c/d: akron/family

If anyone has tickets for the 8pm set and would be willing to exchange for the 11:30 please let me know. I ordered the later ones by mistake and now can't get the early ones, and my wife can't go to the late set.

but still, check them out live!

But yeah, good live show.

BTW, we decided to just go to the 11:30 - anyone else going?

yes. and i love hamid drake. disappointment of the year. :(

however, even comparing the two is sort of insulting as that aside from some banjo/vocal harmonies and an acoustic guitar or two, they don't seem all that much alike

Parker/Drake are phenomenal though. Hearing them for 30 minutes made everything afterward seem all the more trite and pointless.

normally I think they are pretty good live--sometimes their whole shtick gets to me though. did they take off their shirsts and dance around like it was tribal and "real" and shit?

Drake and Parker already had the audience doing some pretty great clapping and chanting stuff and getting into it in a totally sincere way, and after that the whole Family thing of trying to get everyone to lose their irony (while maintaining a healthy irony about it) seemed stupid.

Moreover, after spending some time with their last album, and listening to their set, I realized they just don't really have good songs. They've got guns but no bullets, to use a phrase a drunk music industry guy once told me at a show.

My favorite track of theirs was always "raising the sparks"

I like these dudes.

"LOVE IS SIMPLE"
http://www.stereogum.com/img/akronfamily_loveissimple_cover.jpg

^that's a cool album cover, isn't it?

i don't know what to make of the new album yet in terms of songs--

what i do know is that they are such amazing musicians, really adept at everything they do

they have to cut down a little on the "ok, whole band sing" parts

yuh, I know what you mean.

I've acquired it, but I haven't had a chance to listen and no nothing about it really. Are there some good freakings out on it? Hope so.

*know

cutty, further on the "ok, whole band sing" parts, have you heard "Sunflower's Here to Stay" off the new Angels of Light album?
A/F kind of ruin that song.

<I>they have to cut down a little on the "ok, whole band sing" parts</I>

No way! That loose group singing really makes a lot of their songs. I can't imagine "Future Myth" without it.

Okay. I need to learn how to use the "convert simple html to bbcode" button.

love this new album

No way! That loose group singing really makes a lot of their songs. I can't imagine "Future Myth" without it.

i didn't say get rid of it. i said cut down. overkill.

i like it.

Listening to this for the first time right now and the "ok, whole band sing" part of "Ed is a Portal" really really reminds me of Phish.

Classic for the time I saw them play and they got around thirty members of the audience on stage, handed them random instruments and made the whole crowd sing "Circle Triangle Square! Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!"

Finally got a chance to see these fellers last night at a secret pre-Coachella show up in LA. Brought down the house, all the claims for them as being genius live are fully justified. Getting the crowd going is part of it all of course but the way they were able to constantly turn things on a dime almost minute by minute, pretty damn incredible. A lot of murky but a few good photos by me here; I do like this one:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3134/2442895648_931b358f3f.jpg

they are an awesome live band. also, if you've passed on them so far, the first self-titled album, and their first split with michael gira, are both worth a listen or two. on both those, they walk a fine line between epic/transcendent and hokey/jammy. since then, from my perspective at least, they seem to have succumbed a bit to the hokey/jammy, the exception being their backing work on gira's album last year

Oh I've got their stuff (in a happy circumstance, I'm on the Young God promo list). I'd just not seen them in the flesh before.

damn, that is a pretty happy circumstance!

they are so rad live

future myth is pretty rad - that whole album is great but the song is just :D

new album

it's kinda alright but I'm just looking forward to the live show

I was going to start a thread for the new album (because it's awesome), but I figured I'd start here instead. I didn't care too much about these guys before this evening.

always blown away by the drummer

^^^^ still think love is simple is their best tho

this is really good. maybe being free of michael gira is liberating. the first song sounds almost like yes

but they already sounded like Yes on the second song of the split with Angels of Light!

"moment"? it's an awesome jam, maybe an impressionistic version of yes. i hear more dead in it myself. on "everyone is guilty" there are stretches of straight up "yours is no disgrace" intricacy. but who cares. it's all good. can't wait to see these guys again

well, I was thinkin' specifically of the weird proggy riff thing they go into for a little while right before the song gets all twangy and quiet.

haven't heard the new one yet, but if it rocks harder then I am down with that.

there's an instrumental called "mbf" you might like then that's a little like when "raising the sparks" gets really going

Friendly dudes.

gira is going to be playing in LA when these dudes are going to be in town so hopefully they show up for that.

also they have a mind freak magician opening up for them on one day or something. I hope he comes out and jams w/ them

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WN5rn3vZL._SS500_.jpg

Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free is the fourth album by Akron/Family. It was released on May 5, 2009 by Dead Oceans Records (and in Europe by Crammed Discs).

