Somewhere along the line, The Academy Is… have changed from a generic post-hardcore band into something all together more interesting. While their last EP was pretty good in my eyes, ‘Almost Here’ is a big leap in a different direction. Gone are the confusing Brand New-isms that littered their last release, with time changes and guitars switching from soft to loud in the bat of an eyelid ditched. Now we have a band that are more pop than punk, although their secret weapon is their vocalist William Beckett who uses his voice really, really well. Infact the harmonies on this record are probably only second to the last Fallout Boy CD – autotuned to Hell, I’m sure. Still, you could be forgiven for forgetting there’s even a band playing in the background at times, such is the hypnotic effect the vocals have. They remind me a lot of Eve 6 actually, very mainstream but very cool at the same time.
The Academy Is… like their catchy choruses and vocal melodies. So much so that ‘Almost Here’ has several in every song. There are hooks aplenty throughout, from the straight up pop-punk of ‘Attention‘ to the radio-friendly ‘Season’. While the vocals are very clean throughout, the band do twist their styles slightly to keep things interesting. ‘Black Mamba’ – a swipe at the music press – has Latin beats which vary things nicely and makes it, for me, the best track here. Then there’s the lyrics, which switch from the odd to the clever – often overly verbose, but, to be fair, it does seem to work. ‘Slow Down’ reads as a cumbersome lyrical effort, but Willy B manages to pull it off well. The “doctor, doctor” ‘conversation’ in ‘The Phrase That Pays’ is also rather strange, but again it works well.
The 10 songs on offer do fly by pretty quickly – ‘Skeptics and True Believers’ is very catchy, while ‘Down and Out’ has another chorus-to-die-for. This is unashamedly poppy and with the summer coming along I can see The Academy Is… doing very well for themselves. I believe they’ve already agreed a deal with a major for their next release, so you can probably tell just from that snippet of info what this band sound like. Without the vocals they’d probably be just another five minute wonder, but the songs are made interesting by a vocalist who adds a curious x-factor. There have been some good releases of late, and this is another that’s worth checking out.
www.theacademyis.com
Fueld By Ramen
Paul