESPECTED (2025): Nonagenerian great-grandmother of avant-indie kids
15 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
When Marlon Williams sang Nobody Sees Me Like You Do at his sold-out Auckland Town Hall concert in 2018, it’s a safe bet few who loudly applauded knew who had written the song: Yoko Ono. Although she remains reviled by some older Beatle-obsessed fans for her artistic and personal relationship with John Lennon – who she has outlived by more than 40 years... > Read more
Waiting for the Sunrise, by Death Cab for Cutie
Pickle Darling: Battlebots (digital outlets)
15 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Elsewhere is usually candid about certain artists – usually young women in contemporary pop whose target market is teenagers and their own peers. We simply say, they don't make music for us . . . although many times we have conceded that but said the album is excellent and worth hearing. We think we can recognise talent if even it doesn't make music for us.... > Read more
Human Bean Instruction Manual
AN ESSENTIAL ELSEWHERE ALBUM: The Tokey Tones: Butterfly, Caterpillar (2007)
15 Sep 2025 | 5 min read | 2
It’s a common occurrence: just when popular music has got up a head of steam, some supportive critical consensus, and is charging off in a particular direction along comes something which, by going the opposite way, captures the imagination. At the height of Day-Glo acid-dropping hippiedom along came the Velvet Underground in all their monochrome gloominess singing... > Read more
Yoghurt and Vinegar (from Butterfly)
MUSIC GOING HITHER AND ZITHER: Who was that man?
15 Sep 2025 | 2 min read
Every now and again a new instrument will appear in popular music. Although some were aware of the Indian sitar, it wasn't until George Harrison introduced it on the Beatles' Norwegian Wood in 1965 that it penetrated mainstream pop music. How far did it penetrate? The sitar became synonymous with psychedelic music and there's actually an 11 CD box set... > Read more
The Harry Lime Theme
Archie Bleyer: Hernando's Hideaway (1954)
15 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
The photo of Archie Bleyer here looks more like the portrait of buttoned-down but likeable banker or real estate agent. But he was at one time a middle-sized player in American music. He was a bandleader, singer, producer from the Thirties onward and had his own label Cadence Records which he started in '52 and recorded the likes of Andy Williams. He got especially... > Read more
Dead Famous People: Wild Young Ways (digital outlets)
14 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
One of the more surprising releases of recent years was Dead Famous People's “Harry” in 2020. As far as we had been aware the band enjoyed a short-lived moment on Flying Nun in the early-mid Eighties, went off to the UK and so on, the disappeared. But now there was an album where Dons Savage showed an assured touch in power-pop and knew the value of a... > Read more
In Praise of Right Now
Crystal Chen: You Can Call Me CC (digital outlets)
14 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Emerging artists often like to make a big statement with their debut album, right from the opening track. It makes sense. Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland's Crystal Chen however is confident enough to go the other way: the opener here Bloom (a gently tinkling instrumental on harp with flute for the first two of its five and half minutes) and follow-up, the sensual, smoky and... > Read more
Let's Kiss, Not Fight
GUEST WRITER JOHN BAKER remembers the late Viv Prince, a Pretty Thing, and the legacy of rock'n'roll's wild men
13 Sep 2025 | 9 min read
I was only just talking to Viv Prince on the 21st August when observing the 60th anniversary of the NZ tour: The insane New Zealand rock and roll tour by Britain's Pretty Things, the tour to end all tours! Viv, who died on September 11, age 84, was the last of the English rock and roll loons .... he mentored Keith Moon in behaviour on (and off)... > Read more
Honey, I Need
JERRY HARRISON, INTERVIEWED (1988): The name of this band is Casual Gods
12 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
Here is another interview from the archive, and as with recent postings of Headless Chickens and Straitjacket Fits at crucial junctures in their careers, this comes from 1988. And it to was a pivotal point for former Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison. Talking Heads hadn't performed for three years at the time Harrison launched his band Casual Gods and although... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
The Beths: Straight Line Was a Lie (Flying Nun, digital outlets)
12 Sep 2025 | 1 min read
The Beths' trajectory from indie.rock favourites to mainstream acceptance – from student radio in 2018 to RadioNZ National with Jesse Mulligan in 2022 who described them as the station's favourite band -- could be a roadmap for young bands. Their debut album Future Me Hate Me (2018) and its follow-up Jump Rope Gazers (2020)delivered exuberant, economic and... > Read more