The Spitz, London
21st April 2006
Akron/Family are not from Ohio, nor are they apparently related to each other. They are also sometimes Michael Gira‘s band Angels Of Light. Tonight at The Spitz they might be themselves, though along the way they play up a storm of other identities, genres and musical forms.
The band are also somewhat hirsute, though not at this stage in their UK tour much more hairy than their crowd, whose beardiness is omnipresent. Somehow throughout a set which lasts well over two hours, they manage to achieve the sweatiest of bodies in a band who remain seated for the large part of the gig. One of the key elements in the Akron/Family schtick is keeping the audience guessing as to just what they might play next. Opening with a rising cacophony played on penny whistles, melodica and anything else they might have to hand before launching into fully-fledged psychedelic freakout noise pieces, the quartet sit at the juncture between good ol’ boys out for a barnstorming good time, and literary city sophisticates (they have been known to have William Blake readings as part of their live set before) who know their post-modern place in the spectrum of the rock idiom – and also how to splice the boundaries with convincing results.
So they can pull a pretty mean three-part harmony out of their folksy selves, as “Moment” demonstrates ably, and strum their guitars until the drone emerges before swinging by into the skyscraping realms of post-rock which soon becomes math rock and hard rock and Sabbath-noting doom rock before the realisation dawns that Akron/Family are simply a very good rock band. That that particular material might be some sort of flinty granite is open to question – what is not is the group’s evident tightness and all-round enjoyment of what they’re playing. Despite a few rude loud talkers during the hushed moments where the noise is not the focus, where the words and strings are making the sense for the now, their reception tonight is one of polite reverence and fairly restrained exuberance – this is London after all – but some outbreaks of dancing and head-nodding are observed. When the bass player asks if anyone likes dolphins before the band play “Oceanside”, the eventual chorus of “yes!” comes back from a crowd who seem slightly surprised to be asked – and who wouldn’t be? The ensuing drone-out makes an eventual ascent into feedback and hefty percussive rhythms and is soon somewhere beyond the pastures of ecofriendly niceness and well out into the realms of brain-melted heaviness.
Ever difficult to pin down, Akron/Family’s show defies their already elusively outré records to make for a live performance which is somewhat at an angle to the rest of Rock and Roll. Yes, they have two guitars, a bass and drums; they reference other times, decades, places and moods – but where their own identity lies musically is somewhere at the interstices /between/ the easily-recognised and over-familiar patterns. This is their strength, and along with a simple love of what it is that they summon live on stage both individually and collectively, Akron/Family are a particular experience which is sufficiently like unto none other as to demand witnessing.
