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Akron/Family | Review
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Kyndmusic.com | Dave TerpenyBlessed Are The MeekThese four lads from "rural America" have emerged from New York over the past several years like latter day schizophrenic folkies, long beards trailing behind their tongues, which remain firmly planted in cheeks. They insist that they are not a cult all the while positing the hermetic quasi-religious/sonic worldview/creed known as "AK" or sometimes "AK-AK". And none of them are related, by the way. But the Akron/Family band is somewhat of a twisted version of the old Americana family band (think The Carters, Rainer, and Mainers) that roamed the distant past with all manner of exotic instruments and glorious harmonies. For within Seth Olinsky (various instruments, vocals), Miles Seaton (various instruments, vocals), Dana Janssen (various instruments, vocals), and Ryan Vanderhoof (various instruments, vocals) there lies a genuinely authentic musical revolution. It is a revolution that has begat legions of head scratching hipsters trying to categorize the sonic landscapes these four lads create over a very solid folk foundation. Their latest album (the 4th) Meek Warrior (cover left) on the quixotic Michael Gira's Young God Records is a prime example. Part traveling medicine show, part noise experiment, part unadulterated folk beauty and part inventive improvisation......
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Akron/Family | Review
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All Music Guide | Thom JurekAll the listener can say is "bring it on: more, more, more." Meek Warrior The most beautiful thing about the Akron/Family, this collective quartet of New York musicians who record for Michael Gira's Young God label, is that they are virtually unclassifiable. Is it rock? Post-rock? Acid folk? Freak folk? Free improvisation? Ultimately, who cares what it is, that it is is what matters most, and that is displayed prominently on this seven-cut "special album" (according to Gira). It's over 35 minutes, and includes the nine-plus-minute opus "Blessing Force" that moves from silence to rock-out mantra, to chant to intricate polyrhythmic interplay to free-form, improv, wig city back to guitar, bass, drums zone-out to skronk. All you can say for a brief second is "Oh yeah," before they enter with acoustic guitars, hand percussion and the paraphrased English translation of a Buddhist mantra on "Gone Beyond." There's melody and beauty and space and earth in sharp contrast to the fire of the previous cut. The vocals here are utterly beautiful and joyous and the spiritual vibe is set. Clocking in at only 3:22, it would have been interesting to hear what this might have been......
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Akron/Family | live preview article
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The Stranger/Seattle Washington Weekly | Josh BlanchardTime Traveling with Akron/Family Cosmic AmericansWith casual magnetism and a wide-eyed sense of wonder, the bearded brotherhood known as Akron/Family are the antithesis of the typical New York stereotype. More unpredictable and genuine than Devendra Banhart, and with five times the instrumental muscle of Animal Collective, these four cosmic Americans seem to make a habit of breaking through the barriers of scenes, genres and, as they would have you think, even the realms of our physical world. Onstage, Akron coalesce into a kind of group entity, with so much charisma spilling out in every direction that no one member could hold the spotlight for long, even if he wished to. In fact, this gestalt energy can swell up to such a crescendo that the distinction between "onstage" and "offstage" is often abandoned as the Akronites burst into the crowd to draw the audience into their frenzied hootenanny. Moving to the Big Apple in 2002, Akron/Family charmed their way onto Michael Gira's Young God label, where they achieved dual success with their eponymous debut and the subsequent collaboration with Gira's Angels ofLight. This fall has marked the release of their newest and most fully realized......
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Akron/Family | Live Review
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LA Weekly | Bernardo RondeauThe new album's rampant eclecticism and savage agility are in fact closer to the group's live soundDec 06Akron/FamilyThe Echo (LA Live Preview)Rock & Pop Released on the Devendra Banhart discoverin' Young God imprint last year, Akron/Family's debut album proudly wore its soft, patchwork skin. Swathed in the gentle hiss of bare rooms and rehearsal spaces, its bricolaged songs, shimmering and amorphous, proved a calm island amid the churning acid-bath tides of new weird America. Humbly titled Meek Warrior, Akron/Family's follow-up is a bolder experiment in human energy harnessed for instant invention. Flaring with random ecstasies, the Brooklyn-based quartet morph wildly from all-over electric splatter to oak-hued jangle to an Arkestral freeform cheer squad. Though fiercely communal, the band intersperse their vibrant tumult with lapses of open-faced vulnerability often intoned with a twangy melancholia. The new album's rampant eclecticism and savage agility are in fact closer to the group's live sound: a bristling churn of an erudite imagination. ...
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Akron/Family | Review
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The Oregonian / Portland Oregon | Cheston KnappKnockin' 'em dead liveLet's get right to the point: Each time the Akron/Family (pictured) plays, they have the potential to put on one of the best shows you've ever seen. Their essence resides in the live performance. A distinct reciprocal energy bounces between the band and the crowd, where each feeds off the other, but in a more spiritual sense than happens at other rock shows. The crowd isn't just singing along, but participating in the creation of the music. This symbiosis is like some strange combination of a Grateful Dead show and a tent conversion. When Akron/Family came through town earlier this year, they ended the show by entering the crowd and leading a clap-and-stomp circle while repeating, "Love and space" over and over. The effect was mesmerizing and moving. So call its music whatever you want: psych-rock, freak-folk, psych-folk, folk-rock, freak-rock, rock-rock. Just don't be late for the show. ...