Akron Family ups the ante on Love is Simple, easily their most compelling recording yet. From the opening "Love Love Love (Everybody)," an homage sing along which tropes both the sentiments and melodicism of Sixties rock, it is apparent that the band is unafraid to tip their hat to progenitors. Their reach is wide, encompassing psychedelic and electronic experiments, tribal chants, alt-folk ballads, and classic rock hooks; that said the musical mélange A/F creates throughout Love is Simple is no easily distilled concoction of references. Disarmingly, the band has the good sense not to take themselves too seriously; their most over-the-top experiment, "Lake Song," consists of seven and a half minutes of kaleidoscopic vocals, capped off by a reasonable facsimile of Native American folksong -- it's subtitled "Ceremonial Music for Moms."

What's so irresistible about the CD is that it rewards those with attention spans -- you have to wait halfway through "There's so Many Colors" to get the "big tune," a gloriously orchestrated sing along followed by cooking guitar solos; but the material that frames this climax is filled with so many twists and juxtapositional turns as to make the whole song an architecture constructed entirely of pleasant surprises. "Ed is a Portal" marries trance-inducing jam-inflected ostinati with jubilant group vocals. "Of All Things" is another eight minutes of impressively digressive music. "Crickets" and "Don't be Afraid, You're Already Dead" are more straightforward in presentation, but contain achingly lovely melodies that convey a subtlety and vulnerability that overshadows even the impressive adventures of Akron/Family's long-form works. - Christian Carey (2007, The Daily Copper)