Live Review

The Academy Is… – Manchester Academy 3

• 20th Sep 2008

American pop was at its best in Academy three tonight, and the abundance of high-pitched, twelve year old girls definitely made me feel out of place, and almost like I was at a Westlife concert.

The Maine sounded poor compared to their over-produced album, coming through with a sound more suited to big arenas and festival stages. However they were still full of energy and their Akon cover of “I Wanna Love You” was the highlight of the set.

We The Kings put on an astounding performance, even though it felt like it went on for a lifetime. Poppy lyrics, neat riffs, gang vocals and perfectly harmonised choruses, playing tracks from their recently released album, and including a what can only be described as stupendous cover of Gorillaz “Dirty Harry”, and the audience seemed to love it, even though they all seemed too young to have even heard the song before!

It would seem that William Beckett has taken a new found interest in…well, himself. In between mincing about the stage and playing to the screaming girls by unbuttoning his shirt one song at a time, The Academy Is managed to pull off a fantastic set. It debuted the new album, a slightly more grown up pop album (if that’s possible?), whilst playing the popular ones from the second album that no one liked, and interspersed with exactly the right number of old songs, played at the right times, so everyone was singing along to the stuff they knew whilst listening to the new stuff with open ears. It was massively pop, offbeat drums and handclaps galore along with the singalongs with the audience. A perfect end to a fantastic evening.