Record Review: Akron/Family - Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free

via Ragged Words
Artist: Akron/Family
Release Date: 4 May 2009
Record Label: Dead Oceans
In Three Words: Docile No Longer
Ragged Rating: 3.5/5

By Daniel Greenwood

Set your eyes upon any British mid-to-high-brow music publication nowadays and you’ll find a record reviewed under the branding of ‘Freak-Folk’. This term haunts British music journalists grappling with the ingenuity of New Weird America imports such as Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective. In actual fact, the term ‘Freak-Folk’ is as redundant (however much recycled) as the newly-fashionable Shoegaze re-branding of any old British band putting out a sophomore record with mild attention to guitar effects.

For artists like Akron/Family or Six Organs of Admittance – very different really, but both American and folk-influenced to some degree – it’s less about genre and more a fascination with the relationship between modern America and the vast wilderness it once was. On Akron/Family’s latest record, Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free, the relationship between man and the earth he sprang from is very much advanced – there’s guilt there. ‘Everyone is Guilty’ is a giddy and choppy slice of single material in which the band manage to sum-up the general disorientation that clouds the issue of humans destroying their natural surroundings. And the strings that close the track are just as ambiguous, either signalling a joyous discovery of truth (we are guilty, and we have a chance to change things) or else a tired, saddened release of breath (no one cares, and thus are we doomed). ‘River’ could be an ode to a lost love or a faith flinching: “You are no longer a river to me/…Though your coursing remains.” It’s a beautiful track, too.

One thing clear about Set ‘em Wild is the band’s desire to rock-out. Though, arguably, the blistering switch midway through ‘Gravelly Mountains of the Moon’ disrupts the latter progress of the album. But then again, this is what Akron/Family want to do, they want to experiment further with styles and structure, and they succeed in doing so. But that ‘coursing’ remains, and maybe the band’s experimentation this time (discounting their magnificent self-titled work in 2004) has made freakish the many sumptuous melodies bleeding from this record.