Song, by Toad

It’s always nice when I band who you’ve watched make their own luck actually manage to start achieving the breaks you think they deserve.

I’ve written about A Classic Education a couple of times now, and they’ve just emailed me through with a little bit of news, so I thought it would be nice to pass it on.  Firstly, they have a new single approaching on Bailiwick Recordings – the label which released the excellent Gossamer Albatross (who apparently need a drummer – any takers?) single earlier this year.  It is called Best Regards and, although there’s no set release date just yet, the song can be previewed on both the band’s and label’s MySpaces.

Funnily enough, there seems to be a lot of very good, slightly dark, slightly Smithsy indie coming out of Italy at the moment.  I haven’t featured it here as much as I would have liked to because most of the stuff I’ve been sent has been perilously close to, but just short of, having quite cracked it yet.  There’s no more than a hair’s breadth in it though, and it certainly seems like there is a really healthy scene bubbling under in Italy at the moment.  Fascinating how these things start to build and snowball, isn’t it.

Anyway, the other little bit of a treat in that email from A Classic Education was an English version of Toi, a Gilbert Bécaud song, which the band picked up on from the soundtrack to 1965 Italian movie called “Io la Conoscevo Bene” by Antonio Pietrangeli.  My ignorance of this is absolutely at one hundred percent, so I am doing little more than passing on the press release at this stage, I’m afraid, but I like this kind of little project.  It’s easy to end up with cultural tunnel vision when writing a blog like this and to forget that pop music is just a tiny part of a broader spectrum of arts (okay okay, I know, most of which I really can’t be arsed with) and it’s really nice to see people mixing the context of their music around like this.

Anyway, here’s the song:
A Classic Education – Toi (Gilbert Bécaud Cover)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The original scene with the original Italian version of the song:

And the same footage with their version:

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

Well, perhaps Europop isn’t quite the right term. Eurindie perhaps. This podcast is stuffed full of splendid tracks from the rest of the European continent which we, as marvellously parochial and narrow-minded Brits, seem to forget exists half the time.

I have no real idea how much this music actually intersects with any of the local scenes to which it might belong, but it is certainly nicely in tune with the British scene as I know it at the moment. Scandinavia is inevitably rather over-represented, but I have managed to track down a Belgian, a little Dutch and something (tangentially) Italian to throw into the mix as well. And a special secret bonus surprise for right at the end, but wait for it patiently and don’t ruin it for yourselves by peeking.

The big thing I can’t get over is just how much I had to leave out of this podcast actually. I’d lazily assumed that it might be a little tricky to fill an entire playlist, but I could just as easily have filled two. So don’t whinge about what’s not on there, because I know, I know!

Toadcast #27 – Europop

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. The Divine Comedy – Europop (00.06)
02. Mikrofisch – The Kids Are All Shite (05.52)
03. A Classic Education – Stay, Son (10.40)
04. Wolfkin – These Are Illusions (14.14)
05. Tafra – Cheesy Epic View (19.47)
06. Kottarashky – Chetiri (21.32)
07. Teitur – Catherine the Waitress (29.40)
08. Jens Lekman – No Time For Breaking Up (35.44)
09. Shout Out Louds – Parents’ Living Room (40.01)
10. The Tellers – Hugo (45.34)
11. Cats on Fire – Born Again Christian (49.47)
12. Yann Tiersen – Ginette (57.21)
13. Air – Alpha Beta Gaga (61.44)
14. The Raveonettes – That Great Love Sound (70.33)
15. Die Ärzte – Quark (73.41)
16. Bettie Serveert – I’ll Keep it With Mine (77.19)
17. Snake & Jet’s Amazing Bullit Band – Doom City (82.46)
18. Röyksopp – Remind Me (87.36)
19. Sigur Rós – Untitled (Álafoss) (90.50)
20. Snapline – S2 (102.59)

And here are a couple of songs which didn’t quite make the cut:
Teitur – We Still Drink the Same Water
The Teenagers – French Kiss
The Raveonettes – Here Comes Mary
Blood Music – Eagles in the Water
Hello Saferide – If I Don’t Write This Song Someone I Love Will Die
Tafra – I’m Sorry Brakne-Hoby

Epic indie rock.  Epic indie rock that is very good.  And that, my friends, is about it.  I have two songs by A Classic Education which they have kindly sent me to pass on to you lovely people, but apart from some very basic facts I know nothing else about them whatsoever.  Here’s what I know:

1. They sound a little bit like Band of Horses at times, but without the Americana flavours.
2. They appear to be quite good pals with Jeremy Warmsley who wrote the superb song Dirty Blue Jeans last year.
3. They’re from Italy, although Johnathan Clancy is the name of the chap who wrote to me and that sounds suspiciously English.
4. I think they may be looking for a label actually, and seem to have a ready-made 7″ ready to go.  This sounds like a bit of an opportunity for someone as I reckon the songs they sent should go down well with an inde 7″-buying audience.
5. They’ll be playing Twee as Fuck in London on the 11th April.  Londoners: worth making an effort for I’d say.

What can I say?  The music’s quite dark and broody, and there’s an unironic, honestly-ambitious quality to the sound which I find myself enjoying.  People who cover their artistic insecurities with layers of protective irony are starting to get on my tits a bit and I don’t hear any of that here – a bit like The Twilight Sad in that sense, although the music is not at all alike.

Either way, I like what I hear from these fellas so have a listen and say hello if you can.

A Classic Education – Stay, Son
A Classic Education – Lover’s Barricade

website | myspace | hype