Akron/Family - "Love is Simple"

Akron/Family - Ed is a Portal (Young God 2007)

Akron/Family – Love is Simple / Young God

While it seems like the entire indiesphere has taken up orbit around the Springsteen sun, basking in its scruffy glow and aping the conscientious celebration that is an E Street concert, a small comet by the name of Akron/Family has found a comfortable centripetal force circling a different dimming star by the name of The Band. Granted this celestial body isn’t shining quite as bright as it once did, the influence it has had on American music is undeniable. In the late 60s, The Band inhaled almost every significant niche of popular music at the time and exhaled a sound that intertwined aspects of Dylan’s folk, Sonny Boy’s blues, Redding’s R&B, the Beatles/Stones/Presley’s rock’n’roll as well as elements of gospel and classical music. It was Americana music as interpreted by outsiders (they were mostly Canadian) and was as rough-hewed as it was skilled. There was no singular songwriter, voice or leader, but a band… er… the Band where everyone contributed ideas and talents, and mostly importantly, the framework of their sound left plenty of room for experimentation thanks to the experience and open-mindedness of the players involved. Springsteen, on the other hand, has been pretty much just improving is production quality since 1975. So let’s leave the increasingly cluttered orbit of the Springsteen sun for The Band galaxy, where the Akron/Family comet is allowed to circle unhinged to a specific route and explore other gravitational pulls when seen fit.

The “four extremely nice, sincere and well-mmanered young men from rural America who came to NYC (in 2002) to make music” (YG bio) are unleashing their second full-length record for Michael Gira’s (Angels of Light/Swans) Young God Records; their fourth release when counting the 2005 split with Angels of Light and the 2006 elongated EP, Meek Warrior. Within three years the enchanting psychedelic near-hippie jamfest that is the Akron/Family have made a significant name for themselves thanks to a string of excellent recordings and a seemingly non-stop and very well revered live show. Their music, while rooted in sing-along folk and twangy classic rock, refuses to settle into one particular sound and continuously pushes back any musical boundary they approach. Hushed folk meets free jazz skronk, ambitious prog-pop meets one-chord blues, classic rock’s jeans and sweat meets psychedelia’s elaborate, colorful costumes. It is a wonderful tree where The Band, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Captain Beefheart, Animal Collective, Spirtualized, Creedance Clearwater Revival and Pharoah Sanders all come to sit around and jam into the night.

The bearded mid-20 quartet continue to tease and tweak their unpredictable sound with full-length number two, Love is Simple. The main concern for the Fam at this point should be, and very well may be by the sound of this album, not letting this established unpredictability become predictable. As so many psyche and prog bands of the mid-70s can attest, wacky extravagance isn’t as effective once everyone is expecting a mind-bending turn at each and every corner; it just becomes the norm. The Brooklyn boys are handling this issue with care, Love is Simple has all of the hippie ideal sing-alongs, ambient noodling, contagious grooves, skronk outbursts and skilled musicianship you’ve come to expect, but the vibe is thankfully distinctive from previous releases. This can probably be attested to the band hooking up with producer Andrew Weiss, who is the crazed mastermind sitting behind the boards on the majority of the Ween albums. Holed up in Weiss’s western New Jersey studio, Zion House of Flesh, the Akron/Family were able to harness their musical glee, expressing it through a newfound structure of mostly classic rock electric guitar and elliptical choruses. Weiss was not only able to crisp the production to perfection, but lasso that moment in the early 70s when the combination of prog-pop, country rock, blues, R&B and proto-punk led to the style we now refer to as classic rock (see: The Band) without losing sight of concurrent movements of the same era like free jazz, krautrock and ambient; in other words, just the right balance of accessible familiarity and experimental challenges.

Bookending the album are the Woodstock ideals that are admittedly hard to escape when stuck in the era the Akron/Family are purveying; everyone sing along now: “ go out and love, love, looooooooove ev—ery—one.” Don’t worry if that’s not your cup of tea though, the introduction lasts less than two-minutes before jumping head first into the yell along folk anthem “Ed is a Portal.” Though mostly just a simple Can-derived groove played with just a touch of twang, the Akron/Family color the song with group vocals, choral hand-claps, and enough instrumental nuances to have you picking out details for many spins to come. About half-way through the seven-and-a-half minutes song, the first Band influence is heard with a very effective country-folk bridge accented by bird chirps, lovely melodic percussion and wonderfully out-of-place synth flourishes. It’s one of the many places where so many reference points can be made that it seems almost ridiculous to try and define them. “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead” follows introducing a more somber mood with the utopian 1969 chorus “love is simple,” and “I’ve Got Some Friends” reminds you with its Animal Collective-meets-Langhorne Slim sound that the Fam have as much quirk as they do melancholy. Bridged by two longer experimental and intriguing songs in “Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms” and the climactic “There’s So Many Colors,” the second half of the album mirrors the first half by jumping back and forth between more somber and more jubilant numbers. The highlight is “Of All the Things” that almost comes off Celtic with its accordion-like electric guitar groove and mess hall chants. Like the majority of the tracks though, the song breaks down at the midpoint before rebuilding itself in an even more grandiose manner.

Looking retrospectively at the Akron/Family discography to date and attempting to rank Love is Simple within it is almost a futile effort. Each album really stands on its own, and perhaps the most defining characteristic of Love is Simple is not so much a stylistic difference but the Fam’s increasingly masterful handle on both their more avant-garde and more straight-ahead moments. They have shown they can handle each polar side since the very beginning, but with Weiss’s assistance, the choruses are grander, the skronk is wilier and the rainbows of colorful love-inspired jubilation are as bright as ever. While I do miss the percussive genius Hamid Drake added to Meek Warrior and they have still yet to match the emotional resonance of “Running, Returning” from their self-titled debut, the Akron/Family are only continuing to impress with Love is Simple. The music is boundary-less and their sound is simultaneously reflective, enigmatic, organic, amiable and dreamy. This comet may still be crossing the paths of many influential celestial bodies at this point, but sooner or later you have to think it will completely break orbit and head into areas of infinite space that are yet to be explored.