INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
The Academy Is …
Wednesday, Nov. 21, 7 p.m., $19/$22, all-ages
Mike Carden, guitarist for the Academy Is …, is well aware that the nature of the way people listen to music is changing.
“More and more we get into this where people aren’t listening to full records,” he says. “It’s all about iTunes and singles.”
But if the new Academy Is … CD, Santi, is any indication, the group isn’t about to let go of the idea of providing an album-listening experience — if for no other reason than the band sees drawbacks to over-focusing on singles.
“We listen to full records and we like them,” Carden says. “The thing is, we saw some of our friends writing records where every song is kind of competing for the same space, for the spotlight, where it seems like it’s kind of 11 [attempts] to get the radio single. You kind of get a dead record because none of the songs move.”
The irony to Carden’s observation is that the first Academy Is … CD, the 2004 release, Almost Here, may have unintentionally fallen into the trap of being a bit one-dimensional with a collection of songs that fit the rocking guitar pop mold of groups like Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s and The Killers.
Santi, though, isn’t as easy to pigeonhole as strictly modern pop. The band’s songwriting has grown more multifaceted on tunes like “LAX to O’Hare” (a crisp rocker that includes several shifts in tempo and intensities), “We’ve Got a Big Mess On Our Hands” (which shifts from poppy verses to an edgy, rocking chorus) and “Bulls in Brooklyn” (which gets an anthemic feel from its marching beat and a few call-and-response vocal moments).
Overall, the sound of the band — which also includes singer William Beckett, bassist Adam Siska, drummer Andy Mrotek and guitarist Michael Chislett — is crunchier and more muscular on Santi, while still plenty melodic. And the live, in-the-studio approach producer Butch Walker used in recording the new CD is paying dividends in a live setting.
“That record [Santi] was made where all of us were playing in a room together live,” Carden says. “So I think Santi, in general, just transfers very well live because of the way it was recorded.”