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Historically, this shit is meant to fucking bend time and space and completely disorient a person. There's no passive listeners, no division between the person with the drum and the person without one. I've seen people end up having seriously transcendent experiences at our shows. -Miles Seaton |
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Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead
"Going up and down, falling apart and coming together, the duality thing is an approach we've used. For us, it's often reflected in chaos and resolution," says Olinsky. "Having something that's chaotic and a little out of control, maybe even turns off the audience a little bit with its dissonance, and then resolves into a song that they know or just something sensual and beautiful, gives us ways to draw the audience in and then try and use that energy as a step-off point for something unfamiliar to everyone. Some nights it's successful, some nights it's not. We love music. We love chaos. We love pretty things. As we've matured it's gotten more refined but we love wild turns and butt-ending weird things next to each other."
Akron/Family by Jeff Talbot
This refinement reached a new peak on Love Is Simple, which toned down some of the more outré jazz tendencies, sharpened their songwriting and found them shooting their strange stanzas in widescreen Technicolor while keeping a masterful hand on the camera, at least most of the time. The album is the final bow for the longtime fourth member of Akron/Family, Ryan Vanderhoof, who left the taxing life of a touring musician for a more stable existence. While initially scared about what to do with Love coming out and a tour looming, they quickly discovered Vanderhoof's departure created space for a larger Family, with one person blossoming into a shifting clan that includes blessedly avant sound warper Greg Davis, the entirety of Megafaun and, on the current West Coast tour, The Dodos.
"The people we attract are just hip to what we do. The Megafaun guys pick up on the more Americana/The Band elements and The Dodos pick up on the more punk rock and African parts. Since the first time we played with [The Dodos] we were all like, 'Whoa! Meric [Long, guitar] and Logan [Kroeber, drums] brought it heavy.' We'd have them up to play drums on the end of a song and they were there," says Seaton. "When Seth and I first got together we were Akron and the idea was we'd have this family, a collectivist, Elephant 6 thing, with all different members and configurations revolving around the core. Then, when Dana came along we had this discussion about going in a more traditional band route. Then Ryan joined and the four-member unit is so classic, and everybody takes up so much space in this band. So, with Ryan leaving, things had to start over in a way with Seth, Dana and I being the core Akron with this Family thing happening very organically."
"What started out as damage control has turned into this flowering of its own," adds Olinsky. "Ryan followed his heart and that's perfect, and we're finding ourselves in a position where the box is broken open. You get into the four iconic figures, Beatles-esque mindset and [Love Is Simple] is really the plateau of that. We put the walrus skull on the back cover to recognize that records and the concept of records are dying. We're never gonna be The Beatles or anything like them. That happened and today's industry is a blank canvas for people like us to do what we do. There are whole new avenues for expression. Even if Ryan had stayed we would have had to spend time developing ourselves at this point. We feel a sense of empowerment in the group right now where we can pull off our dreams and find a way of doing anything."
The Lightning Bolt Of Compassion
The immortals gently awaken
All possibilities open
Unto one another
And brothers and sisters begin
To see truly through strata
Akron/Family by James Martin
"We got lots of good reviews for Love but they kind of bag on the positive lyrics. It's unfortunate. I listen to a lot of indie rock records and much of it sounds like a dude complaining or talking about his feelings. That's fine but I'm not sure if it's a weird distortion of Bob Dylan, who spoke for many. A lot of the time, people making art is a really self-obsessed act," says Olinsky. "Our culture is obsessed with newness and genius, and I think people are obsessed with those concepts. A central aspect of our music is joy and the desire to express that in a way that can be shared. There's little prayers that say 'I' but most of them are really an attempt to get past 'I'. Sincerely, most of the lyrics aren't about singular emotional experiences."
Being in the physical presence of their fiercely free, organic music as it unfolds is where the tumblers inside Akron/Family's schema fully click into place. Few concerts have hit me in the spirit like their performance in San Francisco last October, which transformed this writer from a mere admirer into a full-blown acolyte. They are hell-bent on eradicating any fences that stand between them and those gathered. Not content with mere listeners, Akron/Family summons us into the music, makes us a coconspirator in their machinations, a fiddler at their inferno, a child in their sprinkler spray.
"When I first started making music what I thought was a successful situation was seeing Fugazi and having them step up in my face and tell me to pick up a fucking guitar. It's so important, and in a lot of ways that's what we're trying to bring. Success is inspiring someone to make music, inspiring someone to sing, however it happens," enthuses Seaton, a huge fan of ritual music of all stripes. "When everybody is singing and moving and there's this whole undulating thing, there's a sense that, if it gets heavy enough and you're focused enough in the moment, you can really forget there's boundaries between atoms. Historically, this shit is meant to fucking bend time and space and completely disorient a person. There's no passive listeners, no division between the person with the drum and the person without one. I've seen people end up having seriously transcendent experiences at our shows. It's really audacious in some ways to say that shit but at this point I have to because it's what I really care for in music. It's what I'm going for and I don't give a FUCK if someone thinks I'm a sick bass player. Thank you very much but can we go there together?"
Akron/Family by Deborah Samantha
Understandably, most musicians stay away from this terrain. It's a tremendous responsibility to be the one with the power rattle that pokes our ancestors and holds up a mirror to our souls. There's power in being a lightning rod but you can also get your ass crisped. Bad.
"You don't know what's gonna happen or what you're going to bring down [laughs]. There's a lot of things I go through making music that I don't talk about. I get off the road and I feel sick for weeks, physically ill," Seaton says. "I do try to put myself in harm's way in that situation as much as I can. I feel like putting yourself in that situation is the responsibility of the artist in a lot of ways. For me, and for a lot of people, the heaviest thing they may ever come into contact with is a really profound aesthetic experience. So, in some ways, you're the intermediary, you're the host. A priest is not a special thing, they just happen to handle that fuckin' wafer."
"With all the changes in the music industry and the undermining of its commercial structure, I feel like music is being returned to the people. I don't really know what that means," observes Seaton. "It may mean that I'm out of a job, and that scares me sometimes as an artist in my own little ego world where I want MY voice to be heard. That can sometimes create a little frustration but I can see it happen at our shows that people have enough of an authentic experience that the value of music is increasing exponentially without people really even knowing it. The commercial value is changing, and who knows what that means, but there's a rift in the matrix that's making it possible for music to return to folk status. It's so exciting, so huge. I really want to open myself as much as I can, and having that be more of the agenda than just making great records or whatever matters."
JamBase | Freedom Trail
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