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Lisa Germano | Review
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LA Times |Steve Hochman, Special to The Times Don't worry, it's dark only for art's sake April 6, 2006Lisa Germano tackles death and life's dramas in song, but has a brighter side too. After Lisa Germano released her 2003 album, "Lullaby for Liquid Pig," some fans were so concerned about her state of mind that they sent her Bibles and self-help materials. The album, after all, dealt with coming to terms with, but not rejecting, alcohol and addictive habits, both chemical and emotional.You wonder what they'll send her after this summer's release of her new album, "In the Maybe World."The subject matter this time: Death.Recorded over the last two years, the album includes songs that grew out of the death of her cat ("Golden Cities"), her father's successful heart surgery ("Too Much Space") and singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley's drowning a decade ago ("Except for the Ghosts").Before anyone heads to FedEx with packages, though, the Los Angeles-based musician wants to elaborate."It could be a real death or a death inside or the death of a relationship or the death of an idea," she said, settling in at a West Hollywood teahouse with a cheery, engaging manner hardly seeming like someone with death on her......
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Akron/Family | Live Review
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Altercation magazine | Justin HabersaatAll I knew was that the dudes looked kind of like Charles Manson.April 06Much has been made of the Akron / Family hipster cult, and their live shows are spoken of in hushed tones at coffee shop open mic nights across the country on a daily basis. While I had heard my share of Akron music, I had yet to find someone who could accurately tell me exactly what the hell to expect at a performance. All I knew was that the dudes looked kind of like Charles Manson, wore a lot of flannel and, most importantly, were the darling sons of Michael Gira's Young God label. Even though I have yet to fully embrace the heralded "freak-folk" scene gracing every independent music magazine's cover these days, Gira's endorsement carries a lot of weight, so off I went with an open mind and curious ear.The opening slot was filled by labelmates Mi and L'au, a French/Finnish couple that cautiously strum acoustic guitars and sing "gentle" songs. While I can't condone the drunken lout that shouted "BOOO-RRING!" about halfway through their set (fear not, the guy was practically pummeled to death with insults by irate indie-men and......
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Akron/Family | Live Review
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tinymixtapes.com | jspicer No one left without a smile, and no one would ever forget what they had just witnessed. Akron/Family / Sir Richard Bishop(Tractor Tavern: Seattle, WA)02.11.06The Night of the Living Dopplegangers. I swear up and down I was stuck between folks who looked like Peter Sarsgaard, Adam Morrison, and Dee Dee Ramone--an odd trio to envision--but that's what a show billing Sir Richard Bishop and Akron/Family will bring.I walked in just as Richard Bishop began his set. If you've never seen Bishop work his magic, then you'd be in for a real treat. This is another in a long line of classic Bishop performances. The man is able to make one guitar sound like an army of them (take that, Broken Social Scene!) with little effort. Watching his fingers move so nimbly across the frets becomes mesmerizing. There are times when you forget about the actual music being produced and just focus on figuring out his tricks. Once you do snap out of the trance and listen to the sound, you're blown away by how Bishop is able to switch from the gritty sounds of the OK Corral to a playful cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," before launching into......
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Mi and L'au | Review
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Pitchforkmedia.com | Matthew Murphytheir own enchanted form of stripped-down, hermetic cabaret-popApril 11, 2006The backstory behind the charming debut album from European duo Mi and L'au almost reads like something out of a Hans Christian Andersen folktale: two restless, kindred spirits meet and fall in love in Paris, then move to a cabin in the remote Finnish forest to write and record their deeply intimate music in utter seclusion. And while for some albums such a quaint and colorful narrative might seem an incidental talking point, in the case of Mi and L'au it becomes an essential descriptive, as it's nearly impossible to imagine this delicate, wintry music being made under any other circumstance.Matching the couple's hushed vocals with acoustic guitars and minimal, deceptively sophisticated arrangements, Mi and L'au create music that bears only tangential relation to traditional folk, seeming instead to be their own enchanted form of stripped-down, hermetic cabaret-pop. Sung entirely in English, their songs do sound considerably less alien and otherworldly than Finnish psych-folk counterparts like Islaja, Lau Nau, or others from the extended Fonal label roster. The album's relative accessibility can perhaps be traced to guest contributions from members of Akron/Family and Antony compatriot Julia Kent which were......
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Akron/Family | Review
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Chicago Reader | Bill Meyer Critics Choice...AKRON/FAMILY3/1806Akron/Family exercised its eclecticism like a group of talented but green rookies on its self-titled debut, released last year on Michael Gira's Young God Records. It was cool to hear them hop from mellow folk picking to squelchy vocal collage to spacey stadium rock on "Suchness," or flip from flute-led psychedelia to acoustic balladry to a lumbering "Carry That Weight" finale on "Lumen." But the album wasn't particularly cohesive; if the Brooklyn quartet had a reason for doing all that beyond the fact that they could, I wasn't hearing it. Heavy touring since then, both on their own and as Gira's backing band, has sharpened their command of dynamics and clarified their intentions. Last fall at the Empty Bottle's Adventures in Modern Music festival they converted the (by no means partisan) crowd by sending it on a vertiginous but perfectly controlled ride. The show opened with a one-two-three punch: harmony-frosted, McCartney-esque folk pop, Sonny Sharrock-like electric noise, and stomping boogie rock topped with massed vocals that sounded like the chanting of blissed-out soccer hooligans. The band then shifted into what turned out to be a meditation on the elusiveness of transcendence; the climactic "Raising the Sparks" moved......