The Academic is Ireland’s newest export to the world of indie pop. The four-piece is already a hometown sensation with sold out shows around the UK but now the rest of the world is opening up in front of their eyes.
The EP was produced by Kaiser Chiefs’ Nick Hodgson, and it kicks off with the band’s Capitol Records debut single “Anything Could Happen.” Their sound is quite bright and pungent, it’s a revival of that original indie rock sound made famous by bands such as The Strokes (it’s not an accident that they’ve been touring together).
They draw their inspirations from bands such as Phoenix, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, and Vampire Weekend and their music is quite uplifting, hugely melodic guitar-driven. Quite the sonic product of a tight gang of young lads who’ve been playing together since school and shared every moment of their musical and human journey with each other.
We had the chance to have an exclusive chat with the band about their newest record “Acting My Age”, how they’ve been dealing with the pandemic and opening for the Rolling Stones.
When they were asked how quarantine impacted their creativity, they said that it wasn’t actually as bad as they thought. The huge downside was that touring and playing live had to be postponed, but on the bright side they got to write new music, binge watched Star Wars and listened to Talking Heads for the first time.
One of the things that draws the most interest when interviewing the Academic is to know more about their encounter with The Rolling Stones. In fact, they were hand-selected by Mick Jagger to open for The Rolling Stones in Dublin.
Not only that, they actually got to hang out with them a little bit. “We didn’t think we were going to meet them”, the band says. “But then somebody comes to us and says – come on guys! – and he takes us to their dressing room and there they were!”
“It was a surreal experience! Almost like a fantasy movie”.
Their experience with the American music scene has been quite productive so far. They confess it’s a lot different playing for an american audience because depending on where you’re playing the audience is going to be different, whereas “you can always tell if an audience is an Irish audience”.
Touring in the US has always been fun, they say, “except for the one time we almost died!”
“We were driving through Texas and all of a sudden a huge piece of metal flew off a truck on the other side of the road and broke into our van. No one got hurt and everything was fine. But it’s definitely our best touring story!”
The Academic
Go listen to The Academic new record and check out their video here
