Akron/Family will end their late summer/early fall North American schizo-folk tent revival in the River City at one of the city’s most intriguing venues, the 21C Museum Hotel, on September 20. The first leg of their upcoming tour features psych roots luminary and helluva nice guy Wooden Wand, with Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard and Slaraffenland rounding out the rest of the shows. The dates:

Wed. Jul. 22 Cleveland, OH @ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Thu. Jul. 23 Detroit Lakes, MN @ 10,000 Lakes Festival
Fri. Jul. 24 Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge w/ Icy Demons
Sat. Jul. 25 Calgary, AB @ Calgary Folk Festival
Sun. Jul. 26 Calgary, AB @ Calgary Folk Festival
Wed. Jul. 29 Steamboat Springs, CO @ Ghostranch Saloon
Thu. Jul. 30 Vail, CO @ The Sandbar
Fri. Jul. 31 Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Sun. Aug. 2 Liberty Park, NJ @ All Points West Festival
Tue. Aug. 11 Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel w/ Wooden Wand
Wed. Aug. 12 Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle w/ Wooden Wand
Thu. Aug. 13 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl w/ Wooden Wand
Fri. Aug. 14 Birmingham, AL @ BottleTree w/ Wooden Wand
Sat. Aug. 15 Asheville, NC @ Harvest Festival at Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall
Fri. Aug. 28 San Francisco @ Outside Lands Festival
Sat. Aug. 29 Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theater w/ Howlin’ Rain, Lucky Dragons
Mon. Sep. 7 Seattle, WA @ Bumbershoot Festival
Tue. Sep. 8 Portland, OR @ Baghdad Theatre
Thu. Sep. 10 Baltimore, MD @ Talking Head Club w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard
Fri. Sep. 11 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard
Sat. Sep. 12 Monticello, NY @ ATP NY Festival
Mon. Sep. 14 Hudson, NY @ Jason’s Upstairs w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland
Tue. Sep. 15 Williamsport, PA @ Site B w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland
Wed. Sep. 16 Ithaca, NY @ Castaways w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland
Thu. Sep. 17 Buffalo, NY @ Mohawk Place w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland
Fri. Sep. 18 London, ON @ LOLA Fest
Sat. Sep. 19 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland
Sun. Sep. 20 Louisville, KY @ 21C Museum Atrium Gallery w/ Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Slaraffenland

MP3 :::
Akron/Family – They Will Appear

Some critics tend to take issue with an artist who lacks continuity on record. They may attack the artist for having some shade of a messy identity crisis. They might feel that a body of recorded work should be a cohesive submersion into an aurally cultivated landscape. I am not that sort of critic.

Sure, there’s a lot to say about continuity. An album such as, say, Lotus Plaza’s The Floodlight Collective is a great example of a cohesive record that sticks to a particular song structure and sonic timbre, and does it in a well-crafted fashion. However, there’s a fine line between cohesion and repetition or lack of inspiration. There’s also a fine line between ecclecticity and clusterfuck. Akron/Family, with the forthcoming Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, very intelligently carves an eclectic, surprising record that is not afraid to experiment with disparate genres – almost to an alarming level. It’s a textbook example of experimental music for people who might not like experimental music.

Akron/Family have dropped the freak from their freak folk flag, and in its place, introduced 11 remarkable tracks that explore every corner of cosmic American music – torch ballads to bucolic dirges, country rock to atmospheric anthems, sunshine pop and grating noise, Television and the Byrds, Sun City Girls and Sun Ra. Does this sound interesting to you? It should, Set Em Wild, Set Em Free is utterly imaginative.

“Everyone is Guilty,” the album’s opener, masterfully combines funk and post-punk. For a psych folk group, that’s pretty insane. From there, next track “River” provokes a sunshine-drenched subdued pop song with a twang. Eno-informed electronic flourishes swell and subside, as well as steel guitar and horn arrangements. It’s obvious that the Akron/Family loves music with no restrictions, plain and simple. What’s most surprising, aside from the genre jumping, is that fact that the group’s downsizing from a revolving roster to a trio yielded their most expansive album to date.

