Akron/Family is delivering the first radically diverse folk album of the year with the release of S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. This album balances innumerable influences from across the globe with the band’s folk-rock roots and odd personality.
An unmarked cardboard box containing a futuristic dinosaur diorama, 3 pictures and 3 song snippets recorded on a CD were dropped outside Dead Oceans, the band’s record label, in November. The leak-paranoid group wasn’t ransoming anything — just informing its label that it wasn’t sending the completed album to anyone but the printing company.
The album was written in a cabin in Akan National Park in Hokkaido, Japan, then recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit. These unorthodox means of production imbue the album with a lively sense of camaraderie, but create an inside joke that the listener
can’t crack. One can only enjoy the whimsicality from afar.
The tribal drums and ascending electronic bleeps of “Silly Bears” not only start the album with a bang, but its anyplace attitude leaves listeners expecting the unexpected. The clapdriven breakdowns are discordant from the call-and-response guitar riffs, but in the grand scheme of S/T II: TCBAJOSTNT, their oppositions meld with an air of ethereal tastefulness.
Akron/Family has created an album that lacks any sort of polishing or singles, an album best experienced from beginning to end. The band has taken the liberty of enjoying the music-making process on S/T II: TCBAJOSTNT and come out on top, but maybe a little too high for the sober listener.
