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Interview: William Beckett of The Academy Is…

The Academy Is
AbsolutePunk

I recently spoke with William Beckett. The Academy Is… have recently just gotten back together for RIOT Fest and are now ready to kick off their Ten Year Anniversary tour of Almost Here.

Was coming together for RIOT Fest the only reason the band started to talk again, or was it something that was in the back of your mind?

Well; RIOT Fest was always a bucket list goal being from the Chicago area. It’s potentially our favorite festival and I’m not sure if our band was cool enough to get it in the past. But the offer came up and we all got on the phone; Adam, Mike, and I, and we discussed it. The consensus was we really want to do this for the right reasons. Our tour with Jack’s Mannequin, we cancelled and that was not the ideal circumstance. When the RIOT Fest email came in we talked it over and always wanted to, it was like a festival in Chicago, where were celebrating Almost Here ten year anniversary and it just felt right.

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Review: Adele – 25

Adele - 25
Craig Manning

Here’s a monster of an unenviable task: following up an album that sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, spawned multiple ubiquitous singles, won a truckload of Grammys, spent 24 nonconsecutive weeks at number one, and was labeled by Billboard as “the Greatest Album of All Time”—whatever that means. Adele’s 21 was the kind of phenomenon that doesn’t happen in the music world anymore. Albums are obsolete for the average listener, right? Digital track sales are plummeting? Monoculture is dead? Adele defied every expectation and turned her sophomore album into a cultural sensation that was probably as close as our generation will ever get to having a Thriller. No wonder the British songstress took the better part of five years to drop the follow-up.

Unsurprisingly, 25 has arrived to endless comparisons to its predecessor—many of them unflattering. The reviews are mixed, and while the album will undoubtedly be a juggernaut that breaks sales records and single-handedly keeps the record business on life support for another few years, it’s already pretty clear that 25 is not going to have the legacy of adoration that its world-beating predecessor did.

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Interview: Julien Baker

Julien Baker
Aaron Mook

I had the opportunity to speak with the extremely humble and extremely talented Julien Baker about her recent album, Sprained Ankle. We covered everything from the album’s recording to spirituality and, naturally, we nerded out over David Bazan. Baker is a young songwriter with a lot to say, and luckily for all of us, it seems her career is only just beginning.

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Review: Mayday Parade – Black Lines

Mayday Parade - Black Lines
Drew Beringer

Out of all the bands I listen to, Mayday Parade has always been one of the most frustrating. Not because they can’t write pop-punk and pop-rock hits, it’s because the band has always been so close to writing a complete album that turns into one of the genre’s essential listens. After Jason Lancaster departed the band following the release of fan-favorite A Lesson In Romantics, Mayday Parade has had its collection of hits and misses; always close to that career-defining release but just never putting it all together. That all changes with Black Lines.

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The Myth of Objectivity: Music Journalism in 2015

Anna Acosta

(ICYMI: This is a follow up to ‘Witch Hunts & Straw Men: Internet Discourse in 2015)

I want to start by saying that this is not about any particular incident, but instead is addressing a larger issue that is prevalent in our scene – misogyny and the underlying theme that overall treatment of women is a footnote of little to no consequence. We are starting to know who the culprits are, but each time there is an accusation, the same general outcry goes up regardless of evidence provided, or even our own common sense in regards to how society works. In reality, we all know bad behavior is treated as though it were acceptable from young men. We wouldn’t cling so tightly to the law to provide our moral compass if that wasn’t the case. The issue isn’t that we don’t think these dudes might be treating women badly. The issue is that we have decided, somewhere along the way, that unless their treatment of women is illegal, it isn’t an issue. 

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Witch Hunts and Straw Men: Internet Discourse in 2015

Anna Acosta

Lately, there has been a lot of discourse on the Internet regarding how we talk about sexual abuse allegations. In those conversations, the real issue – which is the epidemic of abuse going on in our communities – often gets lost in the shuffle as skeptics and proponents of the status quo throw distraction after distraction into the ring. 

Let me be clear: I am not talking about the rare occasion where an allegation is unfounded and/or proven to be merely attention seeking (which is reprehensible and inexcusable). I am talking about the vast majority of incidents where that is not the case – and I am also speaking on behalf of victims whose abuse is not acknowledged by the law at all (see: most psychological abuse or continual domestic mistreatment). 

So without further ado – I’m going to address some of the more common responses to allegations and start to explore why they are a problem: 

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Review: Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
Craig Manning

Today (August 25th, 2015), Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run has officially been around for 40 years. It’s only had a huge influence on my life, though, for about seven. For a considerable amount of my personal musical growth, I was aware of “the Boss” and his work, but it didn’t really resonate with me on a personal level. Born to Run, along with Born in the USA, Greetings from Asbury Park, and The Rising, were among the first albums I ever put on my first iPod back in 2004, as I looted my parents’ CD collection looking for more tunes to stock my brand new 20 gigabyte device. But while I loved hearing the title track pop up on shuffle during runs, and while later songs like “My City in Ruins” always struck a chord with me, it took another four years for Born to Run to really become that album in my life.

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Review: Jack’s Mannequin – Everything in Transit

Jacks Mannequin - Everything in Transit
Craig Manning

It’s late April 2010, but the weather is so glorious outside that it feels like it’s already June. Rain was threatening earlier, but now, the sun is beating down overhead as I pack the final items into my car for the three-hour journey home. I’ve just finished my freshman year of college and closed out a great semester, and my roommate and I are saying our goodbyes in the parking lot of our dormitory, after having handed over the keys to the room we’d shared since September. It’s a bittersweet moment, but I’m happy to be headed home to the resort town where I grew up for some much needed vacation. I climb into the front seat of my ’98 Honda Civic, plug my iPod into the FM transmitter, and briefly debate which album to choose. I smile as my thumb finds Jack’s Mannequinʼs Everything in Transit — one of my favorite albums of all time, and a record that has been my definitive “summer soundtrack” since I first discovered it four years earlier. I press play and the sounds of “Holiday from Real” come coursing through my speakers. “Fuck yeah, we can live like this,” Andrew McMahon sings. I put on my aviators, shift the car into first gear, and drive. This is going to be the perfect summer, I think to myself as I pull away from my first year of college. I can feel it.

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Review: Frank Turner – Positive Songs for Negative People

Frank Turner - Positive Songs for Negative
Craig Manning

Album sequencing is a tricky thing. When it works, sequencing should feel so natural that it becomes impossible to imagine the album in question being presented in any other way. Perfect sequencing can bring the themes of an album into clear and pointed relief, and can hide the flaws of an album’s weak songs while using the best ones as big peaking payoffs. In a way, the art of sequencing is as important for an album—and as difficult to master—as the art of songwriting itself. When track order is bad, it can push you into viewing an album less as cohesive artistic statement, and more as a collection of tracks. But when clear painstaking attention has been paid to finding the perfect sequencing, it can legitimately make an album.

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