Akron/Family: Sub Verses

AKRON/FAMILY: SUB VERSES (2013)

1) No-Room; 2) Way Up; 3) Until The Morning; 4) Sand Talk; 5) Sometimes I; 6) Holy Boredom; 7) Sand Time; 8) Whole World Is Watching; 9) When I Was Young; 10) Samurai.

All right, who called for another order of Animal Collective? On their sixth LP, Akron/Family step away from some of their wildest, most experimental maneuvres, and record a set of songs that would probably sound best next to an Ewokan campfire. Not that Sub Verses aren't wild and experimental — but the album seems to have more discipline, and behave in a more predictable manner than its predecessor. Nor was it recorded in a cabin on Hokkaido: the band moved to Seattle and El Paso for the sessions, which must have produced a healthy effect on their overall sense of reality.

As usual, the band has been praised for its diversity — the songs, in typical Akron/Family fashion, cover plenty of rootsy, artsy, and psycho ground, yet the record does not have a diverse feel, be­cause, by now, we know what a stereotypical Akron/Family treatment is: heavy tribal percussion, instrumental loops, and choral harmony chanting characterize almost all of these songs, be they «bluesy», «folksy», or «baroque» in essence. This time around, however, the shamanistic ritual that they practice seems to have been thought and carried out with more precision and, dare I say it, a larger sense of purpose than usual.

ʽNo-Roomʼ opens the proceedings with an almost math-rock arrangement of busy drum fills and guitar flourishes, while the vocals chant gruff quasi-Tibetan mantras about the difficulties of see­ing and breathing. The song's roll is a bit monotonous, but it actually helps that not as much is going on at the same time as is these guys' usual penchant; this is still not enough to convince the skeptic of any «serious intentions» that the song might have, but at least this makes it «quirky» rather than «confusing». The gloomy accappella part with the "we held on fast, we held on strong" vocals is, in fact, a bit shivery, an excellent achievement considering how rarely these guys manage to stir up a genuine emotional response.

Next comes ʽWay Upʼ — with its dialog between percussion explosions and vocal outbursts pseudo-randomly popping up from different channels, this song probably the Animal Collective rip-off on this album, but Akron/Family come from a different background: they are a rock band, after all, and their wil­ling­ness to learn from their furry electronic brothers does not go all the way — the sounds of these tribal campfire anthems are, on the whole, crunchier than those of AC.

Next comes everything else: as usual, Akron/Family care little about catchiness (although there are so many looped choruses here that, by and large, something is bound to catch on), but the real reason why individual songs are not worth individual commentary is that they are all part of the same lengthy ritual, and each separate part of it, taken on its own, is meaningless outside of the general context. Towards the end, they seem to get a little more sentimental on tracks like ʽWhen I Was Youngʼ and ʽSamuraiʼ (even a little nostalgic, I'd say), but that, too, sort of feels like a natural conclusion of the ritual after the «heavy» parts.

And some of the parts, mind you, are quite heavy — ʽSand Talkʼ, ʽSand Timeʼ, and particularly ʽHoly Boredomʼ are often drowned in deep fuzz and flattened out with percussive sledgehammers. The heaviness itself is nothing new for Akron/Family at this time, but it does not seem gratuitous­ly arbitrary (like the heavy riffage on ʽSo It Goesʼ from the preceding album) — it just highlights the energy-demanding parts of the campfire ritual.

None of what I have just said means that this is a «good album». Like most of the Akron/Family records, I do not properly «get» it — nothing will ever resolve this band's problem with sounding natural, not to mention «relevant» in any way. But somehow, this time around they really arran­ged their ingredients in a way that can be intriguing and stimulating for whoever needs a little extra intrigue and stimulation these days. I'd like to say that ʽHoly Boredomʼ is a good title to describe the entire album, but in reality, it's more like ʽUnholy Non-Boredomʼ — a focused, con­centrated effort to make spirits ride that ends up a fascinating misfire, where their Hokkaido ex­perience was just a pretentious mess of a misfire. At least, such is my initial impression: watch me return to this record in about three hundred years, and change this opinion.

