The Academy Is… performs at the 9:30 Club as a part of their Almost Here 10th Anniversary tour on Dec. 9, 2015.
“Attention! Attention!/ May I have all your eyes and ears to the front of the screen/ If only, if only for one second.” I’d be lying to you if I didn’t disclose that The Academy Is… was one of the most influential bands to me during my formative years. I was 10 when my dad told me he was taking me to my first-ever concert, the Honda Civic Tour stop in Missouri. The lineup featured The Academy Is…, opening for Fall Out Boy (another important band to a young me). I was heartbroken back in 2011 when the band announced they were breaking up.
I had lived with regret every day of my life for not seeing them again. But this past spring, the band announced it would be getting back together to play through their debut album, Almost Here, in its entirety at the Riot Fest in Chicago. It had been 10 years since Almost Here was released, and to honor the album that changed their lives, The Academy Is… would be going on a mini-reunion tour singer William Beckett described as both a reunion and a “farewell” tour.
At 9:15 p.m., lights went dim in the 9:30 Club, and as the band made its way to the stage, the audience collectively lost its mind. Made up of singer Beckett, bassist Adam “Sisky Business” Siska, drummer Andy “The Butcher” Mrotek, and guitarists Mike Carden and Ian Crawford (Crawford not being in the original lineup), the group returned to the light for its sixth show since 2011. After a brief introduction, the band started its way down the road that is Almost Here.
The show was a wild trip down memory lane for everyone involved. Beckett introduced the song “Classifieds” with a story about its unreleased music video, which was unofficially released a few years back. Fun facts like this took fans through lesser-known parts of the band’s history and pulled back the curtain on the band’s rise to popularity.
The audience was an interesting mix, comprised of people who, like me, fell in love with the band as fifth graders, people who were deep in the pop-punk scene throughout high school (now reaching their 30s) and the parents who chaperoned one too many Warped Tours. Despite the age gaps between crowd members, everyone was just as excited to relive years gone by as the band was. Beckett’s “crooked smile” made plenty of appearances as the fans sang every single lyric from the album back to him.
The Academy Is… finished its playthrough of the album, said its goodbyes and went away almost as quickly as when the band broke up. Through the cheering of the crowd, the chant of, “one more song” swelled in volume before the band burst back on to the stage, reveling in the encore energy. The band members played five songs from their albums Santi and Fast Times at Barrington High, including singles “About a Girl” and “We’ve Got a Big Mess On Our Hands.”
The final song of the night was “After the Last Midtown Show,” and I was at first perplexed by the song choice. I felt other songs like “Same Blood” or “Everything We Had” would be good, sappy, emotional ways to end an incredible night. However, as “After the Last Midtown Show” came to an end, the final words rang clear and I realized that no song could have made more sense. A duet between Beckett and the crowd formed, and together we sang, “We were part of something ours, and ours alone/ Anywhere was home/ We’re almost here again.”
