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
AOTEAROA MUSIC AWARDS 2025: Ake Ake and Onward
31 May 2025 | 7 min read
Every now and again someone will say that awards are a load of crap and that music isn't a competition. Unfortunately, if we are being honest, it is a competition . .. a competition for attention, chart success, listeners an audience and so on. In that harsh reality there are winners and losers. Much like life, really. The very day of this year's Aotearoa Music... > Read more
JOHN & PAUL: A LOVE STORY IN SONGS by IAN LESLIE
31 May 2025 | 3 min read
The seriously afflicted Beatle fan might not expect to find much new inane more biographies. However this insightful and interesting biography-cum-psychological study of the band's protagonists takes such an interesting and probing slant on the relationship between Lennon and McCartney that it does force a rethink of how those two came together to sometimes create one... > Read more
Martha My Dear
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RECOMMENDED RECORD: Sparks: Mad! (digital outlets)
30 May 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes with all the lyrics (necessary with Sparks) and credits. And is available on white vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Sparks brothers Ron and Russell Mael (aged 79 and 76 respectively) open their 28th studio... > Read more
Lord Have Mercy
THE TREADMILL OF LIFE: Age shall not weary me?
30 May 2025 | 2 min read
Four about four decades from my early 20s I did no active exercise: no walking, no jogging, no sports, no gym . . . Actually I think I had a brief encounter with the gym but it turned out we were incompatible. That said, with three kids in the first years, a decade of teaching which keeps you on your toes and feet, a lot of international travel and lecturing at... > Read more
PAUL McCARTNEY, MONDAY JUNE 14, 1965: Just another day
26 May 2025 | 1 min read | 2
The more you think about it, the more impressive the Beatles' work ethic becomes. In the three years after the release of their first UK single Love Me Do in October 1962 they recorded five albums of mostly original songs (A Hard Day's Night had 14 originals), made two films – A Hard Day's Night and Help! – and toured constantly. They did BBC radio... > Read more
GUEST MUSICIAN AND AUTHOR LUKE CASEY on the art of disappearing. And reappearing elsewhere
26 May 2025 | 3 min read
When you’ve been out of the public eye for sometime, it can be a bit like Troy McClure from The Simpsons. “You may remember me from such bands as...”And as another drummer, the great Art Blakey, used to say, “If you’re not appearing, you’re disappearing.” In my case it was intentional. I stopped being a touring... > Read more
FIFTIES ROCK'N'ROLL; LOUD, FAST AND OUT OF CONTROL: Rock 101, The Originators
26 May 2025 | 5 min read
Billy Joel isn't usually cited in the Elsewhere world as an insightful reference, but his feisty We Didn't Start the Fire of the mid-Nineties was a brisk, rocking historical synopsis of our time (JFK, Chernobyl etc) which was referenced a little in Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues chant-poem of three decades previous. However, by starting his countdown of... > Read more
Wanda Jackson: Let's Have A Party (1958)
The Chicks: The Rebel Kind (1966)
26 May 2025 | 1 min read | 2
New Zealand has no great tradition of political pop or rock. All those years of high unemployment during the Flying Nun heyday . . . and who mentioned it? Very few. Even the Springbok tour in '81 barely generated a whisper from musicians. (Riot 111 here being the noble exception.) And during the Vietnam period? Barely a dickey-bird . . . aside from, oddly... > Read more
Voom: Something Good is Happening (Flying Nun/digital outlets)
26 May 2025 | 1 min read
For those outside his immediate orbit, Buzz Moller is something of an enigma. His intermittent project Voom – debut album Now I Am Me arrived in 1998, the follow-up Hello, Are You There? eight years later and given vinyl pressing in 2021 – have enjoyed great affection for their heartfelt, sometimes raw and always melodic alt.pop-rock which roams freely... > Read more
Crazy Feeling
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Suzanne Vega: Flying With Angels (digital outlets)
26 May 2025 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and credits. And is available on white vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Some artists soar like bright flares across the sky and immediately engage our attention, but then... > Read more
Chambermaid
