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Love Is Simple
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Eric Nielsen | BlogSandiego.com Akron/Family bring the goods on the new album. 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 soaring backup vocals in such a positive Beatles (in a good......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Steve Wildsmith | Daily Times a mood of wild abandon, a sort of freedom that comes from having shaken off the shackles of the cityTowering skyscrapers, canyons of glass and steel, concrete and car exhaust, honking horns and the cacophony of life in New York City: It can be a little overwhelming for visitors, let alone those who live there on a daily basis. As much as the Big Apple has played a part in the music made by Akron/Family, its influence has also faded as the years have past, and on the band’s most recent album, “Love Is Simple,” there’s a mood of wild abandon, a sort of freedom that comes from having shaken off the shackles of the city. “We started in New York, but we’ve toured non-stop since our first record was released in March 2005,” Akron/Family guitarist Seth Olinsky told The Daily Times during a recent interview. “We’ve been around the States four times, we’ve been to South America and Canada, we recorded ‘Meek Warrior’ (the band’s sophomore album) while touring, and then we toured another year. When it came time to make this record, we wanted to get out of the city. We went to......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Brian Rademaekers | Star Home News, Northeast Times listening to Love is Simple is itself a lesson in musical complexityIt has been popular of late to refer to Philadelphia as "the sixth borough" of New York City. If we must laugh along and feed the Big Apple’s ego, there really is just one sister borough there that gives us a run for our money when it comes to cranking out stellar, freaky indie music. That would be Brooklyn — a chunk of land home to well over two million people, a higher than average proportion of them musicians in search of cheaper-than-Manhattan rents. Much like Northern Liberties, Fishtown and Kensington, Brooklyn appeals to the kind of rootless artistic riff-raff who want the perks of urban life without the steep cost-of-living. Last Wednesday, Johnny Brenda’s hosted Oakley Hall, a longhaired troupe from Brooklyn who put on a mesmerizing set that called to mind a neo-psychedelic Fairport Convention, Yankee style. They were just one of many ensembles who recently have been taking the two-hour trip south from the borough to play at Philly venues. And increasingly, the oft-bearded bands that come out of Brooklyn seem to have a whacked-out, folksy sound that......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Andrew Clayman | Metro Pulse “It just feels good to say— Akron!†The guys of Akron/Family are, in fact, four unrelated gents based out of Brooklyn, NY—and only three of them have beards! So why exactly did they name themselves after the Ohio city that spawned Goodyear, DEVO, and LeBron James? “It’s just an innately pleasing word,” explains Akron/Family percussionist Dana Janssen. “It just feels good to say— Akron!” Aside from the pleasing but misleading name, Akron/Family has been challenging critics with plenty of other befuddling quirks ever since their self-titled debut dropped back in 2005. Having been discovered and signed to Young God Records by former Swans and current Angels of Light frontman Michael Gira, the band’s unorthodox brand of folkie psychedelia initially got them lumped in with their famous labelmate Devendra Banhart. Since then, Akron/Family has recorded three more albums of almost mind-blowing diversity, including the upcoming Love Is Simple. Despite steady praise for their efforts, however, Janssen feels like the essence of the band is still routinely misrepresented. “Honestly, almost anything I’ve ever seen from critics, where they’ll compare us to Animal Collective or put us under the umbrella of freak-folk and shit like that—it’s just lazy,” he......
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Love Is Simple | Review
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Chris Parker | Philadelphia Weekly warm melody and lush harmoniesThis hard-to-categorize Brooklyn quartet subscribe to a free jazz approach that spins off in mind-bending directions as their drooling, wall-eyed live shows attest. They’re capable of a droning “Sonic Youth tuning” kind of squall, as on the nine-minute “Blessing Force” off last year’s Meek Warrior. But they also can forge warm melody and lush harmonies, as their 2005 self-titled debut demonstrates. They’re preparing to release Love Is Simple, produced by, of all people, Andrew Murdock (Godsmack, Avenged Sevenfold)—more evidence of their iconoclasm. “Now we have three guitar players and two drummers,” says Miles Seaton, of the three temps added to the touring roster. “We just screw it up and keep reinventing.”...