Now jump to “MBF” in the second half of the record. What begins as Steve Albini rock turns into a self-destructive porous membrane of sonic intensity that could fit very nicely on a Wolf Eyes or Prurient record.  The structurally loose “Sun Will Shine (Warmth of the Sunship Version” is another highlight. This track is the closest resemblance to the group’s last effort Love is All, yet maintains the consistency of maturation and playfulness that makes Set Em Wild, Set Em Free so remarkable.  The almost eight-minute “Gravelly Mountains of the Moon” is the real gem, though – a bombastic technicolor psychedelic anthem stocked with vast instrumentation and a pulsating over-the-horizon melodic quality. I like Akron/Family, but I didn’t see that one coming.

I can see the pure ambition of Set Em Wild, Set Em Free to possibly be a point of contention among critics and fans. I hope not. Set Em Wild, Set Em Free is smart and psychotic, almost refreshing to a fault, and showcases a band who has absolutely no comfort zone. Akron/Family have proven themselves to be pretty much fearless, and as a consequence, are propelled to a level much higher than simply another good offering from New Weird America. While some might find the record unlistenable at times, anyone with a relative appreciation of music and how it evolved should be compelled to give Set Em Wild, Set Em Free a fair shot, at least to hear an example of a truly brave and crafty collective.

Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free hits the streets on May 5 and is available for pre-order on Dead Oceans.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
Akron/Family – Gravelly Mountains of the Moon
Akron/Family – MBF

Mercurial weird beards and proteges to crazy ol’ cowboy Michael Gira, the ever-revolving freak folk collective Akron/Family, have big things coming up this year, including their first record as a trio (meaning possibly stripped down?) Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free.  It’s out May 5th on Dead Oceans.  With a much more expansive tour this spring than last winter’s New England-only tour, Akron/Family traverse the great Manifest Destiny throughout the intervening period, including a few residency shows.  They’re still passing up Louisville though (what gives guys?  C’mon, creepy Will Oldham’s for real tryin’ to see you).  Regardless, Set ‘Em Wild promises to be sick and I’ll have some songs for you all as soon as I get to hear it.

Also of note, fellow Young God-er Larkin Grimm is supporting the /Family for a few shows (well, one), and you can catch her tonight at the awesome 21C in Louisville with Sandpaper Dolls.  Her parents were in a cult!

Sun. Mar. 1 – Santa Monica, CA @ McCabe’s Guitar Shop w/ Ben Harper, Howlin’ Rain (Chris Darrow tribute show)
Fri. Mar. 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern w/ Avocet
Sat. Mar. 7 – San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern w/ Citay
Sun. Mar. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern w/ Howlin’ Rain (acoustic)
Mon. Mar. 9 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Brookdale Lodge
Tue. Mar. 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Steve Allen Theatre w/ Charlyne Yi, the Hollywood Hotshots
Wed. Mar. 11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Steve Allen Theatre w/ Golden Animals, Max Maven
Thu. Mar. 12 – Los Angeles, CA @ Steve Allen Theatre
Fri. Mar. 13 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Aruba @ Neon Reverb Festival
Tue. Mar. 17 – Denver, CO @ Oriental Theatre
Wed. Mar. 18 – Austin, TX @ The Mohawk – 5 PM – Austinist/Gothamist Party – SXSW
Thu. Mar. 19 – Austin, TX @ The Mohawk – Dead Oceans/Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian Showcase – SXSW
Sun. Mar. 22 – Hamilton, ON @ The Casbah w/ Rock Plaza Central
Mon. Mar. 23 – Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dees w/ Born Ruffians
Tue. Mar. 24 – Toronto, ON @ Sneaky Dees w/ Born Rufians – SOLD OUT
Wed. Mar. 25 – Montreal, QC @ Il Motore w/ Born Ruffians
Thu. Mar. 26 – Montreal, QC @ Il Motore w/ Born Ruffians
Fri. Mar. 27 – New York, NY @ The New Museum w/ The Lexie Mountain Boys
Sat. Mar. 28 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool w/ Gold Sparkle Band
Sun. Mar. 29 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool w/ Larkin Grimm

MP3 :::
Akron/Family – Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead
Larkin Grimm – Dominican Rum

This is a special Super Swingin’ Mix… because it might be the last one ever. I threw links in this post like you eat lunch.

