I finally got a chance to listen to Akron/Family’s new record Love Is Simple this past weekend and loved it. It strikes a great balance between the the folk, the freaky and the psychedelic.

MP3: Akron/Family – Love, Love, Love (Everyone)
MP3: Akron/Family – Ed is a Portal
I have to admit that “Love Love Love (Everyone)” made me grin when I first heard it. No, I wasn’t overcome by the happy message of the chorus, but rather the switch between the folksy Decemberists type introduction and the Polyphonic Spree happy fun sunshine caricature. But instead of being awkward, it’s downright endearing. The same goes for the loopy eastern Devendra Banhart workings of “Ed is a Portal” (whose looped riff made me think of the music in the back of the Wii commercials).

Akron/Family on Myspace

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately (but strangely not the ones required for my film classes…). I knocked out Taxi Driver today and was just blown away. The only problem with catching up on classics is that few people are anxious to talk about movies they saw a decade ago. Hopefully things will pick up this afternoon when I watch The Dragon Lives Again. For those of you not familiar, that’s a film made after Bruce Lee’s death where the character Bruce Lee dies and goes to hell where he meets Popeye. Together the two fight Dracula, Clint Eastwood, James Bond, the Godfather, the Exorcist and many others. I can’t wait.

And thanks to Boing Boing for pointing me to this great time-waster: McDonald’s Video Game. It’s far more sinister than it sounds.