Akron/Family: free of any New Age stink or hippie laziness

Akron/Family is not a family in the genetic sense, but they coalesce onstage into an entity that’s a little harmonic, a little psychedelic, all freak-folky like Devendra Banhart and jamming some into prog-rock territory — but also steadfastly defying any one classification. Formed in 2002 in a Brooklyn apartment and now sometimes living in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the band is also clearly not from anywhere near Akron, Ohio. A study in contrasts, if you will.

I saw them play at Coachella with members of San Francisco’s The Dodos on-stage, and I remember being mightily impressed that they had not one but two joyful drummers. After the departure of founding member Ryan Vanderhoof (he apparently went to live in a Buddhist Dharma center in the Midwest) they’ve also rounded out their touring lineup with the band Megafaun. A family indeed — one that weaves their audience into a full-participation spectacle.

To get an idea of their ardent live show and touring philosophy, check out this feature with a show at The Independent in San Francisco:

Reviewer Dennis Cook wrote after seeing that show that “watching them leap and cavort in SF, one felt part of some beautiful cataclysm that precedes growth . . . Whether your mind agreed or not, your body will respond instinctively to their fluctuations. More than once I found my eyes had shut and my body continued gyrating, drawn ever closer to the flame they stoked onstage. Akron/Family is writing a 21st century non-denominational hymnal, free of any New Age stink or hippie laziness. What they did in San Francisco was tap into the great currents of the universe and share that energy and unfiltered beauty with us.”

Serious Lennon influences permeate the album, both from the ’60s Beatles harmonies and on into the experimentation of the following decade. On tracks like “Phenomena,” frontman Seth Olinsky’s voice is Lennonesque both in its timbre and in its raw vulnerability (reminds me of this demo), before it freaks out a little bit. Their music meanders through sunny fields, jumps around in bold zig zags, and spaces out into the new frontier — sometimes all in the same 7-minute track. As a sampling: two very different tunes from their 2007 album Love Is Simple (Young God Records):

This song is a crazy cacophonous party out on your street corner, and I’m pretty sure there are some passing Hare Krishnas involved:

Ed Is A Portal – Akron/Family

And this tune — just absolutely lovely, hazy, gauzy. Over a straight-up “Strawberry Fields” opener, it feels like when you’re a kid and you try to float underwater at the lake, looking up at the sun through the wavery green water.

Love is simple.

Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Already Dead – Akron/Family

Akron/Family plays Monolith on Sunday, Sept 14th.

So I’ve heard that Pomegranates are good for your heart

So if you’re looking for flavonoids, drink that darkly-colored POM juice stuff from the grocery store. But if you’re looking for delightfully energetic pop-harmony music, listen to Pomegranates from Cincinnati instead.

Like that weird-looking fruit, these Pomegranates burst open with some serious richness, all purpley red and sweet shimmery. They’ve been getting excellent blog and indie radio notice in the last few months, and I’m preparing to see them at the Monolith Festival next month. My favorite thing they’ve done recently is the always-excellent Daytrotter session. In the accompanying write-up, Sean wrote, “this quartet of young buckeroos from Cincinnati drench their songs in sweet sugar water and let them hover around like hummingbirds, leaving behind a tail of sugar granules that are then picked off by greedy ears lusting for more of the stuff.”

Even though their music glimmers and catapults around inside my speakers, it also plumbs some depths on songs like the melancholy “In The Kitchen,” where the protagonist sings about how the table is set but she is not there for dinner.

MOKB writes that this is music for fans of Death Cab for Cutie, early Modest Mouse, Rogue Wave and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Pomegranates have recently toured with contemporaries like Islands, Ra Ra Riot and French Kicks. Their music evokes buoyantly blue summer skies, like this:

Whom/Who – Pomegranates
Thunder Meadow – Pomegranates
In The Kitchen (live on Daytrotter) – Pomegranates
The Southern Ocean (live on WOXY) – Pomegranates

Stream the full album Everything Is Alive.

