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
TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #2 (2022): Feet on solid ground
26 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
As someone who grew up in a house where there was an open atlas on the lounge coffee table and a framed world map of PanAm routes in “the back kitchen”, travel was always part of life’s agenda. The “Fasten Seatbelt” sign announced a new adventure, and these past few years I'd missed seeing it. So here we are in Stockholm where two of... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Gramsci: The Hinterlands (MAC/digital outlets)
25 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with the lyrics on the inner sleeve. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . When the original Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green died in 2020, Auckland musician Paul McLaney recorded a moving... > Read more
Legend
Lucio's trenette al pesto (trenette with pesto sauce)
23 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
What constitutes a great restaurant? Not just superb food . . . but the atmosphere, surely? Lucio's Italian in Sydney (see their website here) has won me every time on both counts (and interesting wine from Lucio's region of Liguria) and I've written about it before as a travel story (here). It's also like an art gallery-cum-restaurant, or vice-versa. So... > Read more
LOU ADLER PROFILED (2022): What a wonderful world his would be
21 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
In '69 the producer, songwriter, film producer, club owner and impresario Lou Adler - because he could -- took a bunch of soulful musicians into the studio to record a bunch of Bob Dylan's songs in a gospel style. That long forgotten item -- The Brothers and Sisters, Dylan's Gospel -- was reissued in 2014 and so Lou Adler's name went back into the wider world... > Read more
Oh No, Not My Baby
Rewind Fields: Rewind Fields (bandcamp)
21 Feb 2022 | 1 min read
A decade ago Emily Rice was an up-and-coming singer-songwriter at the University of Auckland and was, two years in a row, a finalist in the annual songwriting competition. So she knows a good song when she hears one. She now seems to be in publicity and contacted Elsewhere about this album by Rewind Fields (Callum Lee, also a songwriting finalist the same years as... > Read more
THE OSMONDS: THE PLAN, CONSIDERED (1973): One way ticket to nowhere in particular
21 Feb 2022 | 4 min read
Even those who couldn't abide the idea of the Osmonds, let alone their music, had to concede their '72 single Crazy Horses was a pretty terrific slice of hard rock. And that the album of the same name -- if they heard it -- was much better than anyone might have expected from this family band which, flashing their teeth like grilles, took their brand of soft rock and... > Read more
Modern Studies: We Are There (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)
21 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Elsewhere has frequently championed this British quartet who have roots in folk-rock but extend themselves into more expansive lightlydelic folk-pop, atmospheric rock and downbeat introspection. Once again this sophisticated collection covers all those bases with a kind of chamber-folk on Comfort Me and the dreamy Wild Ocean, alongside gentle jangle folk-rock with... > Read more
Light a Fire
Yard Act: The Overload (digital outlets)
21 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
From the droll post-punk poetry of John Cooper Clarke and declamatory rants of the Fall's Mark E. Smith, through Blur's mannered Park Life and Country House, The Street's tenement block rap, Sleaford Mods and last year's Dry Cleaning, there's a lineage of British spoken word-cum-indie rock. Yard Act from Leeds are a spiky, enjoyably potty-mouthed socialist... > Read more
Gretchen Peters: Dancing with the Beast (2018)
21 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
These Essential Elsewhere album entries, by virtue of this being “elsewhere”, mostly sidestep the albums you'll find in any Greatest Albums Ever list alongside Dark Side of the Moon and Material Girl. Yes, we have pointed to Joni Mitchell's Blue. But albums by King Sunny Ade, John Martyn, Jacques Brel, Reem Kelani and Buffy Sainte-Marie are unlikely to... > Read more
Lowlands
Ichiko Aoba: Windswept Adan Live (Badabing/digital outlets)
21 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Japan's multi-instrumentalist singer/composer Aoba steps with subtle beauty between electronic ambience and a kind of retro-chamber folk which finds her simultaneously with one foot in the past and the other confidently walking into the unknowable and mythic future. In 2020 she released Windswept Adan (a collaboration with Taro Umebayashi) which was a gorgeously ambitious... > Read more
