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Love Is Simple | Review
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Zachary Hermann | Diamondback Crazy definitely permeates throughout Love Is SimpleDuring the opening seconds of the fourth song on Akron/Family's latest album, a voice interrupts the frantic picking and singing to pose the question, "Have you noticed everyone around here is crazy?" Crazy definitely permeates throughout Love Is Simple, Akron/Family's second full album (third album overall if you count the mini-album, Meek Warrior). The range of sounds and ideas represents a true collective genius within the band - a genius which occasionally spins out of control - and while love may be simple, the Akron/Family's new album certainly is not. The album lives and breathes in the sort of three-dimensional space few bands can manage to achieve in the age of digital recording. Though Akron/Family thrives mostly on its renowned stage reputation, there is just as much to praise in the group's towering studio presence. Working with producer Andrew Weiss (Ween) for the first time, Akron/Family has delivered one of the year's most fascinating efforts. Love Is Simple probes the less-traveled fringes of stereo sound, seeking out sonic bliss somewhere across the great divide - a grand melding of organic and synthesized music in a tour de force of love-thy-neighbor-flavored......
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Akron/Family | Love is Simple
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Popmatters.com | Matthew Fianderboot-in-the-ass surprising…But now, with Love is Simple, the studio band is coming full-on with the live band influence...sort of. While the band knows there is energy in their live act, they are also smart enough to know that it would not work as a direct translation. Instead, they’ve smartly taken elements of their live show—a heightened guitar presence, a more “electric” sound, energetic percussion—and meshed it with their ability to craft the beautifully quiet. The results are not only boot-in-the-ass surprising, but also the best thing the band has done to date. The album opens with “Love, Love, Love (Everyone)”, an incantatory, chanting track that invites us, ever so gently, to go out and love. The band’s always been great at singing as a group, and the opener is no different, but it also serves as a build up to the second track, “Ed Is a Portal”. The fangs of the live band start to show here, as the song starts with distant gang-yelling and hand-clapping behind a plucked banjo until, as the vocals rise in the mix and crescendo, the song settles into a dance ‘round the fire anthem. It chugs along, full of sweat and......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Gwendolyn Elliott | Prefixmag.com a spirited, transcendental expedition into layers of unconventional sound combinations, both curious and stimulatingLove Is Simple, the second full-length from the Brooklyn-based gypsy caravan known as Akron/Family, is a spirited, transcendental expedition into layers of unconventional sound combinations, both curious and stimulating. This post-rock deconstruction is nothing new -- genre-hopping bands such as Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective fall neatly into the so-called freak-folk category with ambient, acoustic progressions and trippy psych-rock beats. Akron/Family lines right up with this approach -- running the gamut from tribal, mantra-driven rhythms to tenderhearted, Beatles-esque ballads -- but Love Is Simple is not gimmicky or attempting to ride the wake of those bands. Indeed, one of the many notable features of freak-folk is the motion away from one homogenous-sounding pack. As chasms continue to evolve within the genre, stronger, more distinct identities have begun to emerge. This album shows Akron/Family to be one step closer to a more realized vehicle of self-expression. Love Is Simple, which the band claims is "both a love letter to the past and a launching pad into the future," emits a joyfulness rarely witnessed in the indie scene today. I get the impression that if......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Gwendolyn Elliott | Prefixmag.com This album shows Akron/Family to be one step closer to a more realized vehicle of self-expression. Love Is Simple, the second full-length from the Brooklyn-based gypsy caravan known as Akron/Family, is a spirited, transcendental expedition into layers of unconventional sound combinations, both curious and stimulating. This post-rock deconstruction is nothing new -- genre-hopping bands such as Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective fall neatly into the so-called freak-folk category with ambient, acoustic progressions and trippy psych-rock beats. Akron/Family lines right up with this approach -- running the gamut from tribal, mantra-driven rhythms to tenderhearted, Beatles-esque ballads -- but Love Is Simple is not gimmicky or attempting to ride the wake of those bands. Indeed, one of the many notable features of freak-folk is the motion away from one homogenous-sounding pack. As chasms continue to evolve within the genre, stronger, more distinct identities have begun to emerge. This album shows Akron/Family to be one step closer to a more realized vehicle of self-expression. Love Is Simple, which the band claims is "both a love letter to the past and a launching pad into the future," emits a joyfulness rarely witnessed in the indie scene today. I get the......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Eric Nielsen | BlogSandiego.com A definite standout is Love, Love, Love EveryoneAkron/Family bring the goods on the new album, Love is Simple. If you're a fan, it has all the right stuff to make you smile and replay tracks and sing along and breathe the deep affirmation of living and dying. The four voices in the room burst off the disc and bring your arms up from your sides to flail about, air drumming, and send you into some foreign world of ecstasy and joy. Only Akron can get away with some of these lyrics, so simple, so profound, so Buddhist and existential. It's because the music is filled with life and oceanic energy. A definite standout is Love, Love, Love Everyone which is reprised at the finale. It's this Buddhist mantra that sets the tone for the whole record: an amazing sing along. Don't Be Afraid You're Already Dead brings home the title of the record with a repetitive whole throated chorus of Love Is Simple. Another song you'll find yourself harmonizing to. "Don't be afraid you're already dead" they sing and welcome you to the Akron Church of Love and Beauty. They just repeat and repeat the lyrics with......