Who are The Academic?
The first time I ever heard of The Academic I was closing at work. I was tired, hungry, and it was already evening- I just really wanted the day to be done. I settled on some random suggested Spotify playlist, put it on for background noise, and just like how most workdays go, the rest was a blur. When I was finally finished throwing out the day's coffee remnants and sweeping, I was at the register, counting money, content that my day's work was soon done, and then, a song began to play. The song was ‘Different’ by The Academic and within the first line of it I was hooked. It’s energy was electric and I quickly went on to listen to all the music I could find of theirs, including their first album, Tales from the Backseat, an album whose coming of age sound made me deeply nostalgic for my teenage years, or maybe rather, what I hoped they would be after watching a few too many John Cusack films and indie coming of age movies.
I quickly became a fan of theirs, then fast forward some time later, was given the opportunity to interview them. I was excited and true to my overthinking style, I over prepared and over thought out everything. What I couldn’t prepare though, was how it’d end up being a stormy midwestern day where I live, leading me to have to conduct the interview from a coffee shop that was having an unconventionally loud day. Though I’ll admit that made me feel extremely frazzled at the beginning, it was easy to slip into conversation when I began interviewing them, and they happened to be just about as patient and humble as could be, discussing with me everything from music, experiences being an opening act, to their least and most favorite fast food joints in America.
The Irish band is composed of Craig Fitzgerald, Dean Gavin, and brothers Stephen and Matthew Murtagh. They’re from, as bassist Stephen Murtagh, explained to me, “a selection of very, very small villages that no one’s ever heard of around Mullingar”, thus why they call the bands hometown Mullingar due to it being their nearest town and where they formally began gigging together. They all went to school together, got into music around the same time, and began playing music together around the age of eighteen. They began gigging in small pubs and a Battle of the Bands contest, slowly making their name and finding themselves as a band, eventually becoming a seasoned act and supporting the likes of The Strokes, Pixies and The Rolling Stones.
In 2020 the band released their latest EP, Acting My Age, and despite a trilogy of lockdowns, they became more creative than ever over the past year and a half, releasing their latest single, Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me) on May 26th and announcing their upcoming EP, Community Spirit, which is set to be released July 16th. The single not only reflects the ever evolving sound of The Academic, it also reflects the bands growing independence and self sustainability. While in the past the band had different producers behind their EP’s and album, this time around they did it all on their own. Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me) as well as the EP it appears on, Community Spirit, was written and recorded entirely by the band, and produced in Stephen Murtagh’s bedroom by lead singer/songwriter, Craig Fitzgerald.
“When we were young we didn’t really know anything about like, the studio world and all that,” Stephen Murtagh recalled. “Whereas in the past couple of years we’ve become very self-sufficient as like, Craig turned into kind of like kind of an outright producer so that’s definitely an important step. Even in the first album Craig was kind of learning how to use recording technology and stuff but now like, ‘Kids’ the single that you heard, is fully produced by Craig so that’s how far we’ve taken it.”
While their first album, Tales From the Backseat reflects the bands sentiments of coming of age and their early years, Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me), gives us a taste of where the bands at now, as they create and are inspired by where they are now in their lives, as well as shows us just how extensive the bands sound is. Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me) could only be described as a straight bop- containing sheer electricity from the bass and guitar, heart pumping drum beats, and Fitzgerald’s Bob Dylan-esque voice, with a bit of a 1980's twist amplified. It’s all these things perfectly mixed together that bring us Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me), the song that after a year and a half of lockdowns and quarantines, might just make you feel a little more alive yourself again.
“Yea, [it was one of] the first songs I ever remember writing, like in this bedroom, probably maybe at 16 or 17, and it was just one of those ones where the first time a whole page full of lyrics came to me, and I was like very proud of as a kid. We tried to play it like a bunch of times over the years and we never like got it right at all, but it always stuck around and being like stuck in lockdown for like a year and a half it was just kind of like at the start of January I just started looking at older songs from our back catalog that nobody’s really heard and I’d done like a tiny acoustic demo [of the song] and sent it around to people and yea, out of nowhere we were like, ‘Okay everyone, we’re going to start making like an EP’ and the song hasn’t changed much at all really. It’s still got that kind of naive, Bruce Springsteen thing going on and it’s kind of like, a surreal thing that's the song we’re releasing,” Fitzgerald says, explaining the story behind Kids (Don’t End Up Like Me).