RM Hubbert: Sunbeam Melts the Hour (2012)
21 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Okay, here's what you need to do. Just play the posted track, shut your eyes and try to pick where you think this piece might have come from. Don't read on. If you've done that and stabbed in the dark a bit then let's flip all the cards slowly and tell you this is from the album Thirteen Lost & Found which was produced by Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.... > Read more
TRAVELS IN THE TIME OF COVID #1 (2022): Time to fly
20 Feb 2022 | 2 min read | 2
Nobody has called us crazy, stupid or full of arrogant disregard. However in this increasingly angry climate I'd expect all those accusations to be leveled. And worse. That's because we're leaving for Sweden, Britain and back home via Singapore. Travelers in the time of Covid. Our reason is the same as many trying to get home: family. My wife has a niece and her... Driver Rear Door Glass Privacy Tint Fits 99-04 GRAND CHEROKEE 208116
Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (digital outlets)
19 Feb 2022 | 1 min read
The six singles released in advance of this fifth outing by New York's Big Thief hinted at the breadth on this 20-song double album which, at a push, you'd describe as Americana-cum-experimental folk. The celestial and philosophical Spud Infinity was Band-like country music with fiddle and jaw-harp but the recent Simulation Swarm was slippery folk-rock. Previous Big... > Read more
Dodson and Fogg: Eye on the Moon (dodsonandfogg/bandcamp)
16 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Perennial Elsewhere favourite, the prolific Chris Wade from England (aka Dodson and Fogg) returns with a another folk-pop collection which moves from intimate acoustic (Tell Me How to Feel, I Want to Live My Life My Way, Then and Now) to gently funking blues-rock folk (Funny Little Man) and lightly dreamy psyche-folk (the brief instrumental Following Stillman). Is This... > Read more
Is This What You Want?
JOSH MEHRTENS OF MILD ORANGE offers a track-by-track account of their third album Looking for Space
14 Feb 2022 | 9 min read
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Josh Mehrtens is the excellent dream-pop band Mild Orange. Yes, there are other members -- Jah, Barry and Jack -- but Mehrtens is the songwriter, singer-guitarist, producer, engineer, mixer and controls the artwork and creative direction of the band. So who better to talk us through their jangling, melodic pop-rock third album... > Read more
THE MOTORS: APPROVED BY THE MOTORS, CONSIDERED (1978): They had the look, unfortunately
14 Feb 2022 | 3 min read | 1
You gorra feel sorry for the Motors. Although owing a debt the genre, this British band weren't really “pub-rock” in the manner of, say, Dr Feelgood or Ian Dury's Kilburn and the High Roads. They were more pop-rock – strong on melody, hooks and choruses – but they formed in '77 when the spirits of pub-rock and then punk were abroad. Their... > Read more
Dave Clark Five: Glad All Over (BMG/digital outlets)
14 Feb 2022 | 1 min read
In the way that only the UK press could manufacture, the second the Dave Clark Five emerged with their hit Glad All Over which nudged the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand off the top of the charts, they were immediately posited as “the Tottenham Sound” and a few scribes heralded the end of the Mersey Beat style. To be fair, their drum-heavy sound from leader... > Read more
Haysi Fantayzee: Jimmy Jive Jive (1983)
14 Feb 2022 | 2 min read
It's entirely possible that this British pop duo (with the svengali figure of Paul Caplin guiding their brief career) spent more time in make-up than they did on the charts: they knocked out four singles and an album . . . but their chief feature was their risque glam-raggamuffin look which was used to greater effect by their contemporary Boy George. However their... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Richard Fariña
14 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
The New York-based folk singer Richard Fariña was an interesting figure: right up until he got on a motorcycle in '66 and crashed. He'd been around the boho folk scene with the Baez sister Joan and Mimi (he married Mimi when she was 17, Thomas Pynchon was his best man) and released a couple of very decent albums and a fanciful autobiography. Joan Baez... > Read more
500pcs False Nail Art Tips French Transparent Coffin False Nails Tips Acrylic UV
14 Feb 2022 | <1 min read
Another example of "if the album doesn't exist, then let's make it". Both characters are real and were actually around Abbey Road studios at the same time. And McCartney being fond of banging the ol' johanna on pub songs, then why might he not hook up with the popular and populist Mrs. Mills? The coincidence of McCartney having been married to Heather... > Read more