The Academy Is… – Fat Cat’s – Houston, TX June 9, 2005
Concert Reviews
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Written by Samuel Barker
Jun 09, 2005 at 12:00 AM
ImageThere are moments in your life where you look back on your childhood and wonder if you were as clueless as the youth of today. Moments where you may have been listening to or doing something lame that would be laughed at by the next generation. And yes, we all have those moments, and tonight was a moment where I was thinking about that.In the seemingly never-ending wave of pop-rock/melodic punk bands hitting the road today, The Academy Is… is one of the better ones I’ve seen, but it may be a fight that isn’t worth winning. I wonder if there will someday be nostalgia stations with this stuff on it like there are for the rash of gimmicky synth-pop bands from the 80s.

Regardless, The Academy Is… describes their sound within one of their own songs, Classifieds. Just like the classifieds, The Academy Is… brings a little bit of everything together in one compact place. At times they borrow from Story of the Year and others they mimic Coheed and Cambria. Nothing is left behind in their quest to recreate the sounds of other popular bands.

One benefit of having a sound similar to a cover band is that The Academy Is… is finding many fans along the way. Every song was met with the sound of the packed house singing along with vocalist William Beckett, who is a perfect mixture of Jesse Camp (of MTV fame) and Olivia Newton-John in his appearance and stage movement.

In the end, I felt like an old man. The kids loved the show and I was convinced they were all on drugs, since I couldn’t believe someone of a sane mind could dig this music where there are so many bands pushing the envelope with good music and not just mimicking current top-40 “rock” radio.