The Academy Is...
WORDS & PICS: Edmund Townend (Youth Editorial Group) //
Fresh from the long, hard Warped Tour ? The Academy Is? and friends played to a sold-out audience in Clwb Ifor Bach on Sat 13 Sept.
First up is The Maine, with huge support from the crowd, which surprises them for being at the bottom of a line-up of hardly known American bands. Attractive and bearable to listen to, they please all members of the young crowd, male or female. They play the normal sounding songs for a band of the emo genre and throw in a cover of Akon’s I Wanna Love You to let everyone know that they accept all forms of music (good or bad).
We The Kings are met with even more support. Slightly louder and rockier than the pop of The Maine they start up some dancing in the already heaving crowd. With a better-suited cover of Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc. for the UK crowd, they gain some new fans with their well-conducted research. They enjoy themselves throughout the set, happy that they’re known across the Atlantic. MySpace and the Internet prove to connect fans to new music through the bands the media focus on.
Finally, The Academy Is? bound on to the stage with ear-splitting screams. Their singer, William Beckett, is the life and soul of the band grinning from ear to ear and running back and forth throughout the set. Noticing the crowd’s dedication they play both old and new songs from their first album’s Checkmarks to the newest single Summer Hair = Forever Young. The band plays fantastically, all experienced despite being so young. The crowd join in with every word and “woah-oh”. Despite hearing so much that sounds the same before, it’s hard not to join in to About A Girl which sounds incredibly close to a McFly cast-off.
Despite the rock club set-up, these three bands are the new pop music ? guitars and gorgeous looks. The Academy Is? are more popular than you might think, and the Internet is to thank for that.
Photos by Stellar Spontaneous Photography
