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Akron/Family | Review
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Rolling Stone Magazine | David FrickeWhat 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. ...
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Akron/Family | Review
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The Georgia Straight | Alexander VartyFamily business Those tuque-sporting beard rockers in Akron/Family have discovered that nothing beats a mountaintop for Zenlike seclusion‹it¹s also a great place for breaking out the spliffs they don't smoke. Akron/Family's urgent neopsychedelia gains lavish textures on Meek Warrior. Most bands would be overjoyed to produce a sophomore CD as varied, inventive, and intense as Akron/Family's Meek Warrior, but for the acclaimed freak-folk quartet there's one small problem: the new disc isn't really its second album. Meek Warrior's seven songs might clock in at just over 35 minutes‹the length of an average LP in the pre-digital era‹but according to drummer Dana Janssen, it's just a quick-and-dirty EP. "It's definitely not the second full-length, just to make that clear," he specifies, reached at Akron/Family's Brooklyn headquarters. "It ended up being called that in an article in Spin, but it's not." There's another misconception he¹d like to clear up. Most listeners are going to think that Meek Warrior¹s guitar- and percussion-heavy arrangements represent some kind of aesthetic advance over the simpler and quieter material featured on Akron/Family's self-titled debut. But it's not the songs that have changed, says Janssen, so much as the way they were recorded.......
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Akron/Family | Review
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BC Newsgroup Canada Weekly | Jason SchreursThe Anti-CooL Akron/Family avoid rock trappings for a whole lot of love and joy. Let's face it‹rock shows are a bummer sometimes. Some greased-up fools on stage, sweating and spitting, while the cooler-than-thous in the crowd stand sneering with their arms crossed. But a select few bands, such as Brooklyn's folk/noise troupe Akron/Family, are interested in offering a live show that transcends the bad vibes. "Our approach is trying to have a sense of community as opposed to a lot of rock shows where you'll go and the band will just sort of play at the crowd," explains multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Dana Janssen. "We like to entice the crowd to sing along, clap their hands, and really join in on the show and be part of the experience." And with their feel-good reputation preceding them, Akron/Family excel in their alternately mellow and jarring hopped-up-hymns in a more improv-friendly live setting. The foursome's recorded output is free-form and inventive enough as it is, but the band must get downright giddy at the thought of jamming out more on stage. "Oh, totally," gushes Janssen. "I'm sure I could be happy doing the same show every night, but it......
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Akron/Family | Review
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Times Colonist (Victoria) Canada | Mike DevlinBuddhism infuses jazz-folk blend The Brooklyn musicians who make up Akron/Family are not particularly outdoorsy, despite their publicity material.Photograph by : Handout PREVIEW The tray-card photo of Akron/Family's second CD, Meek Warrior, features the four Brooklynites paddling a canoe. Promotional photos of the band show the quartet in the water, sunning themselves post-swim and hiking up a cliff. The psychedelic jazz-folk group, which resembles a band of tree-hugging hippies, even has a song titled The Rider (Dolphin Song).Astonishingly, Akron/Family singer/ multi-instrumentalist Seth Olinsky says he's hardly an outdoor enthusiast, despite the evidence to the contrary. "I would hesitate to say that any of us are totally outdoors types, but we all grew up in smaller towns," he says. "None of us grew up totally in the woods, but none of us are from cities, either." Olinsky is originally from Williams-port, Penn., as is singer/multi-instrumentalist Dana Janssen. The small borough was a nurturing environment for the two musicians, but it's a far cry from Akron/Family's current residence in Brooklyn. So, Olinsky plans on heading west for some peace and quiet."I'm thinking about moving to Victoria some day," he says. "We've toured all over the place now, and I've......
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Akron/Family and Mi and L'au | Live Review
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The Memphis Flyer | Andria Lisle Young musicians let their freak-folk flag fly. Jan 20/06A New AgeOver the last decade, indie rockers have used albums by Skip Spence and the 13th Floor Elevators as a barometer of hipness. An already mainstreamed Bob Dylan has become even more commonplace. Woody Guthrie was unearthed by Billy Bragg and Wilco, who cut the fawning -- but wonderful -- tribute Mermaid Avenue, while films like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and A Mighty Wind threatened to hijack an entire movement. Folk music, it seems, has never gone out of style. But no one predicted the arrival of so-called free folkies -- musicians like Devendra Banhart, who favors a full-on Manson beard, minor tunings, and murmured vocals, and elfin harpist Joanna Newsom. Both seemingly materialized from thin air to confound rock journalists with their psychedelic ramblings.Critics have used Banhart's and Newsom's success, the highly acclaimed reemergence of genuine '60s folkie Vashti Bunyan, and the popularity of contemporary groups like Animal Collective and Iron and Wine as the signposts of a new movement, variously given monikers such as freak folk, free folk, and outsider folk.Yet many of the musicians, including Akron/Family and Mi and L'au, who......