The self-titled first album by Your Academy has been described by its label as “the resurrection of Memphis power pop.” Now, anybody who knows the basics of Memphian music history will recognize that as a statement of boldness bordering on pure chutzpah. However, the label is Black & Wyatt, whose motto is “Always Memphis Rock & Roll,” so it’s a declaration made from a foundation of solid historical knowledge. Listening to the ten songs (plus one bonus track) that comprise the record, it’s clear the label hasn’t oversold the contents. It’s available on 180 gram fluorescent green vinyl and digital now.
Your Academy is Chris Gafford on guitar, bass guitar, and percussion, Adam Hill on guitar, vocals, and percussion, Brandon McGovern on vocals, guitar and piano, Johnny Norris on bass guitar, and Dan Shumake on drums and vocals, with their union initially spurred by Norris’ desire for his band crash into june, who released a pair of CDs in the late 1990s-early 2000s, to play a reunion gig on his birthday in August 2019.
The story is fleshed out in much greater detail on Black & Wyatt’s website (and expanded upon even further on Your Academy’s Bandcamp webpage for the album), but suffice it to say that the lineup above, save for Hill, played that gig, with the show going so swimmingly that recording fresh material commenced. Thusly, Your Academy was born.
They don’t tap into the essence of Memphis power pop by accident, as Gafford and Shumake played on crash into june’s ’99 debut from blind to blue, and are additionally both recent members of Stephen Burns’ enduring power pop outfit The Scruffs (formed in the mid-’70s), while Memphis scene fixture McGovern (Madison Treehouse, solo) has recorded with power pop legend Dwight Twilley.
“Resurrection of Memphis power pop” is a descriptor inherently linked to Big Star, who remain one of the city’s cult rock cornerstones. Cue the entrance of Hill, who along with playing in The Scruffs is known for his work as an engineer for artists including Jack White, Cat Power, and indeed the reunited Big Star. Furthermore, Hill is often referred to as “The Big Star Archivist” due to his vital assistance in the retrieval and release of lost material by that august band. Along with playing guitar, Hill recorded and mixed Your Academy’s debut.
All this talk of Big Star might lead to an assumption that Your Academy is a studied throwback to the heyday of Greg Shaw’s Bomp (the magazine, the store, the label) complete with hip-hugger jeans and ringer tees. But, with the awareness that power pop is far from an avant-garde endeavor in 2022, that’s not really the case here.
This is partly due to unabashedly hi-fi production values working in combination with arena-scaled songwriting and execution, qualities heard straight away in the LP’s first cut, the riff heavy anthemic charger “Why Don’t We?” In contrast to the striving of many contempo power pop acts to sound like their music was recorded on a four-track in a garage in 1978, Your Academy, even though they never really stray from the classique template, made a record informed by the old-school that sounds like it was fortified with a pile of record company $$$.
And the opener’s piano intro suggests Your Academy are pretty disinterested in maintaining punk cred, even as the lyrics reference the Flamin’ Groovies evergreen proto-punk gem “Shake Some Action,” establishing cognizance of the past that explodes in the next track “Heaven Knows,” its lyrics offering a steady stream of band and song mentions. There’s Drivin’ & Cryin’, Chris Bell, “Yellow Pills,” Guided by Voices, etc., as the music hits like a blend of Squeeze and Game Theory.
Intrinsic to Your Academy’s appeal is this uninhibited bigness of conception, especially when they slow it down. That is, if it bothers you that “Sunrise” sounds like it could’ve been a late ’80s radio hit, well, there’s really nothing that can be done about it. Except maybe contemplate how “Sunrise” and the following cut “Better Alone Together” offer alternate reality flashes of a young Robert Pollard (we’re talking well pre-Bee Thousand) going full-on Cheap Trick with infusions of Beach Boys-Hollies harmony.
“Starlight” does inch toward the bedrock inspiration of pre-Third Big Star but with a little late ’70s-early ’80s North Carolinian action (e.g. dB’s and Mitch Easter) expanding matters. “Starlight,” also offered in a slightly stripped-down bonus alternate version that’s the nearest Your Academy comes to the contents of Numero Group’s Buttons comps, and “Better Nature,” which reminds me just a bit of Big Dipper and Velvet Crush, both insinuate, had Your Academy existed during the early ’90s Alt-indie boom, a potential signing to DGC (home of Teenage Fanclub and The Posies).
“Talent Party” is a mid-tempo jangle-strummer with some handclaps and cool ’60s-ish organ, which is appropriate as the song’s an ode to a Memphis-based teen dance TV program that ran in the ’60s-early ’70s. But “Bluff City,” even as it slows the pace and begins with a little mellow ’70s electric piano, quickly kicks into gear and delivers an emotive soaring gush that’s impossible to extricate from visions of lit lighters aloft during the Clinton era.
While “Our Love Matters (TCB)” opens with another direct reference to Memphis, the song resonates like a Hoboken guitar pop act grappling with a Searchers fixation. Nice. And for “My Lonely Life,” the piano returns and this time sticks around to sweetly melancholy effect, nodding in the direction of pop auteur territory for the record’s finale. Even nicer. But overall, Your Academy’s debut is just an inspired power pop affair. That’s nicest of all.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
