This is some freaky shit. It's like Syd Barrett if he didn't go insane and start climbing trees, it's early Pink Floyd if they didn't suck. It sounds like someone found these guys somewhere in South Dakota, because these songs sound like South Dakota - open and clean and clear.
They do NOT sound like they were written in Brooklyn. It almost breaks my heart in a way to find out that they were, although I imagine that being confined in a small Brooklyn apartment for days on end might result in the same kind of mind-altering qualities as a life in South Dakota would.
I am not entirely sure I am ready to buy into the entire aesthetic of Akron/Family, and knowing that there were three albums' worth of material ready to release is a little frightening, in a way. I can see this being a record that both Thurston Moore and Steve Earle could like, I could see them on a bill with, say, Magnolia Electric Co., but I could also see them with something loud and rocking.
I am not much for psychedelia, however. I just have not done that many drugs or gone that insane, yet, and there is just a little bit of it here. Just a little.
Michael Gira (x-Swans), who signed Akron/Family to his Young God Records imprint, compares them to "an eerie and twisted version of the Band" and I hate him because he is right. Akron/Family is indeed very American music. That outsider quality comes through. Still, the Band are supposed to be the quintessential American band. I tend to give that title to the MC5 or the Stooges, but then again I am talking loud raw and primitive.
This is the kind of thing where I scratch my head and wonder where all these people who bemoan "there is no good music any more" get off saying it. This isn't trendy Williamsburg hipster crap that's going to be so flavor of the month in 15 minutes. There is art and musicianship and actual songcraft at work here, a sense of timelessness pervades the entire album. Maybe three albums isn't such a scary idea after all.
Article comments
1 - bmarkey
Nicely done. I'm ready to order this disc right now, and I'm pretty much allergic to Mr. Gira and/or The Swans. Thanks for putting Akron/Family on my radar.
2 - Temple Stark
Caryn,
I promoted this review to Advance.net. That means I put it here (and these places) where it could potentially be read by another few hundred thousand readers.
- Thanks much for the post. Temple Stark
3 - Jim H
There is no cult thing - that's just jokey hype or part of their artistic misteps - A/f are pretty much goofy normal (as you or i) young men in a rock band. It's a great album and they totally slap you silly live.
4 - amy king
Click through my blog to my flickr page for recent photos of the akron family (on their way to a show in CT tonight).
5 - ben curry
heard the akron family in belfast a few months ago. excellent. come back soon. there are much more fans now than then. p.s. had to pull the velcrose straps off my shoes to enable me to print this with my toes.