Akron/Family first burst onto their scene with their self-titled (the word “eponymous” is now banned from my vocabulary) debut album in 2005. Deceptively gentle and beguiling, at the same time word got around about the band’s incendiary live shows.

Since then, they’ve served as Michael Gira’s backing in group in Angels Of Light (both live and on record), cut a split-album, a mini-album with a free jazz drummer and now their first full length since their debut, “Love Is Simple”. We caught up with Seth from the group when they played the Faversham in Leeds. We started up by asking him how the UK tour was going.

“Well, it’s going really well. I think it’s our sixth show. We’ve only really toured the UK once before, though we’ve played London a handful of times and the Triptych festival in Scotland but we’ve only done one extended UK tour for 2 weeks or something. It was pretty rough the first go around. We always consider America to be difficult and then we come to the rest of Europe and it’s all arts funded, like theatres and art performance centres. There’s a different treatment, you’re like an artist then we come to the UK and you’re a rock dirtbag!”

I think one of the big differences with American venues is they either don’t serve alcohol, which is how a lot of venues make their money back, or the shows are for over 21s only which cuts out a lot of the most enthusiastic people.

“Yeah, we’re trying to do more all-ages shows in America and it makes all the difference. Most of the over 21s are in the background with their arms folded watching the show going ‘that was cool’. The kids are at the front with smiles and go ‘Waaagh, that’s the coolest thing ever’!

We don’t try to kids ourselves, we know we’re not the most original thing ever. It’s not like we’re treading totally new terrain but with 16 or 17 years olds, their idea of what’s out there is still nor fully formed. Someone who’s 26 or 27 feels they’ve seen everything.”

Your recordings, so far, have all sounded very distinctive. Each album has a very different sound.

“I think when we made our first record, we had all these different sides to us as a band but we weren’t going to release a double record. I think Michael [Gira – of Swans/Angels of Light/Young God Records fame] encouraged us to focus on some of things we’d recorded at home, stuff which tended to be more quiet. Which I think is cool because then we got to take the more live stuff on the road and then let it develop in that natural direction because we were touring so much. So, then then split album we did ends up being a document of us playing songs the way we did live.

A year later we were touring and there was some other stuff that grew live and ‘Meek Warrior’ came about when we the chance to work with the free jazz drummer Hamid Drake. ‘Meek Warrior’ wasn’t even planned, it just kind of spontaneously happened with this other drummer. We just jammed with him in the studio on stuff.

The new one is where we had the most time, still not that much time as we had to write and tour a little bit. To me, I feel like it touches on each of the first 3 records. There are little areas of it that sound like the first 3.”

Did you work with Michael Gira again on this record?

“No, he didn’t do that record. We did it with Andrew Weiss, who produced some of Ween’s records. He came along to one of our gigs and really liked it and introduced himself. After the latest Angels of Light record, Michael & I decided not to work together on the next Akron/Family record. I think it had gotten a little tense with him and we’d done a lot of work on projects with him. Andrew seemed like he’d be able to capture some of the more fun side of what we do. We all love Ween and things like The Beatles that we love have a humorous side. With Michael, we didn’t feel like we’d been able to capture that side. I don’t really think we achieved it either with ‘Love Is Simple’ as it turned out our humour didn’t necessary line-up with Andrews but we did try.”

Listening to your album in a car which has a CD player that starts the album again as soon as it ends, I noticed ‘Love Is Simple’ ends the way it begins which makes it hard to tell whether you’re on the first song or the last song. Was that intentional?

“No, but I did have that experience once in the car. It’s pretty cool, I like that. It was just because we wanted to have a classic rock reprise but is a cool thing. There’s that James Joyce novel ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ that you can start from anywhere and read backward or in any order and it’s still the same story”

Have you ever read ‘Finnegan’s Wake’? I did try once.

“It’s impossible, I tried reading it but I like the concept that all points can be the beginning.”

You recorded with Hamid Drake and enjoyed that, any other collaborations planned?

“We did an interesting tour because around June one of members, Ryan, left the group. We had this tour booked and we were trying to decide what to do. We ended up having friends come on tour with us. We had Greg Davis, who releases records on Kranky and Aardvark, and Megafaun who have a record out on Table Of The Elements in the New Year. They came out with us and would open up for us then we’d all play as a 7-piece band. It was a pretty cool collaboration, really exciting thing with so many musicians on stage.

For the Roskilde Festival in July and we met this Ghanian drum group with about 10 drummers and 7 dancers and we invited them to play with us. They showed up with about 17 musicians and it just spontaneously happened. It was pretty amazing. They invited us to come to Ghana and study their music and tour West Africa. They’re called African Footprint International.”

When you play live, how spontaneous is it?

“There’s spontaneity but it is not free improvisation like Derek Bailey! We’re not getting up there and completely improvising. We know the songs so well that we can be spontaneous within the structure of the song and lot of open beginnings and endings. Sometimes we’ll play into one thing and then something else comes up. Now we’re playing as a 3-piece we can take turns and move with each other, which is great.”

Have you begun work on another album?

“No, we’ve been on tour non-stop since September. Probably this Winter we’ll start writing and then recording more in Spring so we might have something ready for Fall to bring out in 2009.”

Any guests lined up for the record?

“I don’t know, we’re kind of open to other musicians. We’ll probably work on in at as a 3-piece and then include some other musicians.”

Interview by Ned Netherwood
Thanks to Nita at Goldstar
“Love Is Simple” is out now