The Academic’s Tales from the Backseat from 2018 was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed debut that ought to have made The Academic a bigger deal on a global scale. The Westmeath band’s second album treads a similar course, with plenty of strong melodies, commercial appeal and a sense of playfulness.
Yet while The Academic have always had a propensity for songs with stadium-sized choruses, do they have the charisma to make those songs sound original?
Sitting Pretty, a record about “navigating life in your twenties”, leaves that question frustratingly unanswered. These are songs that could have gone toe-to-toe with Kaiser Chiefs, The Killers et al in the mid-noughties, but that’s not necessarily an accolade in 2023.
The band come bursting out of the traps with the excellent Supergrass-esque Pushing Up Daisies; the scuzzy warble of organ on Don’t Take It Personally and the harmonies on the 1980s-influenced This Is Your Life are a delight. My Very Best and the hip-swinging disco of Heartbreak’s Where It’s At sound like they’ve been pulled straight from a John Hughes film soundtrack.
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Still, there’s a sense that it’s all been done before, and that four-piece are capable of more. The Academic are a fine band, but apparently still seeking the special ingredient that sets them apart from their influences. As a result, much of Sitting Pretty falls into the inauspicious “pleasant, but forgettable” category.
