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Akron/Family :: "Phenomena"From Love Is Simple (Young God; 2007)
The vast majority of Akron/Family's new record eschews the thunderclaps of noise and fogs of ambient that have long distinguished the band from its peers. This is a startlingly sincere record even when stretching into 8-minute percussive epics, never subsuming genre and expectation with the malice of previous catharses. It is all nice; it is all likeable.
The same soft accusations could be leveled against "Phenomena," too, except that the concision with which the track moves from acoustic lullaby to "White Album" groove to scintillating iridescent psych-rock explosion still sounds like a punch in the stomach, like one of those moments when you look at the sky, no really fucking look at it! and a breeze hits a tree and something of a whisper of the enormity of things rustles by, and you scarcely suppress a shiver at what you almost thought about. It sounds awe-inspiringly awe-struck, a liquefied guitar line spiraling down before the process begins again, no less effective for its repetition. As happens too often on Love is Simple, the conclusion is comfortable, involving noodling guitars and blues organs. David Greenwald calls the record their Sky Blue Sky, which he kinda means as a compliment, being as he's the only dude in America that actually likes Wilco's newest. I haven't heard that record, but I understand it to be the work of a band less aggressively experimental. If so, the comparison is fair -- but I, an A-Fam devotee where Boogz is a Wilco apologist, find myself equally pleased. Music fans are kinda stupid that way, and "Phenomena" is a nice weapon to have in my next Akron/Family argument.
Clayton Purdom :: 18 August 2007 |
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