While it might seem like the group of twenty somethings might have the music industry all figured out already, that doesn’t mean it was always that way for them. They’re the first to admit that their journey as a band has been a gradual one and full of lots of experiences and changes, they even had a different name when they began (they were originally called ‘Maginot’, but later changed their name to The Academic due to their name constantly being written wrong at venues). They come from humble beginnings and are the first to admit that at the start of their careers they knew nothing about the music industry, Stephen Murtagh explaining, ‘[During the beginning] We were always very motivated, very ambitious, [.. but] we didn’t really know anything. All we knew was like putting energy into it and we were like, ‘we’re writing songs and trying to put energy to like, have a good live show, that’s all we do”. Matthew Murtagh then adding, “Yea, to us there was no like, music industry, the music industry was just, ‘how are we going to get our next gig in Mullingar?’”.
While they admit that throughout their early days gigging, most music related news was spread through word of mouth and by playing live shows, thus why it’s been a slower journey for them to get them where they are today- they all agree they wouldn’t change a thing about that part of their journey, and there’s something comforting in that. Their story is authentic and they’re very transparent about the realities of being in a band and the whole process it is of finding yourself as an artist, their one piece of advice, given by Matthew Murtagh being:
“If I was to give advice to anybody I would say, don’t get freaked out if you don’t blow up overnight because that happens for some people, but not for everybody. For some people it takes them much more time for them to figure out who they are as an artist and to get better at it, it doesn’t instantly happen for everybody, so if it doesn’t happen straight away, don’t freak out and don’t be afraid to keep going.”
At one point I proposed the question to them- “Who are The Academic right now?”, a question they described as very deep and which brought various answers such as Fitzgerald explaining how musically, they’re “in a very experimental stage” and Matthew Murtagh saying their lives changing and them growing up since their first album has brought new inspiration in writing, making it, “a very interesting time for The Academic”. That question was then followed by a thorough discussion about their least and most favorite American fast food joints. (Stephen Murtagh has a self proclaimed passion for Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and Fitzgerald has been traumatized by Del Taco. While drummer, Dean Gavin is a fan of Chick-fil-A and Matthew Murtagh has a disgust for Hardee’s and Whataburger). They then explained to me the difference between Irish and American fast food, as well as what's a ‘chipper’ in Ireland, and we ended the call settling on the fact that while American and Irish fast food are too different to compare, they can coexist.
Later on, as I began the transcribing and writing process of this interview, it became very plain to me that even though there might have not been an easy, outright answer to that question of who The Academic are right now or even to what their sound is right now. Who they are, well there isn’t much of a question there. I go back to how they described the beginning of their journey, and how transparent they were about the fact that they entered the industry with a sense of naivety. Fitzgerald explaining:
“We had no idea what like a music industry was like, I think we just liked being in a band, playing music, writing songs, and just writing songs to play them for people. We didn’t get into a studio for so long, it was all just about playing together and just taking any show we could get. Like we played in a truck in like a town twenty minutes away and I think there’s something nice about like not having an expectation like- ‘oh we’re going to get like a booking agent’ or- ‘we’re going to like- go there and show them how good we are’, we just, we just played.[...]” Later adding, “We didn’t really give a shit either, like we just played gigs regardless if there were loads of people there or not, we’re going to do what we’re going to do, and it's very freeing maintaining that when things get more pressure because we know it’s going to be good and that’s the main thing.”
So who are The Academic? The Academic are a band who said it seemed “disrespectful” to pick one of their favorite bands as an opener, so instead they came up with the concept of picking a hologram of themselves, an Academic tribute band, or if any of them ever started their own musical side project, just having that member perform. They dissected the difference between American and Irish fast food with me and then explained what a ‘chipper’ is when I said I’d never heard of that name before . They opened for The Rolling Stones, but lost Battle of the Bands when they were beginning, and for a group who says they once knew nothing of the music industry, they not only recorded, wrote, and produced their own EP- they did it all during a worldwide pandemic.
This is The Academic. The band, who have played everything from stadiums, to gigs in trucks, to crowds of fifteen. Who admittedly entered the industry knowing nothing of it, but instead of being intimidated by it, they took it head on and are about to shake it completely. Who are The Academic? The band from “a selection of very, very, small villages that no one’s ever heard of around Mullingar” who just want to write songs and play music. Who admit that it took them awhile to find themselves as artists and get where they are today- and that’s okay too. They’re a band you don’t just listen to for a single track, but rather find yourself growing up with and saving their albums for your music collections when you feel like reminiscing on your younger days when you’re sixty. Don’t you see? The Academic aren’t a quick to rise, quicker to fall band- they’re a band that with every song they write about love, navigating growing up, adulthood, and all the in-betweens- they’re creating a soundtrack, not just to their own lives, but to those of their fans as well.
The Academic released their latest single Kids Don’t End Up Like Me on May 26th which you can listen to on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music. You can also get more updates on them through their website, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
