Album Review: Akron/Family - Sub Verses

Part of the charm of Akron/Family is playing their albums for the first time. While there are iconic elements that run riot throughout their entire discography, each record is distinct, lived-in, its own beast. Seventh long-player Sub Verses is no different, and the changes are evident before a note is played – the album has been produced by the esteemed Randall Dunn, while the cover art has been designed by Stephen O'Malley of doom metal kings Sunn O))). And opening track No-Room immediately shows a darker gleam than 2011's The Cosmic Birth & Journey Of Shinju TNT. The incessant drum ramble introducing Sand Talk gives way to an Animal Collective mirroring psych pop explosion, a reminder that the two bands came forth from similar musical aesthetics before taking decidedly different trajectories. Elsewhere the dark tones pervade in the drone of Sometimes I, and the electronic noise collage trip Holy Boredom plays on the types of atonal sonic assaults that Death Grips gaffer-tape together out of rusted steel and bile.

No need to fear that Akron/Family have veered away from their experimental strengths though – this is still the crazy, esoteric, percussive-heavy band that gave birth to Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free. The trio embrace their psychedelic lifeblood in the latter elements of the album, especially in the triptych of Sand Time, Whole World Is Watching and When I Was Young. The concluding track Samurai is another about-turn, a slow waltz of operatic R&B wistfulness.

Sub Verses then plays like a schizophrenic idiot savant; ideas are spewed forth at rapidfire speeds, seemingly without nuance or reason at disparate ends of the spectrum, yet gel together in such an unfathomably seamless fashion that it can only be one thing – another excellent Akron/Family album.