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At TRNSMT Festival earlier this month, WTBU DJ Zoe Salvucci chatted with the Academic, an indie rock band from Co. Westmeath, Ireland. They closed out Friday night with their aftershow at King Tut\u2019s Wah Wah Hut in downtown Glasgow, and played early Saturday afternoon on the King Tut\u2019s stage at the festival. The Academic is Craig Fitzgerald (guitar\/vocals), brothers Matt and Stephen Murtaugh (guitar and bass, respectively), and Dean Gavin (drums). They discussed their recent debut release, <\/span>Tales from the Backseat<\/span><\/i>, their musical influences, and starting out as a band in Ireland.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Zoe Salvucci: First off, fantastic show last night at King Tut\u2019s; the whole crowd was super into it, they knew all the words to every song. In an interview you once said you prefer festival shows to intimate gigs, so after last night\u2014why is that?<\/b><\/p>\n Craig Fitzgerald: I think it was a mix.<\/span><\/p>\n Matt Murtaugh: I definitely said intimate shows, for sure.<\/span><\/p>\n CF: I\u2019m a mix of both; I think it\u2019s nice to break it up. Touring\u2019s fun, but then it\u2019s nice to just be at a festival and be outside, which is always nice.<\/span><\/p>\n Stephen Murtaugh: Yeah, it\u2019s weird, because sometimes you get intimate festival crowds, and then you get like festival-wild-type crowds in small venues. So it\u2019s tough to know\u2014I do like festivals, though.<\/span><\/p>\n Dean Gavin: Yeah, it is hard to know. I like a good mix of both. Intimate shows can be better, when they\u2019re at their best.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: You guys were in the US twice already this year, once on your own and once opening for the Kooks. What\u2019s it like at those shows, where you have a smaller headlining show versus a larger show where you\u2019re opening and the crowd might know you less well?<\/b><\/p>\n MM: It\u2019s definitely a different vibe. I mean, our headline shows\u2014although they were on a smaller scale\u2014there was such great energy in the room, because everyone knew all the songs and was singing them, kind of like King Tut\u2019s last night. And then with the Kooks shows, there were definitely people there who knew us, but you\u2019re sort of trying to win over the people who don\u2019t as well. So you kind of have to step up to the challenge a little bit, you know?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n CF: And when you\u2019re supporting a band like the Kooks, things are a little bit nicer, dressing rooms are bigger.<\/span><\/p>\n SM: Yeah, I was gonna say, there was a bit more comfort on the Kooks tour, because, you know, bigger venues, better\u2014yeah, all that stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: You were touring for your (relatively) new album, <\/b>Tales From the Backseat<\/i><\/b>, which debuted at #1 on the Irish charts. That was a little over six months ago, but how many years has it been in the works now?<\/b><\/p>\n CF: Probably about four, maybe?<\/span><\/p>\n MM: Four, definitely.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: Is it nice to finally have it out there?<\/b><\/p>\n MM: It is, yeah. We took a long time getting there\u2014we just wanted to get it right. And we were promising an album for a long time and then just sort of not doing it. But it\u2019s a great feeling to finally have a record out there and share those songs, and the stories of the songs, with other people. And hopefully they can relate to them and stuff, you know?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: So when you were writing the album, were you consciously writing an album, or just sort of writing enough songs to call it an album?<\/b><\/p>\n CF: It was just a buildup over the last couple of years of old songs and new songs. But that was fun, because there were songs that we felt it would\u2019ve been unfair [to leave out]. Like \u201cBear Claws,\u201d which is one of the older ones. We, as a band, always wanted that on the debut album, no matter what we wrote in between.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: It has a very cohesive sound \u2014 it sounds like an \u201cintentional\u201d album.<\/b><\/p>\n MM: Yeah, there were a lot of songs written as well that, while we loved them, they just wouldn\u2019t have suited the album at all. And it was kind of tough to let some of them go as well and think, \u201cWell, they\u2019re not gonna be on this record and they might never be on a record,\u201d you know? But I think with the way the writing\u2019s going now, it\u2019s definitely more album-focused. We\u2019re thinking, \u201cWe are making another record now,\u201d and it\u2019s already sounding more cohesive.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: You cite bands like the Strokes and early 2000s indie rock as a major influence\u2014is there anything you listen to from the 20th century, or are you strictly no-nostalgia?<\/b><\/p>\n SM: No, I\u2019m all nostalgia. We\u2019re all big Beatles fans, I love Van Morrison. I listen to a lot of Talking Heads and stuff, so my listening is mostly nostalgia-based.<\/span><\/p>\n CF: Yeah, 20th century would definitely be most of my music. I\u2019m kind of into the \u201880s stuff at the moment, like New Order, Joy Division\u2014that type of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n MM: Yeah, I\u2019m into the Smiths, Pixies, Television, bands like that, just for my own nerdy guitar stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n DG: I go back and forth\u2014it\u2019s modern one day, then could be \u201870s the next day.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: Cool, cool. So how has it been starting out as a band in a country like Ireland, where there\u2019s not only such a big history of music, but such a strong modern music scene, with hundreds of bands gigging every night in cities like Dublin?<\/b><\/p>\n CF: Yeah, that\u2019s an interesting one, because we\u2019re from the midlands in a pretty rural area, so there wasn\u2019t a lot of places to play. So naturally we moved towards Dublin to try and get some shows. But it wasn\u2019t too bad. I think it\u2019s nice not coming from a city, because then you\u2019re up against a lot of competition.<\/span><\/p>\n MM: There\u2019s <\/span>so<\/span><\/i> much competition in Dublin; it\u2019s quite tough to sort of stick your head out above that and break through. Like you said, there\u2019s hundreds of bands in Dublin and the scene is really strong at the moment, and there\u2019s so much great music, so we kind of just had to keep banging our head against the wall until we could branch out further from Ireland.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: You seemed to make it out pretty fast, I mean with\u2014what was that, Eurosonic, that you played a couple years ago?<\/b><\/p>\n CF: Yeah, that was the start of\u00a0\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n MM: That definitely got us farther into Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n CF: Radio was big as well, in Ireland, which helped us play shows and sell more tickets and build up as a band so we could actually leave Ireland and go play in different cities.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ZS: That\u2019s great. So, what\u2019s next for you guys? Are you already working on the next album, or focusing on gigging at the moment?<\/b><\/p>\n CF: We\u2019re just writing. I don\u2019t want people to think we\u2019re in the studio.<\/span><\/p>\n MM: Yeah, we\u2019re not recording it, but it\u2019s being written at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n CF: Just demos, stuff like that. But no, we\u2019re on the road, you know, that\u2019s it. We have our biggest Dublin headline in July in the Iveagh Gardens. It\u2019s like 4,000 tickets, so that\u2019s our biggest headline ever. And then we\u2019re doing a couple of festivals, and more tours in October and November\u2014it just comes around again.<\/span><\/p>\n MM: Just touring till death!<\/span><\/p>\n Check out The Academic\u2019s #1 debut album, <\/span>Tales from the Backseat<\/span><\/i>, available on Spotify and Apple Music.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At TRNSMT Festival earlier this month, WTBU DJ Zoe Salvucci chatted with the Academic, an indie rock band from Co. Westmeath, Ireland. They closed out Friday night with their aftershow at King Tut\u2019s Wah Wah Hut in downtown Glasgow, and played early Saturday afternoon on the King Tut\u2019s stage at the festival. The Academic is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[26,152,147,29,443,442,444,439,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2578,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions\/2578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}