Live review: The innovative experimentation of Akron/Family
But at its core, Akron/Family is an experimental band. After all, before recording its fourth album -- this year’s excellent "Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free" -- one of the band’s co-founders, guitarist Ryan Vanderhoof, left the band to live in a Midwestern Buddhist Dharma Center. You can’t get more experimental than that.
Understandably, the band's live performances wax and wane according to a variety of factors: the energy of the crowd, the dynamics of the room, the sound system and whether or not the band has “it” that evening. Critical group-think tends to treat bands like static entities, mostly because night in and night out, your average group regurgitates songs as slightly tweaked album versions -- the same set-list, the same crowd banter, the same requests for backstage cold-cuts.
But when Akron/Family nail their cover of Grateful Dead staple, “I Know You Rider,” as they did on Saturday, it’s not an explicit reference to a desire for consistent pre-performance amenities, but rather an implicit nod to their roots. While the Grateful Dead remain the gold standard for every group hoping to play the 10,000 Lakes Festival, most of the bands they’ve influenced have failed to take into account the group’s musical omnivorousness. Indeed, other than possibly My Morning Jacket, Akron/Family deserves the mantle as rightful inheritor to the legacy of Jerry Garcia & Co. as much as any band over the last two decades.
Like the Dead, Akron at their best can channel a visceral communal vibe that makes the Family part of their name obvious. At this year’s SXSW, the band delivered performances so kinetic and transcendent that it inculcated the sort of love-your-brother thoughts that usually come only after a tab of high-powered blotter acid. They straddle that narrow nexus between family and cult, inspiring the sort of fan devotion practically unheard of in the fickle Internet age (outside the jam-band circuit).
Of course, there are perils when the preeminent hippie band is one of your archetypes and experimentalism your guiding principle -- and last night, Akron/Family’s set demonstrated the vicissitudes and occasional missteps that can dog a band so continually determined to levitate. Yet there were times during “River,” “Everyone Is Guilty” and the now-classic “Ed Is a Portal” when it was difficult to envision another band capable of engendering so much joy in their audience -- the crowd writhing and whirling, mouthing along to their almost indecipherable lyrics, smiles seared onto their faces.
These are the moments when Akron/Family locks in and detects that eternal rhythmic pulse imperceptible to lesser outfits -- their guitars climb like gyres, their three-part harmonies mesh gracefully and the drums channel a tribal bliss that taps into some deeply buried lizard part of your brain. It’s the sort of elevation that few bands ever attain, but Akron/Family is capable of night in and night out. However, on Saturday, the band struggled to sustain that intensity, all too often failing to build past those plateaus, following a rousing jam with a long-winded burst of lacerating feedback and interstellar amorphousness familiar to anyone who has sat through a soporific Dead “Drums/Space” interlude. Picture a candle illuminating a room and being systematically snuffed out by the wind.
Enlisting members of Howlin’ Rain for the set’s second half was wise. With the trio becoming a sextet, the move helped redouble the energy level of the thin crowd. It was a good show -- Akron/Family is far too talented to fall completely on their feet. Yet it illustrated the vagaries inherent in a band that refuses to play it safe. Either way, while it may not have been its finest performance, Akron/Family continues to prove that it’s far better to be innovative chemists than overly cautious clinicians.
--Jeff Weiss
Photo of Seth Olinsky, Dana Janssen and Miles Seaton of Akron/Family by Larry Busacca/Getty Images
