Album Review: Akron/Family - Sub Verses

Sub Versus sees Akron/Family performing as pop musicians doing their best no wave interpretation. It's a record full of disparate tones and textures and challenges you in the same way as no wave, but it's all put together using pop music's accessible professionalism, and it's a rewarding work that refuses to be pigeonholed.

No Room initially feels menacing, with its martial percussion and brooding guitar work, but the band's disarming three-part harmonies split the clouds and let some sunshine in. It's a deft balancing act that sets the tone for the rest of the album. Way Up opens with throbbing guitar/drum attack, but it subtly transitions into a brighter place as the African-style harmonies and loose vocal triplets dance over the top. Piano drifts in and a doo-wop passage forms, but it changes again with the reintroduction of the booming stadium percussion to play out the rest of the song as all the elements are drawn together. Until The Morning might actually be the most restrained, polite song Akron/Family have ever written. It's a marvellously charming love song that gets an easy message across using a simple pop refrain for the chorus and a melody loop that dips and crests nicely in the verses. The density that pervades the rest of the album is paired back to let the central elements breathe and develop.

The album is a series of interesting contrasts and clashing ideas, but it also has pacing issues. There are moments in the second half that lose you and it feels slightly undercooked, but overall it's a good entry in Akron/Family's fascinating catalogue.