It’s been a really shitty winter here in New York. As I type this, it is about forty degrees and pouring, not the kind of weather you expect with baseball season starting tomorrow. The rain hitting my air conditioner is making it difficult to concentrate on the music coming out of my speakers, but for some reason the off-beat pattering fits perfectly with bizarre instrumentation and off kilter song structures of Akron/Family’s debut record. Akron/Family is even messing with my mind by blasting lightning claps through my stereo. The album is as dark as the sky and as barren as the trees on a day like this. Street sounds hide behind soft guitar arpeggios, hummed vocals sway richly in and out of the mix. This is not an album for a beautiful summer day, but for a day like this it really fits the mood.

Akron/Family is a four-piece collection of multi-instrumentalists from Brooklyn that creates a strange sort of experimental folk that shifts sounds so rapidly it is incredibly hard to define. Still, as they say on “Suchness”: “I want to see the thing in itself/I don’t want to think anymore.” While this is not really great advice for a record reviewer, it is good advice for the listener of this album. For much of the album Akron/Family starts off songs that seem to be following a reasonable familiar path to modern folk, but the rug is constantly being pulled out from under the listener. While there are times that this can get grating, if you passively let this album come to you, it is an extremely satisfying listen, and one that gets better every time through.

The band is a sort of protégée of former Swans, and current Angels of Light front man Michael Gira. Gira, who is listed as co-producer, also put out the album on his own label and uses Akron/Family as his backing band. But, Akron/Family has its own identity right from the get go. All four singers have very distinct voices and the constant changes in instrumentation give the album a lot of variety even if all of the tempos stay slow and the vibe stays down. There are times of great emotional bombast such as on “Lumen,” and many sad, sweet moments such as the opener “Before and Again.” There are electronic-flourishes mixed with live strings and light guitars, such as on “Sorrow Boy,” that mix together in a very new way from the current crop of neo-folk groups. The vocals are confidently placed in the front of the mix and even with all of the instruments and samples floating around the album has a very crisp sound, never sounding claustrophobic or over-produced.

It is a long album, and there are certainly moments when the experimentation takes away from what would otherwise be a great song. Still, on a day like this, I have all the time in the world to let this album take over the room. I’m sure as hell not going out there. – Larry Hess