Akron/Family
Love Is Simple

THE REVIEW

"What is love" 

The Akron/Family seem to ask (and ask us) often, throughout the 11 tracks of this new effort. There is no single answer, the emotional sphere is the most subjective thing there is and everyone is free to connect the word "love" to different situations/people/things. This is why it's good and right to fall in love with music and albums like this one, full of weaknesses and imperfections perhaps, but born of commendable sincerity and devotion. And perhaps the key to understanding "Love Is Simple" is already in the title, and on a larger scale, in the entire production of the young Akron/Family: simplicity. Understood as transparency, being what is seen, without masks or musical intellectualism of any kind. A bit like love itself. If it exists, it exists, period. You can't force it or repress it. Perhaps that's why love is truly simpler than we portray it, just as an album can candidly please, without having to stimulate any ruminations. Pure and simple sounds, for feelings and images of immediate enjoyment, but with a prolonged aftertaste.

And so one finds themselves lulled by the boy scout choirs of songs with unsettling titles ("Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead"), or by almost banal post-freak anthems in their humanist message ("Love, Love, Love (everyone)"). But isn't this perhaps the essence of music? Doesn't the source from which music springs reside precisely in the heart depicted on the cover?

The four Akron/Family members understood this long ago, and they engage in a kaleidoscopic tribute to love in general and to their musical loves in particular. Leaving little or nothing aside: the India of the ragas with tribal inflections ("Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music For Moms"), the hallucinated California of the Grateful Dead united with gospel visions ("There's So Many Colors"), lullabies that transfigure into lysergic nightmares ("Ponys OG"), zappaesque cabaret crumplings ("I've Got Some Friends") and the trademark of the band, joyful Pentecostal church attitude, country folk twists and free jazz blasts ("Ed Is A Portal" and "Of All The Things"). But perhaps the best definition of their music is given by the individuals concerned in "Phenomena":

"Things Are Not What They Seem, Nor Are They Otherwise".

Everything and its opposite, therefore, as if to quiet possible insinuations about their artistic purposes at the outset. This is who we are, take it or leave it.

I take it.