DC September 25 New Release Recap

Another banner week for releases this week, not only in quantity (we're heavy into the major release season) but in quality as well. Among the notable: Mumford and Sons' eagerly awaited Babel, John Hiatt's Mystic Pinball, Sera Cahoone's excellent Deer Creek Canyon, Danish chamber/pop masters Efterklang and their Piramida and Ben Sollee's Half-Made Man. We're also steering you towards the latest from Becky Stark's Lavender Diamond, Brit neo-folk songwriters Lucy Rose and Joe Banfi and rising piano-pop troubadour AJ Edwards. You may also want to peruse our full listing which includes new stuff from No Doubt, Bettye Lavette, Green Day, Jason Collett and Michael McDermott. Get a look at some of our features, link to listen to music and see the complete DC schedule below...

Mumford and Sons - Babel (Glassnote) - Sophomore album from the drummer-free multi-platinum-selling Brit folk/rockers is the most highly anticipated release of the fall, a self-described "evolution not a revolution"...the conundrum for a band whose whirlwind strumfests best suited for the corner of a noisy pub is translating their success to a larger, arena-sized stage -- a challenge met head on with a new album that's bigger, cleaner and perhaps even more euphoric in it's heart-on-sleeve passions -- a logical, predictable step that will inevitably garner criticism from those looking for the more ramshackle charms of their 2009 juggernaut Sigh No More...Marcus Drav's once again is in the producer's chair...more DC

John Hiatt has been writing classic songs for longer than most of the current crop of tunesmiths have been alive and, we're pleased to say, it would appear that he's in no rush to slow down now. Mystic Pinball, his 21st solo album in nearly 40 years of recording, is his third consecutive collection revealing a grittier, grungier roots/rock agenda as he once again taps Kevin “Caveman” Shirley (The Black Crowes), the producer who helped bring a rough and ragged quality to Hiatt's 2011 Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns...more DC

There's a reason Seattle songwriter Sera Cahoone named her third album Deer Creek Canyon (September 25, Sub Pop) after her Colorado childhood home. A pervasive theme of restlessness and sense of place, what she calls the ever-present gravitational pull of home", forms the unifying lyrical backdrop for an album of exceptionally fine and nuanced Americana. Much of Canyon's appeal comes from Cahoone's naturally relaxed singing style, a voice that emits cool, detachment while evoking a warm, inviting and almost conversational tone...more DC

Piramida (September 25, 4AD), the fourth album from the Danish classically-influenced band Efterklang, takes it's title from an abandoned Russian village in the Arctic circle, inspiration and allegory for what the band calls "the cycle of human creations that being creations like an entire city left to decay in the Arctic or the cycles of our interpersonal relationships in life." Heady and heavy, for sure. Efterklang's ambitious forays into progressive art/pop and eclectic classical minimalism combined with an array of field recordings from the trio's visit to the title's ghost town -- chopped and mixed -- turn Piramida into an adventure that is ornately cinematic while remaining remarkably accessible...more DC

Frontwoman/songwriter Becky Stark is the creative spark behind Lavender Diamond, an L.A.-based quartet displaying diverse and shiny facets of resplendent, imaginative (sm)art-pop. New album Incorruptible Heart is the long awaited follow up to 2007's well-received Imagine My Love and was recorded and produced by OK Go's Damian Kulash, Jr. and Flaming Lips collaborator Dave Fridmann at Fridmann's upstate New York base...more DC

“I wanted it to have a raw, real-time performance quality,” Ben Sollee says of his new album Half-Made Man. “This is kinetic expression. I dug deep into myself and asked the musicians to go there with me. To my ear, it sounds like musical search party; we often find what we’re looking for in between defined styles and genres." That adventurous attitude seems second nature to the Kentucky-bred, cello-toting singer-songwriter, a musician who has toured with fellow string virtuosos Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck and, at the request of Yim Yames, recorded with My Morning Jacket...more DC

As fortuitous breaks go, AJ Edwards received a pretty major one when producer Aaron Johnson, best known for his work for piano-pop purveyors The Fray, agreed to take the Boston-born songwriter into a Hollywood studio to hammer out a few songs. Alongside engineer Warren Huart (Augustana, Howie Day) and a handpicked band of players (including veteran guitarist Tim Pierce), Edwards and Johnson recorded tracks that have become the nucleus of the new five-song EP Where The Rain Ricochets, released independently this past May and now set for a full national release...more DC

Northwich U.K.'s Joe Banfi counts Nick Drake and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska as seminal influences on his music -- but then he tosses in The Deftones and Rage Against The Machine to boot. Signed to the dependably great Communion group on the strength of some unsolicited demos and produced by label co-founder Ian Grimble, Banfi's new 4-song EP Iron (September 24) taps those disparate forces for a promising, all-too-brief collection that carries its weightiness on the strings of an acoustic and the strength of Banfi's supremely expressive vocals...more DC

We like the fact that Lucy Rose began work on her major label debut with producer Charlie Hugall (Ed Sheeran, Florence and the Machine) at her parents' home Warwickshire. For all the critical buzz surrounding the 22-year-old nu-folk singer and songwriter, the unpretentious and grounded lack of irony that permeates her artful music appears to be as natural and unassuming as her accent. Debut album Like I Used To (September 24, Sony U.K.) is nonetheless an ambitious project of depth and maturity, melodies that skitter and dart lightly carrying lyrics that tumble forth and then seems suspended mid-air...more DC

More September 25 New Releases:

Angie Stone - Rich Girl
Bettye LaVette - Thankful N' Thoughtful
Caspian - Waking Season
Chris Cohen - Overgrown Path
Django Django - S/T
Dragonette - Bodyparts
Dum Dum Girls - End of Daze (EP)
Eight Belles - Girls Underground
Elton John vs. Pnau - Good Morning to the Night (Deluxe)
Frightened Rabbit - State Hospital EP
Glen Campbell & Jimmy Webb - In Session (CD/DVD)
Green Day - ¡Uno!
Hundred Waters - S/T (DIG; CD: 10/16)
Jason Collett - Reckon
Joe Bonamassa - Beacon Theater: Live From NY
Kara McGraw - The Hound & The Hare
Kingsfoil - A Beating Heart Is A Bleeding Heart
Low Cut Connie - Call Me Sylvia
Lucy Kaplansky - Reunion
Mary Waterson & Oliver Knight - Hidden
Melody's Echo Chamber - S/T
Michael McDermott - Hit Me Back
No Doubt - Push and Shove
Paul Carrack - Good Feeling (UK)
Preservation Hall Jazz Band - 50th Anniversary Concert/Carnegie Hall
R.E.M. - Document (25 Anniv. Ed.)
Shemekia Copeland - 33 1/3
The Lost Brothers - The Passing of the Night
The Soft Pack - Strapped
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico (Deluxe 6-CD Box)
The Yuya - A Boy, A Queen & A Fish (U.K.)
Trapper Schoep & The Shades - Run, Engine, Run
Various - Frankenweenie Unleashed
Wickerbird - The Crow Mother
Yoko Ono, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore - Yokokimthurston (EP)