Akron/Family and Angels of Light

For those of you who missed seeing the indescribably god-like Akron/Family live, here’s your chance to buy the disc and be converted. Trying to describe their music is like trying to sum up all the experiences that you’ve had over the past year in one sentence. They seamlessly blaze through sweet Beatles/Beach Boys harmonies followed by zoned out chanting to crazed wall-of-noise freak-outs to hippy hoedown sing-alongs and do this, sometimes in the course of one song and yes, they are great songs. All of this is interspersed with weird lo-fi sound effects and little bits of laptop electronica. The most impressive thing about them is their happy-kid ecstatic optimism that never gets even remotely near sappy because they’re just too damn ferocious in their delivery. This split release follows their self-titled first album on Michael Gira’s (Swans) Young God label and features seven tracks of A/F followed by five tracks of Angels of Light, which is Gira backed by A/F. The Gira side goes back and forth between Leonard Cohen type folk ballads to more experimental A/F arrangements. It is to Gira’s credit to give A/F their freedom to interpret; they push his music, as well as the Dylan cover ("I Pity the Poor Immigrant”), into the zone. Good medicine for a fucked up world.