Sitting Pretty The Academic

• 1Pushing Up Daisies03:22
• 2Don't Take It Personally03:39
• 3What’s Wrong With Me03:22
• 4My Very Best03:17
• 5This Is Your Life03:24
• 6Homesick03:35
• 7Heartbreak’s Where It’s At03:35
• 8Do What You Want03:25
• 9Step My Way03:20
• 10Let Go Of My Heart03:37
• 11Right Where You Left Me03:12
• 12Rain03:08
• 13Buying Smokes03:48
• Total Runtime44:44

Info for Sitting Pretty

Irish indie rock band The Academic are very excited to announce details of their forthcoming new album.

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 your 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.

The Academic

Produced by Nick Hodgson at Snap Studios in London

The Academic
With their self-released debut album, Tales From The Backseat, The Academic announced themselves with an unlikely bang. Buoyant guitar hooks and earworm melodies coalesced with Craig Fitzgerald’s lyrics about teenage romance and tribulations in rural Ireland to place the band firmly amongst many ones-to-watch lists.

Released in 2018, it hit number one in the Irish Albums Chart but had enough of a global reach that over the next few years, the band toured the UK, Europe and a good chunk of North America. “We wanted to play the fastest, have the biggest chorus,” explains Craig of the first era of The Academic, which saw the band driven by a competitive edge.

New album Sitting Pretty has “a more matured edge to it,” bassist Stephen Murtagh promises. “We're different people now but that's natural. You grow out of things.” Leaning into that, Stephen explains how the songs on Sitting Pretty are “reflections of where we are now and who we’ve become. We’re in our mid-20s and experiencing all the chaos that comes with that. No one really knows what they’re doing or where they’re going, but nobody is panicking because we’re all in it together.”

Sitting Pretty still packs an energetic punch though. With the band having not played a live show for almost two years due to COVID, by the time they went into the studio with former Kaiser Chief Nick Hodgson, their excitement was at an all-time high. “We were just buzzing to be in a room, playing loud music all together,” says Craig. That same excitement drove those early years of The Academic and that giddy joy can still be heard across their second album. There was an emphasis on live takes. “If the magic is there, the magic is there,” Craig smiles.

The band hopes Sitting Pretty “connects on a visceral level with people who are grappling with their sense of self-worth, their identity and not knowing where they belong in the world. It is a struggle to know where you fit or what’s around the corner and it feels like that’s only getting harder,” explains Stephen. “I think a good chunk of young people feel lost or confused. Hopefully there’s comfort to be found in knowing other people feel the same way.”

Having already conquered their homeland with their independently released debut effort, The Academic are back with the same hunger; now bolstered with the benefit of experience and a few more tools at their disposal. “It’s the idea that your music can take you further than you've ever been before,” Stephen says of their ambition, ‘that’s what lights a fire under me.’

This album contains no booklet.