Akron/Family’s fourth full length album, Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, closes with “Last Year.” It’s by far the shortest song on the record and consists solely of a warm piano line behind a soaring multiple part harmony that repeats the lyric,”Last year was a hard year, for such a long time. This year’s gonna be ours.,” four times before fading into silence. It’s a bit of a stylistic departure from the rest of the record, a sprawling, noisy, diversely raucous masterpiece. Since everybody with a brain and a computer is going to bring up the Grateful Dead when talking about Akron/Family, I’ll get my reference out of the way early: “Last Year” shares a gene with “And We Bid You Goodnight” coming after ten minutes of “Feedback.” The closing track’s two minutes of warm vocals around a spare piano riff serve as both an iteration of the album’s message and a mental coda to the energetic forty-seven minutes that preceded it. On the message side, those sixteen words could mean anything you want them to: after dropping a member and changing labels, Akron/Family is on the cusp of becoming the biggest little band in the world; after eight years of a war-mongering, regulation-eliminating, corporate-greed rewarding president, we’ve got one of us in Washington; or, more generally, things were hard and now they’re going to be better. On the coda side, the closing two minutes serve as a reminder that the album is a testament to the skill and soul of Akron/Family; they can get loud on you, but when they dial it back, they’re channeling the best we’ve got to offer as a musical nation. Dudes made a great album and the last song serves to remind the listener that they’ve got more tricks than the psychedelic freak out in the bag.
Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free is an album that doesn’t require any sort of long-winded introduction (no 500 word discussion of African power sculpture today), at least partially because the album is universally appealing. Do you like music that doesn’t suck? Good. You’ll like Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free. Often, I feel like I’ve got to talk you, dear reader, into an album. In this case, I don’t. Press play on “River.” If you’re not singing along by the three-minute mark (“You and I and a flame make three…”), get the hell off of my website. I’m going to keep going and attempt to make a more refined critical statement about the album (and hit you with a few spots that shine brightly for me) but this is an album that doesn’t need a whole lot of pushing. It’s enough to say that it’s as good as anything I’ve heard this year and trust that you’ll go and buy it.
“Gravelly Mountains of the Moon,” an eight minute opus in the middle of the record, is a prefect song to use to look at all of the things that Akron/Family accomplish on Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free. The song starts with a pastoral flute splashing out of the speakers (Anybody have a good classical reference? I don’t really. Mozart? Is that lazy?), that is soon joined by some brass and a strummed acoustic behind Seth Olinsky’s warbly, evocative vocals. The first two minutes of the song or so meander through this Seals and Croftian folky wonderland, dropping the horns, throwing in some harmonies and wearing a full beard and flannel. At 2:35, almost completely unannounced, the song gets really loud. Huge drums, wailing electric guitars and a pulsing bass line all kick in as the band sheds the sheepskin, revealing the toothy grin of an acid-rock wolf. There’s a zonked-out guitar solo that evolves into a crunching, thunderous semi-chorus, with those horns coming back from the beginning, but funky now instead of classical, and what sounds like a dozen people shouting “translate to get high.” (I might have missed that lyric, but there’s a lot going on at this point. It could very well be “translate to get by.”) This pulsing, anthemic, fist pumping, toe-tapping sound continues for a minute or two before everything drops out again, leaving only a piano and a three-part harmony, repeating over and over “Put me in, let me run with the ball. Hah.,” as the song closes. In these eight minutes, Akron/Family smokes through at least four distinct genres, five tempo shifts and a full orchestra of instruments. It sums up a lot of what they do on the record as a whole: introduce an idea, blow it up, pack in a “chorus” that’s going to be unshakable and close with a sing-along that will bring up the goosebumps. “Gravelly Mountains of the Moon” is just the best example of this (and the song that I’ve got stuck on repeat), but “They Will Appear” and “Creatures” work in roughly the same mode, acting as big sonic canvases where Akron/Family splash a whole mess of aural paint. I told you above that you should buy this record as soon as possible; if you already took my advice, play those three in succession. Make sure you’re somewhere that will be conducive for wild, dervish-like hippie dancing.
There’s not a soft spot on the album. The four tracks we’ve talked about already are great, but it’s not like the rest are clunkers. “The Alps and Their Orange Evergreen” is a finger-picked, quieter beauty. The conclusion of “Sun Will Shine” with the fade into white noise, followed by the return of the track for an free jazz freakout that turns spontaneously into “Auld Lang Syne” is completely bad-ass. “Everyone is Guilty,” which has been floating around the internet for a while, is awesome. “Set ‘Em Free,” the twangiest track on the album, is AM radio gold. (And, as usual, I love that you can hear someone say “Are we rolling?” at the front end of that one.) The depth of sound on the record as a whole (a ton of horns, blazing guitar solos, thunder god drums, delicateness when it’s called for…) is consistently awe-inspiring. Olinsky, Dana Janssen, and Miles Seaton are all wildly talented fellows and the raft of folks they’ve gotten to play with them shine as well.
I’m stepping away from my computer now to take my dog to the disc golf course. I’m putting on the headphones; I’ll be listening to Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free. I’m going to be doing that a lot this summer. Assuming you’ve got ears, you will be as well.
