This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Pennsylvania’s Brooklyn-based bearded troupe The Akron/Family is something of an enigma, even by psych-folk (freak folk) standards.
Their highly experimental approach, is, an acquired taste. Much of their work
has elements of incendiary cacophonous blasts highlighted on Of All These
Things and Lake Song, though the latter has some fine Latino guitar
and thunderous drum work.
This quartet are going into musical directions with a truly freewheeling spirit,
so you’d better hold on because it’s a white knuckle ride, for most part.
Recorded over two weeks somewhere in the New Jersey woods, this boho-bunch of
weirdos were fearlesss in their determination to astound us, on all levels. It
opens deceptively with a Beatles-like simplicity a la All You Need Is Love,
without all the latter’s pomp, and is reprised at the end, book-ending a fascinating,
if occasionally, difficult platter to digest.
Further in, there’s Crickets (yes they’re buzzing in the background) on
a wonderful countryfied beauty, bringing back shades of the Ozark Mountain Devils
from the 1970s. It’s sweet stuff that juxtaposes marvelously with their
no-limits sonic excusrions. Hippydom returns majestically on the tribal
gathering of Ed Is Porta. Not even psych-God Devendra Banhart would go
there.
High spirited chants precursor the acoustic romp, similar to Zed Zeppelin
crowd pleaser Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp (Led Zep 3) that turns into a scintilating
western hoe-down before it morphs into a beat-vocal spacey end. Phonomena’s
gentle start changes quickly into edgey and sharp chords, back to sweet harmonies
and back again to the chords and Jack White styled guitar solos. The middle
section of There’s So Many Colors is superb because of the (strangely)
inhibited solos.
The album’s weirdest tracks are Pony’s O.G., many ‘La La La’s’ and spacey
sounds, and fun-filled and sonically-twisted I’ve Got Some Friends.
Love Is Simple won’t UK chart, but still worth a check.
1. Love, Love, Love (everyone)
2. Ed Is Portal
3. Don’t Be Afarid, You’re Already Dead
4. I’ve Got Some Friends
5. Lake Song / New Ceremonial Music For Moms
6. There’s So Many Colors
7. Crickets
8. Phenomena
9. Pony’s O.G.
10. Of All The Things
11. Love, Love, Love 2 (reprise)
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Review & concert pics copyright © Elly Roberts, 2004-2010.