As I’ve mentioned before, Swan Fungus is one of my favorite blogs out there (along with WFMU’s and Raven Sings the Blues). With regard to the former, I like the author’s idea of yanking a bunch of news stories together and then posting totally righteous jam hives that may or may not have anything to do with what he’s writing about. I’m going to steal that idea (with attribution of course), but up the ante a bit and try to relate the music to a news story. Anton Newcombe does this a lot on his MySpazzz blog, which is how I accidentally got into an online dork fight with him – a story I’ll save for another day. I take that back – we might all be dead on Wednesday if CERN fucks up their lil’ Big Bang experiment. So maybe you won’t get that story from me. That’s probably the least of your concerns.

All in all, recreating the origin of our universe and all of existence will probably be tits. And I totally administer props to CERN for trying to book Spiritualized to perform in celebration of this experiment. But in the off chance that something gets unequivocally fucked in this decidedly dubious pow-wow, I might not go to work Wednesday. I do not want to die sitting at my desk. I mean, that would be fucking sad. I think I’ll kick it at home, grab some beer technology, and have tons of monumental sex with my girlfriend instead, which is a better power play on apocalypse day. I also don’t plan to write a living will and testament, since not even light can escape the extreme, space-time-continuum-bending gravitational force of a black hole, suggesting that my estate probably won’t stay intact anyhow. So don’t plan on getting my Wii.

If you’re not hip to what CERN’s up to these days, EU and US scientists are totally gonna recreate the state of the universe immediately after the Big Bang, deep below the alps, with the 17-mile long Large Hadron Collider. It’s (supposedly) the most massive experiment ever conducted. But it also is (supposedly) a potential gnarly scene. Sounds rad to me either way. Luckily, even if the jive-like worst case scenario manifests itself, Stephen Colbert’s DNA will be floating in space somewhere for extraterrestrials to clone and manipulate and shit.

Here’s yr. research style, with slammin’ animated GIFs to boot. Theoretical physics rules my life. I wish I had my girlfriend’s copy of Paul Davies’ How to Build a Time Machine with me to shed some additional light, for you dear readers, on the stability of black holes and wormholes… stuff like that. Lest we forget those pesky strangelets, as well. If I had to write a headline, I think I’d title it “Hardcore Celestial Happenstance Harshes Mellows Worldwide.”

But even if Wednesday’s flippin’ of the switch goes as smooth as Michael McDonald, we still have that whole The North Pole Ice Cap is an Island For the First Time in Human History thing going on. I’d like to thank the Baby Boomers for fucking my generation, and future generations, over. Tiiiiiight. Thanks guys!

So to celebrate CERN doin’ it live, I’ve gathered a few pleasant, apocalyptic canticles to provide the perfect soundtrack for either a efficiently swallowed Earth (a la CERN), or a slowly dying Earth (a la mankind’s insolence). I’ve always found Bardo Pond to be pretty fitting end-of-the-world bumper music, so I included a couple tracks from them. I’m super pumped about the songs I chose. Though not every jam specifically addresses an accidental astrophysical clusterfuck – the titles, themes, mood, et al. convey a general things-are-fucked notion. I mean, you can’t argue that Boris and Kites aren’t par for the endtymez course. Catch one Cold War reference and one Revelations allegory, and you’ll win something yet to be determined. Leave a comment below.

So happy Monday, you guyses. Prepare to die lol.

MP3 :::
Bardo Pond – This Time (So Fucked)
Bardo Pond – Night of Frogs
The Warlocks – Come Save Us
Boris – Blackout
Love – The Red Telephone
M83 – God of Thunder
The Besnard Lakes – Devastation
Loop – Black Sun
The Vaselines – No Hope
Kites – Exploded Face
Akron/Family – Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead