Pitchfork: 7 Essential Miles Cooper Seaton Tracks
The singer and multi-instrumentalist, who passed away this week at 41, played a key role in the cult rock band’s unbridled sound.
Akron/Family played music that was rooted in folk-rock, but they treated each album like a spiritual quest and each concert like a conversion experience: an invitation to epiphany. Miles Cooper Seaton, Seth Olinsky, Ryan Vanderhoof, and Dana Janssen met in New York City in the early 2000s, became roommates, and released a handful of generous, spell-binding albums before Vanderhoof left—fittingly enough, to join a Buddhist commune. All the band members were multi-instrumentalists who also sang, and the trio soldiered on, widening their sound while standing off to the freaky side of folk revivalists like the Avett Brothers and Lumineers. Akron/Family’s last album was their seventh, 2013’s Sub Verses.
Seaton, who also went on to release solo music, was vital to this eclectic, multi-voiced group. When news broke this week of his death at age 41, tributes spread out across the music community, from collaborator M. Geddes Gengras to peer and admirer Justin Vernon. “When we started touring, you see audiences and start to feel, ‘This is a place I can do good in the world,’” Seaton told Pitchfork contributor Grayson Haver Currin in a 2008 interview. “That’s a real gift to me.” Here are seven songs that can act as an introduction to Akron/Family’s shape-shifting musical dharma. –Marc Hogan
By Marc Hogan and Sam Sodomsky
