Akron/Family - Akron/Family
Alternative Folk, Freak-Folk
The Brooklyn, NY-based collective of four multi-instrumentalists combine a variety of modern and pre-modern styles into a strong, singular whole. Their self-titled debut is a string of acoustic glides recalling rural folksy warmth and fractured folk-rock experimentalisms with tender carnival-esque stories. The raw, natural, unprocessed feel ironically presents an authentic and engaging album from the once lost aesthetic folk-rockers. Their slow-burning songs are well decked with alien metallic clacks, skittering tones, tape hiss storm clouds, and field recorded thunder. There is also a poignant strength of spirituality in every tune they orbit around us, bringing forward lush and dreary swells. For, as this world gets older, and novelties increase along with our exposure to everything, we must consider that everything we are exposed to influences us in some way.
Like a lot of modern creative folk recordings, Akron/Family’s debut triggers a great deal of emotions, sometimes complex and contradictory with imaginative sounds and lyrics. The record starts off with Before and Again, opening beautifully with sweeping folk of plaintive nylon strings and distant, electronic homing signals. Following up is the soft and freely tune, Suchness. The poignant and quirkily playful song is a morph into a poor-man's rumba. The unforgettable eight-minute epic, Italy is a sonic journey and a soar to heaven at that. Stumbling on easily the best percussion work, Running, Returning throw in as many strange and random noises into the track. With lead singer Ryan Vanderhoof calling over a dissonant swirl of guitar, percussive noise, and a chorus of distant, shout-sung voices, the tune is rhythmically enthralling. The melancholy scrap of Afford catches a soft jet-stream of air and float elegantly into a dusky campfire sing-a-long. The quiet incantation of hidden track, Untitled, ends the album appropriately with gentle and majestically sways into slumber.
Akron/Family are a folk band at heart, and beneath all the off-note harmonizing, stretched out electronic buzzes and awkward silences is a band wholly obsessed with where a room full of instruments and some youthful ambition can take some poignant acoustic tracks. They are rare in that they can work effectively on both sides of the mystic-folk and indie-rock divide. This debut is well written, produced and delivered. The introspective depth achieved in this album is absolutely unparalleled. They exists in a dimension unbeknown to us, and occupies a space of its own.
Akron/Family - Italy by ajay-patel
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