Akron/Family's self-titled debut for Young God has its share of opaque psych-folk weirdness. After all, each of the Brooklyn band's four principal members receives a "bric-a-brac" credit next to the more conventional listings for guitar, piano, melodica, glockenspiel, and percussion, and unidentifiable noises have a way of splattering suddenly across the album's plaintive acoustics. "Part of Corey," for example, is two minutes of tape splicing and hiss before a gentle ballad rises above the wind noise. This penchant for matching squelchy electronics to analog instruments will land them immediately with a New Hippie tag, if their beards don't do it first. But the quartet isn't limited to that sound. They integrate it with an indie rock aesthetic (
Flaming Lips, Palace), and songs like "Italy," "Afford," and "Before and Again" are plucky, even mostly catchy, and having that bit of structure takes
Akron/Family a long, long way. It's not off-putting when the twining, weeping guitars in "Afford" suddenly start alternating with heavy reverb and field recordings of birds -- if anything, the experimentation makes the song stronger. "Lumen" is another highlight; it begins with whining cellos and shifts to a stilted British folk sound before becoming something closer to orchestral pop. "Running, Returning" is strong, too -- with its melding of animalistic percussion, layered voices, pleading melody, and hints of electronic noisemaking to the lo-fi aesthetic, it's a pretty solid primer for the record's overall feel. ~ Johnny Loftus