[band photo credit Desiree Watkins]

New song from The Avett Brothers :: “Murder In The City”

North Carolina’s The Avett Brothers stretch their rustic tunes into unclassifiable yet beautiful territory on a regular basis. Their 2007 album Emotionalism reverberated with twang, but also rollicked and screamed with a healthy dose of smack-you-in-the-face rock and roll. And then they also go and wrench out these spare, honest, gorgeous ballads that hurt to listen to (please hear “If It’s The Beaches” from the Gleam EP, for my favorite excruciatingly lovely example).

On July 22, they will release the second installment in the raw Gleam series, and following in the initial footsteps of the first recording, “the Second Gleam EP sings to the uncommon senses of the common man.” Our first listen of this collection comes via new song “Murder In The City.” A friend of mine is a bit of an Avett Brothers megafan (to put it mildly), and recalls one particular time he saw them perform this song. He writes that it was “effing heartbreaking. Scott was crying on stage, my friend Kevin was crying in the audience, the rest of us were fighting back the tears.”

Murder In The City – The Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers play Steamboat Springs on my birthday (warranting a road trip in what is sure to be one of the top birthdays in my recent memory), followed by a hotly anticipated appearance at the gorgeous Red Rocks on Sunday Sept 14th as part of the Monolith Festival.

Denver’s Hearts of Palm

Yup, that’s a lot of people in one band. Call them Denver’s own Polyphonic Spree (minus the cult-tastic fashion robes), the warm and sparkly effervescence of Hearts of Palm is a bright spot in our city’s musical landscape. Previously named Nathan & Stephen, the 8-piece band decided to change their name earlier this year to more accurately reflect their gigantic size (not a two-piece!) and as a salute to their favorite vegetable (I might have made that up).

They’ve recently self-released a lovely free 4-song EP, originally available only at the delicious Mexican restaurant Illegal Pete’s in a creative arrangement that funded the production. It has been on heavy rotation here lately in anticipation of their two upcoming high-profile appearances at summer festivals.

On August 1st & 2nd they’ll play two shows as part of the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase. DPUMS is in its eighth year, and in a mere two weeks will invade South Broadway for a completely non-hostile takeover. And then on September 14th, Hearts of Palm will bring their “characteristic and customary joy, enthusiasm, and abandon” to the red rocks of the Monolith Festival.

So check these two tracks (my favorites from the EP), watch their recent interview with the fabulous R. Baca to get the firsthand story on the controversial name change, and then go download the rest of the songs. Because you can always use more free music, and this is good stuff.

No Water – Hearts of Palm
Give Em Hell – Hearts of Palm

So tired of being sexy

Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) has one of the best band names ever, for two reasons:
1) it literally means “I got tired of being sexy” (and who hasn’t?)
2) the name’s taken from something Beyonce once said to that effect. I mean, really.

Singing in both Portuguese and English, CSS weaves together shiny, syncopated electro-pop with an edge of irreverent glamour and charming naivete. The Guardian once wrote that “they sound like an unlikely, brilliantly wrong fusion of Tom Tom Club, dance culture and the Fall.”

Although CSS favors topics of pop culture and night hedonism (song titles include “Jager Yoga,” “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above,” and “Meeting Paris Hilton”), their music is not vapid. The new song below evokes a lot more Karen O than Paris H, even though they sometimes sing about the latter. And I say this with affection because my new job is in this field, but they also look like an innocent group of foreign exchange students. You practically want to help them find the library, bring them to a soccer game, or maybe take them home for Thanksgiving when the dorms close.

For your listening pleasure, three tunes: Some new hotness from their upcoming release, a smokingly sassy remix of “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” (on repeat ’round here), and their smashing efforts at remixing Swedish indie sensation Lykke Li.

Rat Is Dead (Rage) – Cansei de Ser Sexy/CSS
Music Is My Hot Hot Sex (Switch feat Mapei mix) – CSS
Little Bit (CSS remix) – Lykke Li

The new CSS album Donkey (produced in Brazil, mixed in L.A.) is out July 21 on Sub Pop.

