New CDs: Alex G, Duncan Sheik, and Erroll Garner

Alex G

Beach Music

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nolead ends Things are looking up for Alex Giannascoli. The Havertown-reared former Temple student built a rep as an underground songwriter of note with a series of self-released bedroom recordings leading up to last year's stellar DSU. Now he's in the big leagues with Beach Music, the prolific 22-year-old's seventh album, but his first for major indie player Domino. Beach Music retains the approachable, dreamy aesthetic that marked his previous recordings, with a sharper focus and the same knack for melodious, fuzzed-out singer-songwriter pop that recalls his main influence, Elliott Smith. Don't let the noisy opening track throw you: This is pretty, bewitching stuff, from the childlike "Brite Boy" and the shimmering, inward-looking "Bug" to the rapturous "In Love," which sounds like the result of the South Philly songwriter's going on a late-night Chet Baker jag.    - Dan DeLuca
Alex G, with Eskimeaux and Brandon Can't Dance, plays at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at the First Unitarian Church, 2120 Chestnut St. Tickets: $13-15. Information: 215-821-7575, r5productions.com.

nolead begins Duncan Sheik
nolead ends nolead begins Legerdemain nolead ends nolead begins

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nolead ends Adult-alt artiste Duncan Sheik always was theatrical. It was there in his 1990s hits. So it was characteristic of him to take a turn to writing musicals, winning eight Tonys for 2007's Spring Awakening. He followed that with Whisper House, The Nightingale, and this autumn's American Psycho musical. There's a dramatic flair, too, in his latest album, Legerdemain, with glimpses at the past ("Photograph"), fading relationships ("Distant Lover"), and blame ("Hey You"). The cosmopolitan, folky "Half a Room" feels like New York City 1965, with its demands for love and a voice with the sandy quietude of Paul Simon. And "Selling Out" is a fleet-footed look at pop culture's universality. Sheik's touch of Broadway colors the whodunit of "Acquaintance" and the cause-and-effect of "Avalanche" in an album both edgy and elegant. - A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Erroll Garner
nolead ends nolead begins The Complete Concert By the Sea: Recorded Live in Carmel, California September 19, 1955 nolead ends nolead begins

(3 vols., mono; Sony Legacy nolead ends nolead begins ** nolead ends nolead begins **)

nolead ends nolead begins nolead ends    Put this album on and let it make you happy. In 1955, Concert by the Sea, 11 selections from a gig by pianist Erroll Garner, bassist Eddie Calhoun, and drummer Denzil Best, was released, selling more than 200,000 units and establishing Garner as a concert favorite. On that hallowed show's 60th anniversary, the complete Armed Services Radio Network tape has been resurrected, digitally remastered, combed, and filtered, and the result is total delight. The first two discs have the complete show; the third offers the 1955 album and post-concert interviews with the band. With nine previously unreleased tracks, it's about twice as great as the original. Both jazz powerhouse and showman, Garner hits the sweet spot between serious jazz and mass appeal. ("Nothing is really corny," he says in the interview, "if you can find a way to do it.") A bubbly aquifer of musical ideas, he sings along, mutters, chuckles, quotes other tunes, wanders off into hunched chords and darting, melodic figures. Clanging intros give way, unexpectedly, to "Night and Day" and "Lullaby of Birdland." Don't miss his version of "Laura," a romantic noir epic, tresses of liquid notes cascading. - John Timpane

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