For all the passion I have for several of Akron/Family's songs, I've never really considered myself a fan of their albums. It usually ends up just being one or two songs I take from each album (or in the case of Meek Warrior, I took none and hardly listened to the thing) and love intensely (Ed Is A Portal) or merely enjoy within the mix of the rest of my music (Before & Again) or just listen to for the novelty (Running, Returning's wailing at the end of the track always makes people in my car go "what the fuck who would listen to a cat dying?").

And, so far, I'm going to say my reaction to Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free is going to be largely similar. I haven't even gotten through a complete listen yet, so I can't say for sure, but I already know one of the songs is obnoxious and I'll never want to listen to it.

My point is, Akron/Family crafts songs that are pure genius and then they fuck around, I think maybe just because they can. When I saw them live, they had a three night residency at the Center for Inquiry West, they did sort of the same thing: they lured the crowd into a marvelous groove by playing this song and others that have a somewhat danceable beat. At one point most of the crowd was dancing around a little bit to them.

But then the tone shifted, and the second half of the set turned into an overwhelming noisy experimental explosion where you could hear bits and pieces of songs taking shape but then they would distort them back into repetitious noise. By the end of the set, no one had walked out, but only because we were all waiting for the band to take a turn back into the beautiful stuff they had been playing earlier, a turn that they never took, leaving most of us (I think) scratching our heads as to what just happened.

When I saw them at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum they did no such thing, but that was prior to the departure of guitarist Ryan Vanderhoof. If I had to choose between the two live shows, the Natural History Museum one was far superior, and the version of Ed Is A Portal they played their was inspiring, while the version at the Center of Inquiry left me feeling kind of empty.

Still, I bought one of their shirts, and a set of their pens. The shirt is now one of my favorites, being some sort of 50/50 blend from American Apparel, it is an absolute joy to wear and I love it. I wear the pen with this album's art on it on my jacket, because what could be cooler than a tie-dye flag?

The point of this post, however, wasn't to talk about the band, and for all intents and purposes I should probably just erase all that, but I won't. The point of this post is, quite simply:

This song is fucking awesome.

Oh my fucking god, it is so awesome!

I love it when I get excited about music, because it makes me feel like I could burst, and this song does this. It's just so... beautiful, you know, man? This song reminds me of what it feels like to be in love; to live a day that was so powerful that you can't help but smile at the end of it all. It's a sunset on an empty beach; it's staring into a pretty girl's eyes and actually being able to see her in them; it's sitting around a fire with a bunch of friends after spending a long and entirely pleasant adventurous day together, clearing the day out of your lungs and head; it's lying in the back of your car with a girl at a drive-in theater. This song is all these things, to me, right now.

Thank you, Akron/Family, for taking me to places in my mind that the day has yet to carry me to, for inspiring my feet to take me to places that remind me of the way this song makes me feel. Thank you for making music that can make me feel full of life even when I'm just driving around by myself.