Sitting Pretty

Sitting Pretty is an album about navigating life in your 20s; the uncertainties and the ever-shifting sense of self. “It’s about the entrance into true adulthood and how that can alienate you from yourself, making you feel like you’re playing a supporting role in your own life,” the band explain. “In one moment feeling 100% certain about everything, only to become overwhelmed with feelings of aimlessness and lack of direction in the next.”

Staying true to the idiosyncrasies that have cultivated their ever-growing fanbase however, The Academic persist in finding the fun and the romance within the transience of it all. “Ultimately it’s about finding your feet, feeling the weight of time passing on your shoulders, and trying to enjoy the good times and meaningful relationships along the way.”

Pushing Up Daisies is the sound of a confident young band cutting loose. It’s a gritty return for a band who have a penchant for cramming more melody into their singles than most bands manage across a full album. The sound is direct and riotous – a band ready to announce themselves properly, far beyond the Irish neighbourhoods that already claim them as hometown heroes.

Of the song, the band explain: “Pushing Up Daisies is our ode to insecurity and ego in equal measure,” the band say. “It tackles the hectic nature of our current circumstances. The ecstatic highs and the unbearable lows of life in you twenties.”

These four boys from Mullingar step into album two with unshakable intent, having been on something of a journey of discovery since the success of their self-released debut, Tales From The Backseat which debuted at number 1 in Ireland. At the tail end of the Summer, they unleashed Don’t Take It Personally a song which, not unlike Pushing Up Daisies, puts the young masculine ego under the spotlight; in both its immovable heft and its frail fractures.

Back in Mullingar, there’s long been a sense of when rather than if The Academic will become a serious concern outside of their home country, and become a band that excite and unite fans right across the globe. And whilst their self-released debut album shot straight to number one in their home country the band deliberately held their nerve before introducing their music further afield. It’s a strategy that is surely now destined to pay dividends.