Akron/Family Love Is Simple by: Justin Pearsall Mon:03-Sep-07 Label: Young God Year: 2007 WB rating 91 out of 100

Akron/Family exist in their own musical sphere, making any attempts at universal categorisation futile. It is this individuality, their chameleon quality, which lead to a slew of critical praise for the band’s live performances and a growing awareness to their three recordings, the highlight of these being 2006’s transitory Meek Warrior – a record existing somewhere between prog-rock and folk. While Meek Warrior won the band new fans (and hardened the support of prior followers), the very qualities attracting attention to the album: its genre-hopping, exploration of dissonance and free-jazz, and loose, live sounding performances, where the attributes that polarised others and ultimately made the album fascinating, but not quite remarkable.

Such a polarisation makes the follow up to Meek Warrior the musical equivalent of bowling’s seven-ten split. Should the band simplify and expand on the hooks of Meek Warrior, an album where the melodic payoffs were nestled between spurts of noise and virtuosity, appeasing the initially distracted? Or does Akron/Family continue in more experimental domains? Somehow Love Is Simple achieves both, thickening the melodic and harmonic element speckled throughout its predecessor, providing tighter, crisper performances and arrangements, while attaining that ‘fuck you’ to pigeonholing that defines the band as special in the first place.

The album (described by Akron’s own Seth Olinsky as a “homage to the classic records … of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young”) is, in title, composition and performance, an extended, yet at times scarily accurate, portrayal of the daring, yet melodious, quality that makes ‘classic rock’ so important. Opening with the album’s bookend track ‘Love, Love, Love (Everyone)’, our first exposure to Love Is Simple is a calculated, yet unpretentious, reappraisal of Lennon’s ‘All You Need is Love’; the song’s chorus echoing The Beatles in mantra, mood and group harmony. More effortless and direct than anything Akron/Family has ever done this introduction illuminates the album’s tendency for old fashioned hooks.

But to assume that Akron/Family has gone completely retro on us is misguided. While ‘Ed is a Portal’ borrows from the droning instrumentation first popularised by George Harrison on ‘Within You Without You’, the seven-and-a-half minute journey taken from this seed is entirely Akron/Family alone. Incorporating chanting vocals, ‘70’s folk, spoken word and resolving with a tinny hip-hop beat, the seamless way in which the song fuses its hotchpotch of sounds is proof of Akron’s development, now managing to co-exist outside traditional frameworks whilst keeping tunefulness at the forefront.

When occasionally Love Is Simple does abandon its melodic gifts, arguably reducing its greatest asset, acceptance is simply a few repeat listens away. With further inspection the once difficult loses discordance, shedding skin and becoming more justifiable, and perhaps even more beautiful. The initially unattainable mid-section of ‘Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Mums’ (a mutated, world music-on-acid splice of jungle paranoia) is a prime example, in time clarifying itself, becoming integral to the album’s overall scheme.

Before the release of Love Is Simple it would have been fair to say Akron/Family sounded like nothing heard before. Their blend of folk sensibilities, prog-rock exploration, field noises and group harmony mashing the best qualities of many great bands together, making it impossible to finger-point their sound. But being unique does not always equate to artistic success (Yoko Ono’s sound explorations were original, Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express popularised the synthesiser, both influencing movements that outweighed their own work), and on Meek Warrior Akron/Family were sometimes a little too heavy-handed in asserting their own singularity, causing confusing to the album’s true intentions.

Asides from a few slight transgressions the same cannot be said about Love Is Simple, it is a far more focused affair and a more thorough realisation of Akron/Family’s ability. While Olinksy may be right, the best may still be yet to come for his band, Love Is Simple is frighteningly developed and deserves to be considered as one of 2007’s best.