Akron/Family Doesn't Mess Around

originally published September 12, 2007

What you or I accomplish in 10 minutes on any one of our frantic, over-caffeinated, scattershot days is mere Gorton's fish sticks compared with what Akron/Family achieves in the nine minutes and 29 seconds that comprise the opening track of the band's 2006 long-player Meek Warrior. The song is called "Blessing Force" and you are going to have to bear with me: we join our heroes mid-drum circle, a tribal gestation buttressed by a terse raga.

Just as the listener begins to efficiently vibe on said groove (we are going somewhere and it is awesome, I promise), we are interrupted by a chorus of verbal spazz, rhythmic babble spilling forth in a froth of syllabic ricochet that eventually adjusts and aligns itself in a joyful glee-club chant of the titular lyric. This then gives way to the sort of shamelessly paisley-drenched psych breakdown that was apt to elicit the following reaction from a co-listener: "Are these guys serious?"

Well, Are They?

Answer: Truly. New York-based Akron/Family is a serious band that trades in a brand of timeless gravity that most groups cannot or will not approach. It would be pretty easy to take petty swipes at these folks' body of work with any number of surface-level jabs:

A) They're too eclectic - the screwed-up chin-stroke that accompanies any inquiry into genre specification goes beyond the typical proposal of "band X covering band Y." Over the course of three full-lengths for Young God Records, along with a split release with label boss Michael Gira's post-Swans project Angels of Light, the members of Akron/Family get fingerpaint-messy like they aren't restrained by whatever three genres they've assigned to their MySpace page. People who love to put things in modern-looking boxes might cry "freak-folk" - note the beards in the promo pics - but while the group certainly dips deep into the psych wellspring, it is capable of a near-sentimental acoustic sweetness that is disarming and utterly affable.

B) They're too hippie - their shows have been known to last up to four hours, and the lyric sheets are dotted with some sober-eyed (or not) reflections on love, nature and other things that young, supposedly liberal, upwardly-mobile people are obligated to pretend to not care about.

C) They're too unfocused - jams run free all over "Lake Song/ New Ceremonial Music for Moms" (Moms: "You shouldn't have! Really!") while other songs blurt mission statements plaintively and promptly duck out of sight in preparation for the next sonic rumination.

The reasons anyone could use to justify a dislike for Akron/Family are the same reasons that grant musicians - the kind of people who, knowingly or not, perform a role that has been historically crucial as a tool of socialization and communication beyond the barriers of language and culture - undeserved feelings of superiority or smugness. But as I grow older, I've learned that, although we are apt to grasp onto aesthetic strands of taste and preference, honesty and heart are where great artists find their footing. The members of Akron/Family bear both the former as well as the latter in truckloads. Theirs is a muse with a strong tradition in true trust, reserved not only for one another but for their audience as well. Perceived audaciousness - i.e. "Are they kidding?" - is, at least to this listener, simply the byproduct of musicians attempting to fearlessly and honestly tread ground that is markedly unfashionable and, when executed with this sort of aplomb, of a greater source than the unholy trinity of inspiration that is Money, Sex and Fame.

A Fine Fit

Anyone seeking proof positive vis-à-vis Akron/Family's bona fide status need look no further than the second half of the track "Blessing Force," which transitions from a messy "out"-music piledriver into some Rorschach-test free jazz, complete with Ornette Coleman sax puke. Since it all comes back around in the end, I'm going to leave you with a quote from R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. In the 1999 book Listen to This! and speaking on the subject of how punk rock was perceived in its nascent years, specifically in our sleepy, arch-psychedelic town, he says this: "In New York and Los Angeles, everyone got leather jackets and spiked up their hair… in Athens, everyone just kind of went, 'Gee, that means there aren't really any rules at all and you could do whatever you wanted to.'"

With the release of a new record - a gem by the sweet-not-saccharine name of Love is Simple - next month, Akron/Family emerges as a punk band that surpasses its genre so entirely that you wouldn't even know it was one in the first place. Could anything be more tailor-made for our beloved shire of love and space? I'm telling you once and once only: get on this bus.

Jeff Tobias

Liner Notes is Flagpole's music opinion column.