Song, by Toad

How hard is it to make it as a band when you’re part of a thriving local scene? Tough enough, I should imagine. Is it easy to be overlooked in all the noise? Is it better or worse than being part of a smaller scene, or a more fragmented one perhaps? Or how about if there’s little scene at all? Or none?

A Classic Education are an indie band based in Italy. Now, oddly enough, I seem to have been contacted a few times recently by Italian bands playing what I would essentially call British or American indie rock so in the country as a whole there appears to be a small but not insignificant undercurrent of this sort of thing going on. In any one city, though, just how big is this kind of music over there? I have no idea, but I would assume it wasn’t all that massive a scene. What we describe as indie just doesn’t seem to catch on all that well (apart from Scandinavia of course) in most other countries for some reason.

Here’s a really interesting comment my friend Morgan (he of Toad TV ‘fame’) left at the bottom of the Europop Toadcast thread the other day:

I love Europe, as you know, for all it’s strong cheeses and the distinctive, uncompromising musical whiff they give off. It is interesting though, that you rarely see any discussion in young music circles of what ‘non-indie European music’ is about and where it’s coming from. It kind of gets palmed off as ‘World Music’ or trad folk. A musical museum piece rather than a vibrant scene that might actually represent a country. I guess it’s because that’s how it has been in the UK. I’ve always had a feeling that the reason the UK can create so much ‘new’ music is because fashion is the dominant religion here and our traditions are deemed to be generally embarrassing. Like with our national food, there’s always something to be gained socially by ditching the Brit-stodge and producing something exotically tinged with a foreign flavour, be it American jazz, blues or rock’n’roll, french accordions or recently, Eastern European gypsy music.

So what do you do if you’re an anglophone indie band adrift in the middle of Italy? How do you find the network of like-minded people who encourage you, come to all your gigs and buy your first home-made CD-Rs? Maybe it’s easy; maybe I’m just imagining all this and it’s pretty much the same as everywhere else – things often are I suppose. Nevertheless, A Classic Education always seemed something of an anomaly to me, perched out in Bologna, as they are.

Despite their Italian provenance, frontman (I think) Jonathan Clancy is a Canadian if I remember correctly, and the band do have the odd sliver of recent Canadian indie in their sound. The start of the brilliant Stay Son could easily, just as an example, be an Arcade Fire song.

For the most part the music is a lot more straighforward than that: it is straighforward, from-the-template indie music with atmospheric guitars, charismatic vocals and swelling strings. The only thing that really distinguishes this kind of thing is a simple one: do the songs grip you? The answer in the case of A Classic Education is simple: yes, they most certainly do. The EP kicks off with the obvious pop song, but for all the others are less insta-pop flavoured in their choruses and hooks, they are no less engaging.

So why don’t these guys have a record deal? I think it’s because the record industry is shit-scared at the moment. It reminds me of the pharmaceutical industry in that sense: everyone scrabbling for the Next Big Thing that will make millionaires or geniuses of them. In doing so what always gets neglected is the small-to-medium seller. No one’s interested in a product that is good, solid and respectable and will sell in good, but not breathtaking, quantities.

This is kind of where A Classic Education sit: their sound isn’t new or revolutionary, and you are unlikely to find their gigs stuffed full of teenagers with Haircuts wearing black+white+a bright accent colour. They are a good, solid indie band with a knack for writing excellent, satisfying songs.  And once the initial enthusiasm dies down, their EP is one I will always pull out and give a spin every once in a while, no matter how old it gets and no matter how much new stuff comes and goes in the meantime. It’s available from their website, so go and buy one.

A Classic Education – Badlands & Owls

MySpace | More mp3s | Buy the EP from their website