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Feb 25, 2013After the sparse and pretty "Bedfellows Farewell," which offers a tender counterpoint to virtually every other song on the album, Academy quickly loses steam.
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Feb 13, 2013Ostensibly a song-cycle about prep school kids spread over an 11 tracks, the close quarters become the sites of devotion, betrayal, communion (or near-communion), and abject loneliness. But relating to that isn't required to enjoy this rich recording.
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MojoFeb 6, 2013The crystalline vocals hint at either uplifting profundity or overblown pomposity--it's hard to say which. [Mar 2013, p.98]
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Jan 18, 2013This all adds up to an ambitious record, the most thematically ambitious of Holopaw's discography, but it's a set that can't quite live up to those lofty goals.
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Jan 17, 2013The album simply flickers out like a candle, with the faint promise of another visit to this setting.
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Jan 17, 2013Academy is an ambitious album. Unfortunately, it lacks in the final burst of tenacity needed to alleviate the aural blue balls it conjures.
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Jan 17, 2013Orth starts off with a very promising narrative, but soon loses the listener, and himself, in the world he's created.
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Jan 17, 2013The themes are vague enough that they could be applied to any number of relationships or situations, and far more captivating are the arrangements and dynamic shifts in orchestrations that make up the cyclical nature of the album.
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Jan 17, 2013Singer John Orth's gentle vibrato is well positioned to channel the nervous, ephemeral innocence of boyhood curiosity.