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The Academic’s ‘Acting My Age EP’ Out Now

July 10, 2020

The Academic are pleased to release their new EP, ‘Acting My Age’. Streaming now via Capitol Records, it’s preceded by new single of the same title, available now, with a video.

The EP was produced by Kaiser Chiefs’ Nick Hodgson.

The six tracks that form this EP act as a timely introduction to The Academic, right as they commence their journey to take their music beyond the confines of Ireland.

As Mullinger’s finest, The Academic are already deemed hometown heroes with a number one album to their name. And if you were a betting person, you’d probably fancy a flutter on The Academic repeating their chart success further afield. The songs are the sort that make a quick impact; sharp, buoyant and explosive. By second listen you’ve got the melodies nailed, fizzing around in your cranium. Instant gratification. Time is precious.

The Academic make music that embraces the electric guitar and aren’t shy of arena sized choruses suggests that guitar music could well be heading straight back to the mainstream after a decade or more laying resolutely fallow. Some would confidently argue that we’ve been in rude health for the past few years. With Idles and Shame’s state-of-the-nation punkish potency swinging open the doors for the likes of Fontaines D.C. and Murder Capital to burst their heads above the underground, over in the mainstream Sam Fender has been marrying critical acclaim with solid sales (a rarity), his chest-thumping Springsteen-esque tales of a community’s heart and struggle flying straight to the top of the charts. Meanwhile, The 1975, veritable stalwarts on their own podium, now feel positively pop, yet at their very soul is an innovative, smart-talking guitar band with surely one eye on stadiums having long since slayed the festival fields and arenas. Catfish & The Bottlemen and Blossoms also tease arena sized audiences, whilst off the media radar you’ve got the likes of Gerry Cinnamon and Sea Girls cautiously bothering bigger live rooms to ever increasing audiences.  But this feels palpably different. The odds feel less of a risk. The door is swinging wide open.

Despite being in the infancy as a global concern, The Academic have already sold out venues across the UK & Ireland, and they’ve also received the props of Mick Jagger who personally selected them to support The Rolling Stones in Dublin.  That Mullingar has them down as hometown heroes and local-boys-about-to-explode, will doubtless be of importance to those who have studied the rulebook of city/town specific era-defining guitar acts from Oasis to Arctic Monkeys, Sam Fender to Kasabian. Primed now as Ireland’s most likely to, The Academic are ready to become what they deserve.

Fronted by Craig Fitzgerald, a man who gives good quote without over-selling the product, the young four-piece sit at the centre of a venn diagram that draws from the likes of Phoenix, The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and Vampire Weekend.

The EP opens with the weighty one-two of ‘Anything Could Happen and ‘Acting My Age’, songs that sound a few steps beyond promising and into ‘essential’ territory.  Look up to the stars and you’ll find them en route. The rest of the EP offers plenty of light and shade, tonally and expressively.

A fine introduction to a band you’d yet to hear, right on the cusp of becoming inescapable.

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