Ocean Beach: Long Road Home (Freezing Works Records/digital outlets)
23 May 2025 | <1 min read
Although the charts would suggest there's no great demand for them, people still form guitar-driven rock bands. Something in the camaraderie of like minds as much just getting together to make a thrilling noise? Auckland five-piece Ocean Beach -- named for the former freezing works in wind-blown Bluff at the bottom of the South Island -- manage both on this debut... > Read more
On My Way
Viagra Boys: Viagr Aboys (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Set aside the silly band name, because here is a band which is part rocking Beck in slacker-punk mode, part Beastie Boys, part political comedy act and probably a bit more of other things. This Swedish outfit – fronted by US-born singer-writer Sebastian Murphy – are frequently described as dance punk and garage punk. They seem adequate descriptors for a... > Read more
Dirty Boyz
Tune-Yards: Better Dreaming (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The classy songwriting and delivery of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner has been one of the delights and discoveries of the past decade as they weave soul, r'n'b, funk and pop into art-pop. But they also deliver more as on this album which, despite the sheen of the surfaces and the clever music, has something to say about these straitened times. This from the hypnotic... > Read more
Swarm
THE KITCHEN CINQ REDISCOVERED: Amarillo, California in the Sixties, y'all
19 May 2025 | 2 min read
In their photos, the Kitchen Cinq out of Texas in the mid Sixties don't look entirely promising, like buttoned-down high school seniors who have been given the afternoon off from library duties. And yet . . . The first thing to pique interest in the 2015 28-song compilation When the Rainbow Disappears; A Drama Worthy of The Kitchen Cinq is that this band from... > Read more
Please Come Back
Kurt Cobain: Gun, head and Smithereens.
19 May 2025 | 2 min read
As with most people of a "certain age" I can remember where I was when I heard John F Kennedy had been shot ( I was in bed), and when I was told another Kennedy had gone the way of the gun (in bed again, there's a pattern emerging). Of course I also remember John Lennon's murder (came in with the kids from soccer and it was on television) and, oddly enough --... > Read more
Tupac Shakur: Picture Me Rollin' (1996)
19 May 2025 | <1 min read
Is there a more sad song in the retrospect than this, after Tupac (assailants "unknown") was gunned down? The great poet of rap gets into a beautiful low, confidently cruising but melancholy groove while giving himself some big-ups because, after all, those punk police have passed on and now we need to picture him at the top of his game . . . ... > Read more
Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
Labels “indie” and “alternative” haven't meant much since one-time indie bands (R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Husker Du) signed to major labels. But they are convenient shorthand. Seattle-based Car Seat Headrest fronted by singer-writer Will Toledo have remained loyally indie and alt.rock, but for this impressive 13th album they embrace one of... > Read more
Devereaux
Jensen McRae: I Don't Know How But They Found Me! (digital outlets)
19 May 2025 | 1 min read
The jury is always out on an album where the artist uses it as public therapy. Of the few successful ones, the most outstanding for its courage was the John Lennon Plastic Ono Band album of 1970 which was cathartic and uncomfortable. It was uncommon at the time – has any other artist of his stature since been that emotionally naked and brave, musically and... > Read more
I Can Change Him
Spencer Davis Group: I'm a Man (1967)
18 May 2025 | 3 min read | 2
Down the years – from Mairzy Doats in 1943 to Springsteen's Blinded by the Light three decades later (“madman drummers, bummers and Indians in the summer”) – lyrics have been open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. For years I thought Manfred Mann's Ha Ha! Said the Clown was “the horse hit the town”. I'd been ready for... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Jenny Hval: Iris Silver Mist (digital outlets)
18 May 2025 | 1 min read
Although Elsewhere championed Jenny Hval's excellent The Practice of Love album we're aware that she's probably a hard sell. She has rolled from dark metal, edgy art music and 2016's exacting jazz improvisations of In the End His Voice Will Be the Sound of Paper to alt.folk and experimental sounds under own name, and as Rockettothesky and Lost Girls. She's now 44,... > Read more