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Akron/Family | Review
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stylusmagazine.com | William S. Fieldsalbum of the weekI’ve read at least two histories registering the impact of traveling family singers like the Rainer Family on early American pop music (via their influence on blackface minstrelsy) stretching out over time through the Carter Family and landing on heavy hearts from the Jackson 5 to the Danielson Famile. Singing families are attractive, a quirky Americana cliché that runs through the heart of pop. So please note the slash: You are not being introduced to The Akron Family. Both “Akron†and “Family†are words with a comfortable and soothing ring, but divided by the slash they’re just signs, side by side, an oblique surrealist one-liner. Similarly, the music of Akron/Family is a string of acoustic indices recalling a homesteady sort of folksy warmth but underscored with a fractured post-everything back-story. Akron/Family’s self titled debut is an absolute (but glorious) wreck of false starts, abandoned experiments, fractured faux-anthemic folk-rock and somewhat-fettered-improvisation. It is free-associating fantasy, musically and lyrically, pure carnival; deeply flawed; precious and self-mocking, glowing-via-the-glum. Viva the flaws, though. I’ve often said I’d rather spend my time with a compelling failure then any slick, put-together success. This goes both for records and for......
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Akron/Family | Review
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stylusmagazine.com | William S. Fieldsalbum of the weekI’ve read at least two histories registering the impact of traveling family singers like the Rainer Family on early American pop music (via their influence on blackface minstrelsy) stretching out over time through the Carter Family and landing on heavy hearts from the Jackson 5 to the Danielson Famile. Singing families are attractive, a quirky Americana cliché that runs through the heart of pop. So please note the slash: You are not being introduced to The Akron Family. Both “Akron†and “Family†are words with a comfortable and soothing ring, but divided by the slash they’re just signs, side by side, an oblique surrealist one-liner. Similarly, the music of Akron/Family is a string of acoustic indices recalling a homesteady sort of folksy warmth but underscored with a fractured post-everything back-story. Akron/Family’s self titled debut is an absolute (but glorious) wreck of false starts, abandoned experiments, fractured faux-anthemic folk-rock and somewhat-fettered-improvisation. It is free-associating fantasy, musically and lyrically, pure carnival; deeply flawed; precious and self-mocking, glowing-via-the-glum. Viva the flaws, though. I’ve often said I’d rather spend my time with a compelling failure then any slick, put-together success. This goes both for records and for......
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Akron/Family CD (Young God)
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brainlove.co.uk | by John Brainlovethis is a really special recordThe Akron/Family CD was composed and home-recorded by four 20-something guys in a Brooklyn apartment. But you wouldn't guess to listen to it - this sounds like it was recorded somewhere between a Nashville porch and the surface of Mars. Folk clashes with spaced out electronic noise, ballads disintegrate into tangled guitar webs only to rise again in a completely different shape. Even on first listen, it's clear that this is a really special record. Subtle creaking fades into simple strummed strings and sweet campfire vocals... ambient washes mingle with electronic beeps and whirrs, and melt over delicate slide guitar and tinkling glass sounds. These songs have a crafted feel - like you are being led by the hand through the Akron/Family's sonic world. Like there is a coherent masterplan that reveals itself to you, a little at a time, as you listen. The Akron/Family CD is composed of the kind of beautifully simple melodies that will stick in your head without having to smashing your ears in first - not like the obnoxious insistence of 00's pop or the bombast of 'Gay Bar' or anything so crass. Akron/Family takes an......
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Akron/Family | Review
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outsideleft.com alex v. cookFAMILY MAGICKTiny insects and crustaceans blow around with occasional sharp winds only to bake in the warm and giving sun. A couple years ago, my wife bought me what has become my favorite book ever, Alchemy & Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum by Alexander Roob. It¹s a dazzling compendium of alchemy etchings and mystical illuminated scrolls from the 1400¹s and on, with equally incomprehensible explanatory text. Its like Finnegan¹s Wake, except with pictures, it makes my head spin every time I thumb through it. Around the time I got that, I also broke down and bought the much heralded Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music, the old record set that convinced everyone from Bob Dylan on up that thar¹s weirdness up in them thar hills. Its compiler, Harry Smith, was an ardent adherent to alchemy and particularly its hallucinatory imagery, and so the liner text and package is festooned to look like the magical document it is. Fast forward 50 years or so, when it has once again influenced a new tide of folkies, not with just the idylls of Dock Boggs and the Charley Patton, but with it¹s symbols and talismans of which it is liberally festooned.......
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Akron/Family | Review
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outsideleft.com alex v. cookFAMILY MAGICKTiny insects and crustaceans blow around with occasional sharp winds only to bake in the warm and giving sun. A couple years ago, my wife bought me what has become my favorite book ever, Alchemy & Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum by Alexander Roob. It¹s a dazzling compendium of alchemy etchings and mystical illuminated scrolls from the 1400¹s and on, with equally incomprehensible explanatory text. Its like Finnegan¹s Wake, except with pictures, it makes my head spin every time I thumb through it. Around the time I got that, I also broke down and bought the much heralded Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music, the old record set that convinced everyone from Bob Dylan on up that thar¹s weirdness up in them thar hills. Its compiler, Harry Smith, was an ardent adherent to alchemy and particularly its hallucinatory imagery, and so the liner text and package is festooned to look like the magical document it is. Fast forward 50 years or so, when it has once again influenced a new tide of folkies, not with just the idylls of Dock Boggs and the Charley Patton, but with it¹s symbols and talismans of which it is liberally festooned.......