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Akron/Family: S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT

Dead Oceans

It’s not easy to wrap one’s head around Akron/Family’s newest release. It’s a concept record—allegedly a pastiche of sounds pulled from a long-lost trove of the group’s earliest recordings and repurposed through its current incarnation. It’s the sequel to—or the remake of—the group’s self-titled debut, recorded in the flank of an erupting volcano or in the wreckage of Detroit. The song’s video features the trio standing still in a backward-moving New York cityscape while subtitles declare that the band is in Japan. This doesn’t feel like a collection of songs as much as it feels like a long suite of compositions. Sure, at times the psychotechnowizardry summons U2 or The Cure—but also summons rain, static, Funkadelic, water boiling over flame, perhaps a gamelan, a Japanese flute, John Lennon and a saxophone. There are bits here and there that remind one of Akron cohorts Bon Iver or Megafaun, or The Dodos and the West Coast’s modern psychedelic sounds—as if the bands are all talking to each other now. It’s all infused through Akrons’ own increasingly-electro tribalism, squealy-dry twin guitar leads and double bass, dude-gang hollers and occasional crystalline pop. It’s headfuckery, of course. The Akron/Family is telling its own story.