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Akron/Family: S/T II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey Of Shinju

AKRON/FAMILY: S/T II: THE COSMIC BIRTH AND JOURNEY OF SHINJU (2011)

1) Silly Bears; 2) Island; 3) A AAA O A WAY; 4) So It Goes; 5) Another Sky; 6) Light Emerges; 7) Cast A Net; 8) Tatsuya Neon Purple Walkby; 9) Fuji I; 10) Say What You Want To; 11) Fuji II; 12) Canopy; 13) Creator.

Okay, this is no longer tolerable. According to hearsay, this album, in its entirety, was composed near a live volcano in a cabin on Hokkaido (see front cover). Apparently the next attempt to re­vitalize and revolutionize modern music will consist of composing and arranging an entire album while suspended on a cable from a helicopter circumflying a New Guinean jungle valley. This is the kind of approach that is bound to breed 21st century Mozarts and McCartneys.

Amazing feeling — it is not as if the Akron/Family approach here has changed much, yet I sense more irritation brewed by this record than by all of their previous catalog put together. Doubtless, chronology is part of the reason behind this feel. For a debut album from a freshly strung experi­mental band, S/T II would have been a respectable promenade — show off one's chops, eclecti­city and open-mindedness. For a band that, after groping in the dark for several years, had some­how begun to finally justify its existence, it is a total disaster.

What does it all sound and seem like, this time? Imagine The Animal Collective, only without their unique electronic kaleidoscope and without their — honestly amazing — ability to create otherworldly vocal harmony waves. But with their, often pointless, mix of lazy folk vibes with tribal droning, avantgarde dissonance, and nonsensical lyrics. Now hang on; I am not saying that this is the first time ever that we are getting this stuff from A/F. But even on their least interesting records, they used to at least balance the pointless stuff with pure, unspoiled moments of beauty. I never liked Meek Warrior, but it had 'Gone Beyond' on it, reminding me of the fact that there were real people with actual human hearts out there, and one could, with relative ease, try and es­tablish a wi-fi link to them. S/T II is a closed network in itself.

There is plenty of energy. 'Silly Bears' jump around like crazy to a life-asserting buzz of electro­nic equipment and choral vocals, and 'Another Sky' scatters neo-psychedelic happiness all over the place. But already Seth Olinsky's quiet mumbling into his sweater undermines all the joy, and, what's worse, not a single of these sonic overlays strikes any soul chords — everything is too ste­rile, too stuffy, too over-thought and over-calculated.

And what once used to be prettiness has mutated into by-the-book minimalism with zero impact, e. g. the concluding duo of 'Canopy' and 'Creator', on which introspective acoustic, angelic slide and tender, fragile singing try to combine in heavenly beauty and end up sounding like a lame pa­rody on The Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin, masterminded by a bunch of robots. I don't know — was Ryan Vanderhoof really the heart and soul of this band, confined to making this plastic kind of sound from now on, or is it simply a case of inhaling too much volcanic ash, with subsequent clogging of one's spiritual channels? Regardless of the answer — a vicious thumbs down to the most technically complex and the most excruciatingly boring Akron/Family album as of yet.

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Akron/Family: Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

AKRON/FAMILY: SET 'EM WILD, SET 'EM FREE (2009)

1) Everyone Is Guilty; 2) River; 3) Creatures; 4) The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen; 5) Set 'Em Free Pt. 1; 6) Gravelly Mountains Of The Moon; 7) Many Ghosts; 8) MBF; 9) They Will Appear; 10) Sun Will Shine; 11) Last Year.

Lead vocalist Ryan Vanderhoof quit Akron/Family soon after the release of Love Is Simple, lea­ving the rest of the band as a trio. Solution? Why, simple: just hire a supporting team of nine extra studio musicians — and release your biggest-sounding album up to date!

Of course, saying that Akron/Family are trying to «branch out» on this record sounds odd, as if there ever was a time when these guys were content to strictly adhere to one rigid formula. And yet, branching out they surely are... again. If Love Is Simple took its cues from The Beta Band and The Animal Collective, this time they seem to be digging deeper, soaking in influences from the classic prog-rock scene(s): Yes, King Crimson, and particularly the Canterbury acts. In fact, already the opening track, 'Everyone Is Guilty', jumps in with the jazzy feel of a 'Roundabout', moves through a hard-rocking section technically worthy of a 'Red', and has just about the same number of signature changes per minute as yer average National Health composition.

