DC September 20 New Release Recap

You may need a hefty wallet to take care of just this week's high mark releases. We've picked out a few of the most notable (even if some of the names may not be that familiar), including new albums from Will Dailey and The Rivals, Lisa Hannigan, Tori Amos, Halloween Alaska, Correatown, Alex Winston, Ed Sheeran, Katie Herzig, Tony Bennett, Lanterns on the Lake and Ivy. You can check these out after the jump and see our more complete listing of artists and releases:

Will Dailey & The Rivals - Will Dailey & The Rivals (Universal Republic) - Boston singer/songwriter has quietly expanded his Boston base over the past decade, moving from solo gigs at acoustic-friendly folk clubs to regional clubs with his band The Rivals... engaging new project comes on the heels of his ambitious 2009 Torrent project, a pair of releases that culled songs from quarterly song postings on the web...more DC

Lisa Hannigan - Passenger (ATO) - Irish folk/pop songstress, best known (still) for the seven years she spent touring and recording with Damien Rice, follows her acclaimed, Mercury Prize-nominated debut Sea Sew with this new ten track project produced by Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry (Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint) and engineered by Ryan Freeland (Ray LaMontagne)...Hannigan says the new songs (and album title) come from the "loves, heartbreaks, confusions and friendships that we take with us through life"...Ray LaMontagne duets on the stark lament "O Sleep"...more DC

Tori Amos - Night of Hunters (DG) - The idea of making her twelfth studio album a classically-inspired song cycle actually makes perfect sense for this always-inventive songwriter...the orchestrated chamber pop, reveling it's "all acoustic" tag, focuses Amos' on her formidable talents as a composer of rich, intricately textured melodies...self-penned and produced, this is her first album for the prestigious classical label Deutsche Grammophon...more DC

Halloween, Alaska - All Night The Calls Came In - Oddly (and terribly) named Twin Cities quartet  return with their fourth studio longplayer of lush, velveteen-textured art/pop and first since the remarkable Champagne Downtown from 2009... engaging melodic lines and classic references have put them more in the general vicinity of 80's U.K. trailblazers Prefab Sprout and The Blue Nile than most domestic comparisons ...here the band looks for a less ponderously crafted affair, stripping back the sound a bit and cutting out much of the robo-beat programming...now even the synths and beats are crafted by hand...more DC

Tony Bennett - Duets II (Columbia) - The ageless and iconic crooner has again tapped some of pop's biggest names for this star-studded seventeen-track duets album produced by the legendary Phil Ramone... the hoopla surrounding the tracks with Amy Winehouse (her last completed studio performance) and the likes of Lady Ga-Ga have overshadowed the bulk of fine performances here including sumptuously produced turns from Norah Jones, long-time Bennett fan k.d. lang, Michael Buble, John Mayer, Josh Groban, Mariah Carey and Sheryl Crow...more DC

Lanterns On the Lake - Gracious Tide, Take Me Home (Bella Union UK) - Less hazy shoe-gazing and more like absorbing the breadth of the vast starry heavens, Newcastle-based Lanterns flicker and glow in the dark with their own spacious, narcotic post/pop...debut album, produced by bandmember Paul Gregory follows up a pair of well-received EP's...moving from a starting point of mellow acoustic folk-based melodies, layer upon layer of luminous keys, strings and electronica build until the songs become glistening, ambient mosaics of a dreamscape soundtrack...more DC

Katie Herzig - The Waking Sleep (Downtown) - Grammy-nominated performing songwriter's distinctive (sm)art/pop songs do that rare balancing act: in-demand staples for the usual TV synch suspects (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Target commercial, etc.) while getting critical notice on tastemakers like KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic...new project, her first full-length since 2008's Apple Tree, has the faint scent of 80's Howard Jones/Nik Kershaw hook-laden synth pop...more DC

Ed Sheeran - + (Plus) (Atlantic U.K.) - Unassuming 20-year-old Brit neo-folkie with a love of hip-hop rhyming has become something of a sensation across the pond, an acousto-beat wonder that tacks speed tumbling lyrics onto a buskery strumfest...a series of collaborative and solo EP's and a killer single - "The A-Team" - took the copper-topped troubadour to the #2 spot on U.K. iTunes...more DC

Correatown - Pleiades - L.A. songwriter Angela Correa takes her band into some new plush and fuzzy electronic environs on this meticulously crafted, birkenstock-gazing sophomore album produced by Dan Long...the austere organics that saturated Correatown's 2007 album Spark. Burn. Fade. have, well, faded this time around, replaced by a slow swirling mix of drifting, droning guitar lines, interesting time signatures and dense synth washes...more DC

Alex Winston - Velvet Elvis EP - New York-based, Detroit-raised singer/songwriter cites the Motown sound and Chuck Berry (of all people) as influences in her music, but we're hearing lots of Kate Bush and a dab of Joanna Newsom not only in her chirpy, child-like voice but in the far-flung, highly theatrical art/pop studio productions. Drawing a bit on her operatic training in phrasing and sky-high melodic structures, Winston's modern girl-group sing-a-long songs are a blend of the precocious and the precious, smart and exotic whimsy that puts her squarely in the latest cadre of high-concept indie-pop female performers...more DC

Anna Elias/Forlorn Hope - Valleys in the Flatlands (U.K.)
Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps - Little Wind
Chris Letcher - Spectroscope
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Hysterical
Duke Robillard - Low Down & Tore Up
Emily O'Halloran - Morphine and Cupcakes
Gavin DeGraw - Sweeter
Gentlemen Hall - When We All Disappear
Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself (EP)
Jim Capaldi (Traffic) - Dear Mr. Fantasy (Box)
John Cale - Extra Playful EP
Kasabian - Velociraptor! (U.K.)
King Creosote/Jon Hopkins - Honest Words (EP)
Madi Diaz - Far From Things That We Know (EP)
Mary J. Blige - My Life II: Journey Continues
Meg Baird - Seasons On Earth
Megafaun - S/T
Mike Oldfield - Incantations
Needtobreathe - The Reckoning
Nurses - Dracula
Pearl Jam - 20 (20th Anniversary 2-CD Anthology)
Richmond Fontaine - High Country
Superheavy (Mick Jagger/Dave Stewart) - S/T 
The Jayhawks - Mockingbird Time
The Waterboys - Appointment w/ Mr. Yeats
Van Dyke Parks - Arrangements Vol. 1
Wavves - Life Sux (EP)