PRESS
Akron/Family | Review
Rolling Stone Magazine | David Fricke
What if Pink Floy gave birth to Ummagumma in the Band's basement at Big Pink?
Meek Warrior
(With photo of band in paper issue)
Akron/Family are a four-man band based in Brooklyn, of assorted rural origins (in Pennsylviania, California and upstate New York) and now roaming all over a wide, open space where antique folk balladry, primal drone and explosive improvisation meet and melt in a woodland psychedelia that answers an age-old musical question: What if Pink Floy gave birth to Ummagumma in the Band's basement at Big Pink? There is nothing retiring about the first nine minutes of Meek Warrior - "Blessing Force" is practically an album in itself, a mounting-hysteria suite of Hawkind-like overdrive, healing-ritual chant and free-jazz blowing. The middle of the record is softer communion pagan sing-along and log-cabin jamming that turns wild and electric again in the ecstatic, tumbling rock of "The Rider (Dolphin Song)." Joining singer instrumentalists Ryan Vanderhoof, Seth Olinksy, Miles Seaton and Dana Janssen in this alchemy are jazz drummer Hamid Drake and the members of the Toronto bands Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene, making this true family music.