But leave it to Akron/Family to stun the listener and make already the second track sound like it belonged on a kiddie album by They Might Be Giants — a bouncy, catchy, and supremely nerdy at­tempt at crossing liberal college student with sentimental hillbilly ('River'); a song that, certain­ly, neither Yes nor King Crimson nor any Canterbury-related musician would ever think of wri­ting — except, perhaps, as a lame one-time joke. Akron/Family, however, are not joking, or at least one never knows where the joke starts and where it ends.

Still, Set 'Em Wild, as far as it seems to me, hits the target further away from its center than Love Is Simple did. On that record, the balance between wildness, boldness, and tenderness was just about right. Here, they gravitate away from the sentimental hippie attitudes. Dug deep into the middle of the record are songs like 'Set 'Em Free Pt. 1' and 'The Alps & Their Orange Ever­green', lovely hippie-folk ballads with nothing particularly «freakish» about them; and the album ends with the big and moving anthemics of 'Sun Will Shine', very impressive until the final car­nival noise section needlessly cuts in to deflate the atmosphere.

But the rest, once again, reverts us to the art of dicking around with no particular place to go. Heaps of free-form noise on 'Gravelly Mountains Of The Moon', wild industrial screaming on 'MBF', sort of a New Wave-influenced folk-jazz thang on 'Creatures', replete with tricky progra­mming of the drum machine — I fail to see how exactly these performances tie in with the more «heartfelt» parts of the album. And even per se, they are not all that interesting. So much weird­ness for weirdness' sake, from all periods, epochs, and genres has already been synthesized, and Akron/Family still haven't found a proper way to make a new kind of weirdness, all their own.

As a result, I probably like this record for all the wrong reasons: the band's new portfolio of in­terests should be Set 'Em Wild's major selling point, but its best songs are still the ones that could easily have been written for their self-titled debut. Misguided Moment No. 1: 'Last Year', on which the band, simulating inspiration and determination, chants "Last year was a hard year for such a long time, this year's gonna be ours" against some minimal piano backing. I know they are just trying to cheer themselves up after the loss of a key member, but it is hard to get rid of the feeling that with Love Is Simple, they pulled themselves up by the hair as high as possible, and now it is really back-to-the-swamp time.

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Akron/Family: Love Is Simple

AKRON/FAMILY: LOVE IS SIMPLE (2007)

1) Love, Love, Love (Everyone); 2) Ed Is A Portal; 3) Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead; 4) I've Got Some Friends; 5) Lake Song / New Ceremonial Music For Moms; 6) There's So Many Colours; 7) Crickets; 8) Phenomena; 9) Pony's O.G.; 10) Of All The Things; 11) Love, Love, Love (reprise).

One marvelous description of this album by a user on RateYourMusic stated that it sounds «like Wilco on speed playing guitar-based cover versions of Animal Collective songs» — so complete­ly up to the point that I find it hard to add anything worth adding. But let us at least try to put it in the context of Akron/Family's previous releases. Maturity? Development? Stagnation? Identity crisis? Artistic breakthrough? Where's that curve heading to?

I am not going to say that we are finally beginning to see the light; but there are some welcome signs on this album that make it, if not more accessible, then at least a bit more understandable than its predecessors. For the first time, Akron/Family seem to be getting a wee bit bored with ex­perimentation for experimentation's sake, and seek to adapt their weirdness to one of many avai­lable musical/artistic philosophies. With all of their influences still influencing, no wonder the chosen model of action is the one that demands to get together and love one another right now. The fact that all of its components are filtered through Akron's madness is insignificant in compa­rison. The good news is, we are finally getting somewhere.

The first minute and a half, which the band spends normally playing their acoustic and electric guitars and normally singing about how "every precious human being's been a precious parent to you... what can be done? what can we do? go out and love everyone", truly sets a Crosby, Stills & Nash-like framework for the rest. All right, so the very next song is called 'Ed Is A Portal', and consists of several meandering sections that incorporate folksy banjo drones, tribal chants, psycho jangles, and echo-drenched neo-Californian vocal stylizations, so you can see not that much has really changed. But 'Love, Love, Love' has given us a vector, and in this light, everything feels a bit different.

