For these
rising emo heroes, the love is all around
The Academy Is…/Panic! At The
Disco/Acceptance/hellogoodbye
February 4, 2006
by Marc Hirsh
[photos taken by Marc Hirsh]
originally published in
The Boston Globe, February 7, 2006
As one of the opening acts for the All-American
Rejects,
aspiring emo heartthrobs The Academy Is… commanded an intense fan
response when
they were in town this past November. Saturday’s return to Avalon
put the
band’s drawing power to the test, and the sold-out all-ages show proved
that
Taking the stage as Europe’s “The Final Countdown” blasted through the P.A. system, The Academy Is… quickly reestablished its connection with the crowd, who took the first lines of second song “Attention” from frontman William Beckett and throbbed as one with their arms in the air during “Classifieds.” Beckett’s whip-thin frame and long hair could have been lifted out of a 1970s rock star textbook, but the unthreatening singer frequently declined to hold himself above the audience, announcing “This place belongs to you. Don’t ever forget that. We never will.”
Such populism is lifted from another textbook, of course: the emo one. But The Academy Is… earned its adulation. As Beckett marched back and forth across the stage singing in his untrained boy-band tenor, the rest of the band pushed forceful and glistening songs such as “Down And Out” and “The Phrase That Pays” forward. Even including two new songs (one of which, “Pour Yourself A Drink,” seemed more like a scrap at this point) alongside everything from its lone album, Almost Here, The Academy Is… exhausted its setlist at the 45-minute mark.
After three 30-minute openers, that was still enough to satisfy almost everyone. Panic! At The Disco mined the same combination of melodicism and power, but Panic! added a layer of agreeable bombast and an aggressive desire to please like an emo Click Five. With the nervy energy of “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage” and the almost sinuous verses of “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off” cleanly giving way to the controlled hyperactivity of the chorus, the band gave little indication that it hadn’t played a single show until after its album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out was recorded.
hellogoodbye played an agreeably spry form of nerd-rock that had touches of New Wave, but with less emphasis on synthesizers than on the processed gleam of When In Rome and the Fixx. Acceptance followed with nondescript heavy rock that could become Switchfoot with more gloss and a few hooks.