Review: The Academic follow up debut album with New EP The Community Spirit

by Joe Sharratt
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Irish four-piece The Academic dropped their debut album Tales From The Backseat in 2018 to positive reviews, it’s blend of youthful exuberance and noughties-inspired indie, as well as the band’s reputation for exhilarating live shows, winning them fans both in the UK and at home in Ireland, where it hit number one in the Irish Album Charts. They built on that momentum last year with Acting My Age, a six-track EP recorded with Nick Hodgson of the Kaiser Chiefs that spawned the single of the same title, a mainstay of their live sets.

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Review: More feelgood fun from Barenaked Ladies on new album Detour De Force

by Joe Sharratt
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One Week was the ludicrously catchy track littered with pop culture references that first turned on a whole host of listeners around my age to the Barenaked Ladies in the late 1990s. It remains the band’s calling card and biggest hit, and still serves as the best introduction to their work for anyone who has not yet (somehow) heard them. Though, thanks to the sheer runaway success of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, for which the band created the distinctive theme song, that title is arguably under threat. 

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Review: I Love You, I Hate You Little Simz

by Rob Costa
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Before you hear this track for the first time, you read the title and you know this is going to be something epic! Then the track starts with an almost cinematic crescendo, with harps, horns & strings all building anticipation and in the last second of the intro you have no idea what’s about to hit you. 

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