Akron/Family - 'Meek Warrior' (Young God) Released 03/10/06

Jaded, eh? Heard it all before, huh? Then crank up ‘Blessing Force’, the berserk opening bombardment on ‘Meek Warrior’, and prepare to be bowled over. For chances are you’ve never encountered anything even remotely like this overflowing bowl of heady brew. A nine-minute plus opus dripping with sudden u-turns of mood and tempo, ‘Blessing Force’ spirals uncontrollably from the intro’s feverishly stomping thud-a-thon to an extended coda of shrieking discord that could well be the guttural death-rattle of a hundred guitars being lowered into a cauldron of fiery lava via a blast of boogie-hued classic rock swagger, a spot of communal chanting and a nimble percussion breakdown afrobeat originator Fela Kuti could have hung a 27-minute sax solo on.

By the time the four-piece embark on a demented torrent of yelping in the saliva-splattered manner of comedy loonies on industrial dosages of uppers, even those well-versed in the esoteric and the eccentric might conclude that the countless hours at the mercy of gas exhausts at the back of the van (where much of this material first saw the light of day) necessitated by the band’s punishing touring schedule might have fried the minds of Brooklyn’s principal practioners of psychedelic outer-space Americana to the point where this cavalcade of curiousness constitutes a perfectly cohesive tune.
Bear with it, though, and the epic workout – and the mini-album as a whole – emerges as a triumphant parade of pure, unrestrained creativity and visionary delight in smashing boundaries – in other words everything Akron/Family have excelled at so far. Only this time the band’s occupied with exploring the extremes of their sprawling sound. It’s almost as if, having reined in some of their weirder impulses to deliver ample evidence of hit parade potential on their half of last year’s superb split with Angels of Light, the four-piece can no longer contain their radical tendencies, which are unleashed here in their full jaw-dropping intensity.

But it’s not all about cooking a right cosmic cacophony. For every gargantuan overload of decibels and improvisatory raid on the senses there’s a wispy flowering of fragile folk (the stunning ‘Lightning Bolt Of Compassion’, so delicate it tempts evaporating altogether) and cosmic campfire singalongs that roast mushrooms rather than marshmallows (the drone-drenched ‘No Space In This Realm’). Some of it – the hysterically honking horns on the diabolically detuned finale of ‘Blessing Force’, the surges of skronk-infested sludge amidst the shamanic riffage of ‘The Rider (Dolphin Song)’ – is far-out enough to languish beyond the reach of most maps, but the gentle likes of ‘Gone Beyond’, a beaming beacon of bucolic beauty, and ‘Love and Space’, a heavenly hymn straight outta Appalachians, provide plentiful balm to soothe even the most frayed of nerves.

Equal parts unhinged, wild, strange, pretty, wise and meditative, ‘Meek Warrior’ might not be the masterpiece destined to propels Akron/Family from the margins to the limelight they so richly deserve (that’ll have to wait until the band’s next ‘proper’ album, out early next year). Nor is it the most appropriate place for newcomers to hop aboard. But it’s another dazzlingly diverse offering from one of the few outfits around who can honestly be said to pack a surplus of ideas, as well as the skills to translate them to consistently stunning produce.