Akron/Family - Meek Warrior (Young God, 2006)

Akron/Family
Meek Warrior
Young God
2006

Rating: 7.5 crab nebulae out of 10

I’ve never been a big fan of the term “freak folk” to describe what the kids are doing these days with some acoustic guitars, a delay pedal and repetitive layering of vocals. But the nice thing about any genre name is that despite how silly it might be, it gives you an easy way to refer to a specific style and most folks know where you are coming from. I mention this because Akron/Family often gets grouped with those freak-folk bands, which is a perfectly fitting descriptor of this New York City-based quartet some of the time. Then there is that other part of their music, which couldn’t be any more all-over-the-map if you had a globe and a handful of darts. Sunny pop, krautrock, noise…you name it, they find a way to work some element of that sound into their recordings.

This album, "Meek Warrior", finds them following along that same path, this time with extra help from some members of Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene. The Young God website makes it sound as if this is a hold-over until the band records another album - a collection of random tracks individual band members had been working on, fleshing out and then recording with the full band later. Mostsongs lean towards the more folky side of the band, all fine and good and no complaints from this listener; but they still manage to work in a few mindfucks, most importantly the opening track “Blessing Force”, an epic 9+ minute rocker that goes from Oneida-style repetitive rockin’ to more straight-forward folk to some weird variation on blues-rock and finally dissolves into noise and chaos to end it all. It is this song that best represents the many sides of this talented band, with their ability to swarm all over the map musically and still somehow tie all of that together in a listenable fashion.