"Everyone Is Guilty" - 5:58
"River" - 4:46
"Creatures" - 4:13
"The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen" - 3:51
"Set 'Em Free, Pt.1" - 2:37
"Gravelly Mountains of the Moon" - 7:41
"Many Ghosts" - 4:05
"MBF" - 3:14
"They Will Appear" - 6:28
"Sun Will Shine (Warmth of the Sunship version)" - 5:13
"Last Year" - 1:40

sorry i posted the wrong album:

(from Akron/Family newsletter)
"We’re super excited to announce the inception of Family Tree Records — our very own imprint designed to bring you rare & unreleased Ak/Fam material, our own side projects and eventually, a few brand new artists we think you’ll love.

So, to officially induct Family Tree, we’re beginning with what will be the first entry in our Improv Series — a set of releases devoted to the AkAk fringe, experiments pointed towards the outermost cosmos.

That said, we present you with Totem (Improv Series 1) — the results of us hopping onto WFMU’s Frow Show and laying a 70-minute freakout to tape

After bringing the Totem discs out on our Winter tour through the south, they were gone before we knew what to do. So we’ve decided to make it available in the digital realm."

Available at http://akronfamily.bandcamp.com/

1. Totem 1 02:05
2. Totem 2 03:54
3. Totem 3 02:26
4. Totem 4 02:00
5. Totem 5 02:18
6. Totem 6 04:26
7. Changing Positions of the Sun 16:42
8. Village Awareness 07:26
9. Totemic 00:59
10. Planing Sideways. Graphical 09:05
11. Fixation Star Grid 09:42
12. Numbers Growing 07:14
13. Always Been Ways To Here 10:45
14. And In The 00:21

Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

this is such a great album

http://pitchfork.com/news/41419-listen-to-the-new-akronfamily-album-now/

link 2 the stream: http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/44427006

this album doesn't really have any surprises (except that one part where I think the dude goes on and on about walking out of a Safeway) and makes me kind of sad, but I don't really care because their live show is still going to be great

a while ago I downloaded this session they did where they basically recorded an album demo on a radio show, and it was all pretty alright. Nothing really stood out except this one track they did called Sophia (or something like it, it sounds like a country song and they all just keep shouting Sohpiaaaaaa over it). I don't have it anymore, so if anyone does please leonardo it.

I have the song "Sophia", I think you sent it to me actually

otm

The tie-dyed freak flag is a way better look for them than the skull anyway.

this issue is all about... communication.

signed,
your girlfriend

hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahaha no

― dave cool it (stevie), Thursday, January 26, 2012 9:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha yeah I was on my way out when I read this earlier but that's a leeeeetle overcooked

don't think it's the issue in any case

man, this sounds like some blink 182 shit

http://soundcloud.com/danabuoy/

lol these dudes what happened

this is prob the first band whose career I've followed closely enough that I've been able to see their descending arc in realtime

Seeing on Twitter that Miles Seaton passed away, sadly. These guys could be really good and I was holding out hope for a comeback.

RIP. They had a few fantastic songs and I will forever be jealous of my friends who saw them during the Angels of Light split era, where, iirc, a performance of "Raising the Sparks" literally spilled out of the venue and into the street. (I assume this was more or less standard practice on that tour.)

I never really warmed to their later stuff (and they were sadly not very exciting when I finally did catch them in the mid-2010s) but back in the self-titled/Angels of Light split era it really did seem like the sky was their limit for a little while

The one time I saw them was phenomenal, small club show and one of the few concerts I've been at where everyone was dancing start to stop.

This is really wretched news because two months ago a dear friend who was plagued with severe depression ended her struggle, and her last message to us all the day before (one of those ones that reads a little different now) included a link to her own favorite Akron/Family song, "Last Year." Heavy, heavy time.

Oh wow, I'm sorry Ned.

Sadly I never got to see them live, but I always hoped I'd get the chance. I know the latter stuff was a little more spotty, but I still like a lot of their material. In fact I had finally replaced my burned CD copy of the S/T album with an actual copy last summer.

very sorry to hear that ned

Thanks very kindly. There's lots more to say about her but we're all still feeling the loss. A real light.

Absolutely lovely thread about Seaton from another friend of mine.

In the mid 2000s until the early twentyteens Akron/Family was my absolute favorite live rock band. Life-affirming music. When they played on my radio show in college, Miles and I talked endlessly about music and he offered to dump his his entire external hard drive full of tunes

— Sam (@fax_me) February 19, 2021

akron family was one of the best live bands in the mid-00s, saw them quite a few times, first was during the angels of light split tour. After that one member left to be a monk they were not really up to that level live but man they were so special when they were. The last time I saw miles play was 6-7 years ago, it was in a large warehouse space and it was a duo of him and a cellist, with a choir diffusing out throughout the warehouse, walking around and singing at various levels to make this 3D surround sound experience. Not really sure what to think or say