Oh, and it’s gonna be a party with these kids out at Red Rocks. CSS is one of the penultimate acts capping off the Monolith Festival this September, playing at 9:45pm Sunday, September 14th. Come, dance.

Port O’Brien: All we could do was sing

Port O’Brien is a nautically-named collective of five musicians based out of the California port city of Oakland, the neighbor across the bay from San Francisco. Their songs are mostly written by lady baker Cambria Goodwin and her commercial salmon-fisherman boyfriend Van Pierszalowski. Their self-released 2008 album All We Could Do Was Sing contains one of the most vibrant tunes of this year (and hey, M. Ward agrees):

I Woke Up Today – Port O’Brien

Part of the reason this song hit me so viscerally is due to the first time I saw it performed live. This February I was out in San Francisco to cover the Noise Pop Festival. Every event all weekend long had about twelve good artists on the bill, including a happy hour at the Diesel Store on Post Street.

So maybe we can call it the four free vodka/fruity concoction dealies that the excellent amateur bartender made for me amidst the overpriced denim, but the spirit in the air when Port O’Brien kicked into their free set was nothing less than jubilant. I would even call it riotous as people sang along, the percussion beat at full-force, and the vocals keeled into an almost war chant.

That mood of spur-of-the-moment explosion served the song better than cutesy sailing videos, in my opinion, because it’s a song that feels chaotic and wonderful – akin to this session that my Blogotheque peeps captured a few weeks after I caught the Port O’Brien set in SF:

Superdrag is both filthy and afraid

Back in the studio since February, Knoxville’s Superdrag has loosened another new song upon the music world, this time over on the Gibson guitars site. Although a release date for the new album has not yet been set, Superdrag is playing a few West Coast dates in the coming weeks, then Bonnaroo this summer and, of course, Monolith.

According to frontman John Davis, the new material keeps it tight with the sound Superdrag fans love, described as “an amalgam of Dinosaur Jr.-inspired guitar noise, Hüsker Dü-style energy, and melodies that aspire toward the pop sophistication of the Beatles.” Davis also talks about how good it is to get to experiment again with the interlocking guitar parts that they pride themselves on, and to be making new music together — “to step right back into that, after all this time.”

As for me, the addictive melody here is stuck firmly in my cortex (or wherever really good songs loop on repeat and make you hum them for the last 24 hours). The rough edged Teenage-Fanclubesque vocals on this cut make me feel happy, and not at all filthy, nor afraid.

Filthy & Afraid – Superdrag

Read the full article here, and then if you’re feeling inspired, you can also go back and check out the Fuel/Friends interview with John Davis (Oct 2007).

Catch Superdrag on Saturday afternoon at Monolith, come September.

[thanks Lauren!]

Chester French accomplishes more in the dorm basement than you ever did sophomore year, lazy slacker

So the story goes that a pair of Harvard boys get bored and decide to record an album in their dorm basement. A lot of things happened in my various dorm basements but nothing that sounded this good; I think it was too dark with those half-lit humming fluorescent lights, the broken foosball tables, and slightly dodgy-looking couches that you knew had some sketch tales to tell.

So what did Chester French conjure up there instead? Think robust strings over crisp and sexy beats, some chiming mid ’60s guitar . . . and they get all Zombies here at the beginning of this track. What’s your name / who’s your daddy?

She Loves Everybody – Chester French

and – you know hear it:
Time of the Season (alternate mix) – The Zombies

Go traipse on over to their MySpace now and listen to “People” . . . then try and tell me that doesn’t make your day significantly better. So pleasing that I’ve already used it on a mix. Chester French’s debut album Love the Future is forthcoming in 2008 on Pharrell Williams’ Star Trak label.

Chester French is performing at Red Rocks on Sunday, September 14th at the Monolith Festival.