Love Is Simple is the sound of
Akron/Family truly finding their feet as a band, and then stretching their limbs out as far as possible in many directions. A concept album only in the loosest sense, with its basic rubric concerning the core concepts of love of natural beauty, Love Is Simple is mostly riveting and only occasionally trying. For a band that already defies easy categorization, their fourth album is particularly all over the map; as the music races through vastly disparate styles, it veers between sounding whimsically profound and maddeningly fleeting. Despite its sheer charm, the constant shifts in mood assure that one will never be able to lose themselves completely to the album -- the joy is more in just watching it unfold. As the enigmatic
Akron cult/band continues to expand its attention-deficit approach to eliminating easy classification, they end up moving even farther beyond the obvious "freak-folk" and "psychedelic" tags into all sorts of world music, classic rock, and post-rock. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this music, however, is to simply call it "indie rock," since an emerging trend with so many like-minded groups such as
Animal Collective,
Battles, and
Deerhoof, is to forge similar paths into fractured indefinability. There's certainly enough neo-hippie guitar noodling and singalong chants to carry this material well into jam band territory, if it weren't for the precise structures and catchy melodicism which abound throughout.
Akron/Family is one of those bands which make sense of an oxymoron like "planned improvisation." Coming after the subdued opening track, "Ed Is a Portal" is perhaps the prototypical track here, with its droning guitar line, tribal beat, and chanted, nonsensical lyrics dissolving into a beautiful
Led Zeppelin-style acoustic break before everything slowly rebuilds again, only to end with a minute-long trip-hop excursion which feels like a completely new song. Indeed, it's difficult to think in terms of whole songs here rather than segments of songs -- even the track breaks start seeming arbitrary after awhile. The two extended tracks in the middle of the album, "Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms" and "There's So Many Colors" act as the centerpieces, and contain both the best and worst elements of
Akron/Family's sound. The former contains a majestically subtle interplay between bells, acoustic guitar, light percussion, and vocal harmonies which adds a beautifully placed flamenco-esque guitar solo for maximum effect, but as the track shifts focus, it becomes increasingly grating, until the last three minutes are little more than meandering screams and noise. Immediately following that are the two minutes of chanted group singing that open "There's So Many Colors," which can make for a tough patch to get through -- that is, until a guitar starts playing a riff which quickly morphs from sounding like King Crimson to
Spacemen 3 to
Phish, bringing the song finally into a bluesy romp which becomes a definite winner. The latter half of Love Is Simple creates a more blissfully reflective mood all in all, with briefer, more self-contained songs such as "Pony's O.G." and "Crickets," which are a real pleasure, if not quite as memorable. Earlier, on "I've Got Some Friends,"
Akron/Family sings "That's how it should be/that's how it is." That outlook permeates through all the songs here -- the band will take any sound or aesthetic they feel like, and incorporate it into the grand scheme of things, no matter how unlikely the combination. Most often, this approach works wonders in creating a fascinating auditory journey which is satisfying on multiple levels. ~ Ben Peterson