PRESS
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Lullaby for Liquid Pig | Lisa Germano | Review
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Travis Woods | prefixmag.coma twelve-song cycle of diaphanous, hazy strands of sound, interwoven with her weary, smoke-hewn vocals and sadly gorgeous melodiesA quietly difficult, challenging meditation on the personal detritus that accumulates around addiction, Lisa Germano's Lullaby for Liquid Pig is a twelve-song cycle of diaphanous, hazy strands of sound, interwoven with her weary, smoke-hewn vocals and sadly gorgeous melodies. Although albums of this dark sort rarely rocket into the sunny stratosphere of pop's charts, they do manage to burrow into its culture -- just follow the harrowing, epochal through line that binds Tonight's the Night to In Utero. Upon its initial release in 2003, Lullaby for Liquid Pig failed to imbed itself as indelibly into the charts as it did the ears of those lucky enough to hear it before it flat-lined into out-of-print oblivion.Luckily for listeners and the album, Lullaby for Liquid Pig has been resurrected by Young God, replete with a bonus disc of rarities and live cuts for added depth and context. Yet it's the album proper that remains so bleakly radiant -- from the piano-looped, painkiller haze of "Nobody's Playing" to the plaintive, heartbreaking slow burn of "Pearls" ("hate will grow into blossoms of no/......
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Akron/Family | Live Review
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Tom Hughes | The Guardian (UK) morphing from quiet country-gospel into heavy psych-rock workoutsBrooklyn's wellspring of outlandish rock creativity just keeps on gushing. This curious gaggle of freak-folk troubadours have proved themselves capable of more extraordinary, kaleidoscopic musical feats than most - morphing from quiet country-gospel into heavy psych-rock workouts, dipping into strange marching-band anthems and reverberating free-jazz jams along the way. Lyrically, they take a more traditionally hippy approach, telling tales of ancient forests, giant flowers, portals, love and space. But aside from singer Miles Seaton, not a little reminiscent of Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, they do not look much like hippies - bass player Seth Olinsky has an air of the no-nonsense punk rocker and drummer Dana Janssen could almost be a Dawson's Creek bit-part actor. All three sing - and beautifully, too - whether in close harmony on their quietest, simplest ballads, or in hectic, colliding yells on the big, wild rock numbers. Olinsky is particularly irrepressible, leading frequent demands for audience clap-, stamp- and sing-alongs, and getting a great response. Communion is clearly a big priority here. In the six months since they last toured the UK, Akron/Family have lost a guitarist (he went to live......
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Fire On Fire | Review
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Stereogum.com | Brandon StosuyBand To WatchFire On Fire, a super Portland, Maine quintet featuring ex members of Cerberus Shoal, wail on their acoustic instruments -- stand-up bass, mandolin, banjo, harmonium, accordion, guitar, tamboritza, jembe, dobro, etc -- and harmonize like nobody's business. They all live in the same house, which has seemingly forged them into one seamless brimstoned, rural-gospel choir rattling out some of the prettiest harmonies this side of Young God labelmates, Akron/Family, only more countrified. Our favorite tune from the band's debut five-song EP is its opener "Hangman," which gathers momentum on a strange Animal Collective-in-a-hay-field vocal pulse. Please accept it as the official Fire On Fire intro sermon after the jump. And keep in mind: Everyone, even the worst man, has friends. That warble really is so great and knotty. The group has a transcendent pulse to 'em -- sounds cheesy, but take a look at a back-porch rendition of "Amnesia," and notice how it all sorta crackles and waves? Right, like fire. The 5-song EP, hand-screened heavy stock/velum packaging in a limited edition of 1,000, is only available at the Young God site and at the band's live show. Look for their debut full-length of all......
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Folk of ages | Fire on Fire | Review
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thephoenix.com | CHRISTOPHER GRAYFire on Fire snag a label, make it countLIGHTING THE WAY: Fire on Fire. Young God Records is one of the country’s more prominent DIY record labels, and a crucial fixture in the neo-folk renaissance that has become one of the decade’s most pervasive music trends. Founded by Michael Gira (formerly of the long-running band Swans), Young God staked its claim on the landscape in 2002 by signing a then-little-known “freak folk” artist named Devendra Banhart. Gira released Banhart’s first three albums, expansive and scene-defining works bearing the homemade-yet-fine-tuned aura that the label has made into a philosophy (Banhart has since flown the coop and appears hell-bent on becoming the ur-hippie). Young God found similar success with the increasingly unclassifiable road warriors of Akron/Family, and Gira’s own band Angels of Light continue to improve and gain fans. So yes, it’s a pretty big deal that Portland’s pre-eminent neo-folk supergroup Fire on Fire landed a record deal with Young God, and that their self-titled debut EP proves worthy of its new company. Like most of their labelmates, the band are willfully unique; specialty instrumentalist Tom Kovacevic gives exotic adornment (of tamburitza, nay, jembe) to each song, and perhaps......
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Akron/Family, LIVE REVIEW
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Richard B. Simon | RELIX MAGAZINE The Independent, San Francisco, CA, 10/11/07My colleagues at Relix have been urging me of late to check out Akron/Family, as part of the rising psychedelic tide of the late mid zeroes. Their recent disc, Love Is Simple, doesn’t seem quite like rock ‘n’ roll so much as tribal jubilance, a bunch of people shouting and thumping and drumming and rejoicing vocally. Sonically clear and carefully produced, the Beatles on American Indian mysticism, instead of East Indian. Somewhere in there (“Crickets”) is the sound of summer in the humid temperate zone, peepers chirping and cicadas munching on leaves, and rubbing their legs together. Live, would they be crickets or guitars or drums or what? The answer is yes. Akron/Family came on quiet, but as those voices—those shouting singing voices—kicked in and in, they sucked you in off the street. Word was that they had been busting Dead covers. They look like Deadheads, for sure—rolled out of the bus, de-loused and freshly shorn of their dreadlocks—but they don’t sound like the Dead. Not so early in the night. Not until they want to. Akron/Family is a big party onstage, a dudefest, a street gang with joy......