Free Music Monday Chris Cohen Caller No99

"What is that, my nature?" Chris Cohen asks, simply and sweetly, mid-"Caller No. 99," amidst a sunkissed wash of flanged guitar and rickety drum-machines and dolloped organs and alien-spacecraft steel-pan drums. The question lingers like the guitar licks, answering the question like interpreting a dream.

The jam begins with Cohen waking up ("a year too late/just to sit around and wait"), roused from his slumber by the clock radio. There's plentiful imagery from old-school analog radio —not least of all the call-in competition number of the title— which, in turns, goes with the song's gentle evocations of the soft-pop and yacht-rock of AM radio; a fantasy sound from a fantasized "station above the tuning dial."

"Caller No.99" marks the first solo song from the former leader of the Curtains, co-leader of Cryptacize, one-time guitarist in Deerhoof, and sometime drummer in White Magic. It comes from Overgrown Path, his first-ever on-his-lonesome album, which is due out September 25 on Captured Tracks.

• Chris Cohen, "Caller No.99"

Free Music Monday Mi Ami Time of Love

When Mi Ami arose from the ashes of frenetic DC outfit Black Eyes, they spun that post-punk/post-hardcore/free-jazz-ish furore into dubbier, more aqueous and tranced-out jams. Their impressive 2009 debut, was still the work of a screechy rockband, but as time's passed, Mi Ami has grown more and more electronic.

That comes to a culmination with their freshly-pressed fourth LP, Decade. With Daniel Martin-McCormick seemingly spending more time, these days, making retro-old-school-house jams as Ital, so, too, does Mi Ami sound like they're courting dancefloors.

Whilst there's dubbed out ripples through "Time of Love," it sounds for all the world like a house remix of a punk-funk act: a bassline turning eternal funky circles, a hoarse-throated vocal chopped into a half-heard snippet that doesn't bother the groove, and the core beats boom-tick-ing to a euphoric infinity.

Elsewhere on Decade, Martin-McCormick's voice is allowed to air its snarling, political, rough-edged screech. But, here, sanded away, the effect is symbolic: "Time of Love" effectively scrubbing away all traces of the duo's punk-rock pasts; Mi Ami eyeing new horizons.

Mi Ami, "Time of Love"

From the Vaults Friday Afghan Whigs Gentlemen 1993

The Year: 1983
The Album: Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen
Who it Influenced: The Hold Steady, Titus Andronicus, The Constantines, Foo Fighters, Mark Lanegan, Interpol

Chances are, if you're going to a summer festival this year, you're going to be watching the Afghan Whigs. On many bills, they're pretty high up, a feted entry on the line-up effectively filling the 'reformed '90s rockband' slot previously occupied by Pavement, Pulp et al.

For younger listeners, maybe this doesn't seem strange: the Afghan Whigs have a bunch of celebrated records —1993's Gentlemen has had book written about it— and were a part of that happy orgy of Sub Pop acts who inked to major labels and played Lollapalooza. I mean, they were peers of Soundgarden and Nirvana, say no more.

Except, in their day, the Afghan Whigs were defined by their underdog status. Their fans came to worship them whilst building up a weird inferiority complex; the lack of (relative) commercial success leading Whigs lovers to believe they appreciated and understood Greg Dulli and co in a way that casual listeners just couldn't get.

And never was there more a case for this than with Gentlemen, which for all its lack of an MTV-blasted hit single, was an astonishing LP: a full-length narrative study in infidelity, sex and drug addiction, and deceit that only revealed itself over sustained listens.

• Full review: Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen

Dan Deacons New Album America Out in August

Everyone favorite bearded-entertainer, one-man electro showman, and Francis Ford Coppola collaborator has a brand new album. Dan Deacon —the Baltimore musician behind such delirious LPs as 2007's Spiderman of the Rings and 2009's Bromst will release his ninth full-length on the 28 of August, via Domino.

The album is called America. As provocation, not patriotism. The press-release for the record offers: "the album demonstrates anger, confusion, and apocalyptic anxiety over corporatism and war, but finds consolation in the geography of the United States and in recent social movements both domestic and international."

The record finds Deacon employing a range of acoustic instruments —guitars, brass, strings, woodwinds— and moving away from the brash sound of Bromst. "The A-side is all pop songs; it's all killer no filler," Deacon told me last year, of the then-in-the-works album. "The B-side is one 20-minute piece divided into five movements and there's no pop song structure; it's a lot of development over time. It's both my poppiest and most experimental record."

The first single from America, "Lots," can be downloaded at the Dan Deacon website. Deacon has a handful of festival appearances and a European toured for September lined up, but expect plenty more tour dates before 2012 is out.