The lyrics to 'Ed Is A Portal' seem like schizophrenic pseudo-scientific babble, but the guys simply try to bring together all the loose ways of human existence, from the primordially primi­tive (hence all the campfire shamanisms) to the hallucinative to those based on (at least, superfi­cially) more rational approaches to the space and time continuum theories. On 'Phenomena', one of the album's few fully-fleshed out folk-rock songs, they explain what they mean: "Things are not what they seem to be — nor are they otherwise". Another stylistically varied suite begins with a minute-and-a-half long acappella chanting of "There's so many colours — without the dirty windows". C'mon people, all those clues and we're still not getting this band?

It's not like their sudden urge to become more friendly, cuddly, and transparent automatically makes Love Is Simple into a masterpiece. Songs like 'Crickets' and 'Phenomena' still only ma­nage to be «pretty» rather than «gorgeous» (for all the aptness of the quoted description, they still have a long way to go to reach the melodic sensitivity of Jeff Tweedy), and each of the long meande­ring chants / ragas / ambient improvs / madhouse celebrations, on its own, has just about the same overwhelming potential as their earlier attempts. It's just that now, armed with a master­plan, the good bits seem better than similarly good bits used to sound before. You can even allow yourself to wonder at the meaning of the line "Don't be afraid, you're already dead" in the context of "Don't be afraid, it's only love — love is simple".

In short, John Lennon circa 1967 would probably have loved this stuff, much of which manages to pay tribute to 'All You Need Is Love' and 'I Am The Walrus' at the exact same time. It does not so much entertain as stimulate, of course, but it is arguably the first time that Akron/Family try to assault us on the heart front in addition to the mind — rather crudely hinted at by the organ's jui­cy depiction on the album sleeve. Correspondingly, it is the first time that my heart agrees, if still a bit reulctantly, to join in the thumbs up ritual together with the mind. Love Is Simple may be anything but truly simple, but, at the very least, it is now seductive.

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Akron/Family: Meek Warrior

AKRON/FAMILY: MEEK WARRIOR (2006)

1) Blessing Force; 2) Gone Beyond; 3) Meek Warrior; 4) No Space In This Realm; 5) The Lightning Bolt Of Com­pas­sion; 6) The Rider (Dolphin Song); 7) Love And Space.

Third time around and these guys still haven't properly explained the nature of their mission on this planet. However, the transition from second album to third is already less jarring than the one before that. By now we know fairly well that Akron/Family like folk music, free-form jazz, and psychedelic sounds, and that the combination of all three of these elements in unpredictable ways is what sets them apart from potential competition. So, Meek Warrior is the first record that we can safely call «generic Akron/Family» and view as a stabilization of sorts.

The record is a collaboration with jazz percussionist Hamid Drake, whose skill is supposedly much admired by the band, and this prompts them to rise to the instrumental and artistic chal­lenge: 'Blessing Force', opening the album, is a colorful nine-minute melange of everything that could ever matter, from wild tribal drumming to wilder tribal chanting to blues-rock jamming to raga to, finally, total chaos and more Dolphy-style catastrophic dissonance. Unfortunately, there is simply not enough motivation. The trick, as usual, is in how well and for what purpose these individual parts shift into one another — and if the «how well» part is nothing to fear about, the «for what purpose» part rests unanswered. Much the same applies to the record's second lengthy track as well ('The Rider').

Annoying and frustrating — behind all these gimmicks, all of the time, there hides a perfectly de­cent folk-rock outfit with potential, prowess, and feeling. They prefer to realize this potential through repetitive mantras, but when they are not being repetitive for the sake of shocking (e. g. a looped acappella chanting of "love and space, love and space"), these are good, sensitive mantras — 'Gone Beyond', which slowly and steadily does weave out a feeling of "going completely be­yond"; 'The Lightning Bolt Of Compassion', sung dreamily and romantically in a pseudo-lan­guage probably made up on the spot; 'Love And Space', almost insulting to the «typical A/F fan» in its gospel-folk straightforwardness, that is, until that silly acappella loop begins.

In fact, even if that would have technically been just another gimmick, not to mention adding a serious threat of dying from monotonosis, I would have preferred an entire album of such mantras instead of these alternations with dissonant jazz and tribal howling. Akron/Family seem to be at their best when they're quietly picking the acoustic and humming along, not when they're trying to show some muscle — «Meek Warriors» indeed; sure wish that title would have been more jus­tified. As it is, the album is uneven. A bunch of well-meaning, not-untalented lads caught up in the pointless progressive drives of the XXIst century. A sad, but avoidable, fate.

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