America Track List:
1. "Guilford Avenue Bridge"
2. "True Thrush"
3. "Lots"
4. "Prettyboy"
5. "Crash Jam"
6. "USA I: Is a Monster"
7. "USA II: The Great American Desert"
8. "USA III: Rail"
9. "USA IV: Manifest"

Tour Now and Sunrise:
July 7: Des Moines, IA - 80/35 Festival
July 12: New York, NY - Pier 84
July 14: Cincinatti, OH - Bunbury Music Festival
July 21: Antigonish, NS - Evolve Festival
September 1: Chicago, IL - North Coast Music Festival
September 7: Raleigh, NC - Hopscotch Music Festival
September 19: Prague, Czech Republic - Meet Factory
September 20: Berlin, Germany - Festsall Kreuzberg
September 21: Hamburg, Germany - Reepers
September 22: Eindehoven, Netherlands - Area 51
September 23: Amsterdam, Netherlands - Bitterzoet
September 24: Brussels, Belgium - Botanique
September 25: Paris, France - Le Trebando
September 26: London, England - Scala
September 28: Manchester, England - Islington Mill
September 29: Brighton, England - The Haunt

Free Music Monday The XX Open Eyes Demo

The forthcoming second LP for downbeat London outfit The XX is one of the most anticipated albums of 2012, a chance for them to follow-up the intensely-acclaimed and unexpectedly-successful debut LP, XX, they dropped back in 2009.

The first taste from it is the most tentative sketch: the freely administered "Open Eyes (Demo)," which lets you know its nature in titular parentheses. The rise of digitally-aided home-recording has meant the distinction between the demo and the finished product has grown far smaller, but "Open Eyes" harkens back to the cavernous divide of yore.

Where its LP successor will be electronically aided, sonically radio-ready, and recorded in an expensive studio, this demonstration version really just sounds like Romy Madley Croft caroling quietly over a few forlorn bass notes and plentiful tape-hiss.

The charm in it comes from trying to pick out what Croft is whispering amidst the hiss. It sounds like a lovesong filled with laments: "you can tell there's something wrong/I've been here, you have been gone." But all's well that ends well, and the lyrics culminate with the author finding a safe place to hang her thematic hat. "With you by my side," Croft sings, "everything'll be alright."

The XX, "Open Eyes (Demo)" (via Stereogum)

Free Music Monday The XX Open Eyes Demo

The forthcoming second LP for downbeat London outfit The XX is one of the most anticipated albums of 2012, a chance for them to follow-up the intensely-acclaimed and unexpectedly-successful debut LP, XX, they dropped back in 2009.

The first taste from it is the most tentative sketch: the freely administered "Open Eyes (Demo)," which lets you know its nature in titular parentheses. The rise of digitally-aided home-recording has meant the distinction between the demo and the finished product has grown far smaller, but "Open Eyes" harkens back to the cavernous divide of yore.

Where its LP successor will be electronically aided, sonically radio-ready, and recorded in an expensive studio, this demonstration version really just sounds like Romy Madley Croft caroling quietly over a few forlorn bass notes and plentiful tape-hiss.

The charm in it comes from trying to pick out what Croft is whispering amidst the hiss. It sounds like a lovesong filled with laments: "you can tell there's something wrong/I've been here, you have been gone." But all's well that ends well, and the lyrics culminate with the author finding a safe place to hang her thematic hat. "With you by my side," Croft sings, "everything'll be alright."

The XX, "Open Eyes (Demo)" (via Stereogum)

From the Vaults Friday Jim ORourke Eureka 1999

The Year: 1999
The Album: Jim O'Rourke, Eureka
Who it Influenced: Wilco, The Dodos, Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors, AU, Sandro Perri

In the mid-to-late-90's, Jim O'Rourke felt, in some ways, omnipresent. Long before the internet made every musician feel omnipresent, made those connections between bands public and banal, O'Rourke's name was like a key, a clue, for those sound enthusiasts carefully poring over liner notes, production credits, and thanks lists; for those into the burgeoning revelation of reissue culture, and the secret, lost history of experimental music and forgotten longplaying casualties.

He was a solo artist and studio engineer, an experimentalist with a pop music jones, and a musician who both learned from tradition and mocked convention. His album-credit-list omnipresence was due to his seemingly-tireless work ethic: largely from a list of unending production/arrangement jobs for the then-vital Chicago scene, but also via a furious rate of solo recordings.

Early on, these were often arch-academic affairs, extremes of avant-gardery made as a sideline to O'Rourke's main band, Gastr del Sol (whom he split with David Grubbs). But 1997's Bad Timing changed that: a suite of long instrumental pieces steeped in John Fahey-inspired bluegrass banjo-plucking, minimalist repetition, and post-rock rise/swell; but delivered with a sly, quizzical, ever-shifting approach to production.

Bad Timing marked the first of O'Rourke's 'pop' albums; each named for a film by British auteur Nicholas Roeg. It was followed by 1999's magnificent Eureka, which captured O'Rourke's particular new working way brilliantly: bluegrass guitars, bubbling electronics, Bacharach/David arrangments slyly, and a hushed voice singing dryly-comic lyrics. There's no simple emotions here —save for the artist's obvious joy in his craft— but plentiful intellectual rigour, admirable composition, and lyrical in-jokes for those listening closely.

Eventually, O'Rourke would go weirdly 'overground': becoming a fully-fledged member of Sonic Youth and the producer who turned Wilco from alt-country bar-band into sonic explorers. He'd stop making his own pop records, move to Tokyo, and fade slowly away from omnipresence.

• Full review: Jim O'Rourke, Eureka