ALBUM REVIEW: State Champs – ‘State Champs’

Here’s a notion that really needs to be coined—‘pop-punk privilege’. Essentially, it’s the idea that pop-punk bands will be viewed on a more lenient grading curve, based on the belief that their output doesn’t need to impress, but feel easy and good to listen to, and that’s treated as enough of a reason to keep an eye on them. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s always applicable somewhere. More than most, though, you’ll find it in the world of first-half-of-the-2010s breakouts, in that moment of pop-punk where everyone was pegged for a king-making album with no thought of future sustainability. But because they were all ‘good enough’, they’ve been deigned continued attention long past their peak. Like, we don’t need to treat a new Knuckle Puck or Seaway album like they’re a big deal, but it’ll happen anyway.

So what of State Champs in all this, a band with proven longevity past the aforementioned? Could they not simply just be a better band? Well, yeah, they are, but they also might be the most lucrative beneficiaries of the whole ‘pop-punk privilege’ infrastructure. 2013’s The Finer Things was undeniable; it’s a modern classic, a borderline flawless representation of what pop-punk of the era could be when tuned up and overloaded with melody. But with Around The World And Back a couple of years later, they got a lot poppier and smoother in ways that its predecessor avoided, and saw no significant repercussions for it. If anything, they only got bigger, due to a cache of choruses made all the more palatable. And that’s what State Champs have been riding off the back of for years—a keen ear for a hook, in a fashion that’s handily supplanted what could’ve been easily scene-warping at the beginning.

Now, that isn’t automatically a bad thing. If anything, State Champs have made a startling good go at working it in their favour, to where 2022’s Kings Of The New Age had a good deal more worth remembering that you might’ve predicted. But pan out a bit further, and you’ll notice that’s all they’ve got. And when you pan further than that to see how robust their safety net has become, where any notion of ‘make-or-break’ is off the table entirely…well, you kinda want some stakes left in your music, right? It’s not a shock that the State Champs album their self-titled most closely pairs with is Living Proof, the 2018 effort with nary a memorable quality to it, and by far the most deflated this band have ever felt. And here it is again, twinged with the sourness of knowing that they’re just allowed to get away with this now.

It’s here where it’s worth looking at the weight on that word ‘privilege’. In many contexts, it’s not a word that people take too kindly to, often seeing it as admonition or hostility, or outright blame. The truth is, there’s nothing inherently bad about privilege, if it’s used in a beneficial way. So does that sound like the case on an album that most frequently circles around being good ‘enough’, or catchy ‘enough’? Not to accuse State Champs of laziness or anything, but this is far from their most bracing work by any stretch. You can tell from how they’re unable to cover up the lack of ideas, and how much weaker the punches thrown can be. Opener The Constant is presumably supposed to have this thundering chorus that just ends up stumpy and slow. Later on, Hell Of It feels more staid than its big, whirling romance wants to inspire, and Tight Grip is shrunken and clipped in the way that many of mgk’s pop-punk forays were.

Suffice to say, in terms of flashbang hits that would define the modern pop-punk canon, State Champs’ self-titled is sorely lacking compared to what came before. To be fair, the high points are here, but only in patches, as opposed to a whole album’s worth that came from the debut. And even put up to usual standards, they’ve not exactly been refreshed in any significant way. If you take Clueless—which has probably the best hook on the whole album—the whole ‘awkward meet-cute’ throughline pre-dates State Champs’ existence by at least a few decades. But for the battery-farmed shout-alongs that are expected of State Champs nowadays, it does the job pretty effectively, as do Silver Cloud and Light Blue.

It’s the necessary mindset with which to experience this album, after all, not expecting much more to come from it. To that extent, you can’t really argue. It’s modern pop-punk, at the end of the day, and State Champs’ brand of it always has and always will serve as an infallible soundtrack to Americanised fantasies of summer at the beach / skatepark / inaccessible, presumably overpriced Warped Tour revival. The bounce and polish are there in droves, in perfect alignment with their genre peers and expectations. Listen closely to Too Late To Say and you might even hear some modern blink-182-isms on the go (or, just listen at all; they’re really obvious to spot).

That’s all to say to it’s a serviceable enough album in practically every sense to avoid being awful, or anything equally hyperbolic. Five albums in, State Champs clearly have their formula on lock, and it is generally working. Derek DiScanio remains their strongest soldier with a voice that projects the last thread they have to true punk, and even if there’s not a song or beat that can match—the sliver of double-time drums on Just A Dream are more awkward now than they were even a decade ago—at least they’re still as good as ever. It’s a small consolation on an album that’s hardly brimming with the vivacity that formerly characterised State Champs, no matter how much they want to reverse-engineer that. This wants to be a pop-punk tour de force, just like the old days, only said force rarely materialises in its favour. Hell, the one truly distinct moment—uncharacteristically so, even—doesn’t even belong to State Champs, where it’s not only a blindside that they know Slope exist, but are willing to have them collab on Save Face Story.

In other words, the only time that State Champs aren’t hogging the direct middle of the road is when they hand it off to someone else to deal with. Doesn’t really sound like a band once pegged to spearhead their entire genre, does it? Not to harp on that point too much, but you really only need to put this album next to The Finer Things, and the downgrade is blatant, made all the worse by the inevitable enablement of it all. State Champs are capable of much more than an album that’s just okay, and avoiding that because you can get away with it only makes any stagnation feel so much more chronic. Compared to what came before, this feels like a letdown when it has no right or reason to be. Even if State Champs don’t want to show it, you should still believe it—they can do much more than this.

For fans of: Neck Deep, blink-182, All Time Low

‘State Champs’ by State Champs is released on 8th November on Pure Noise Records.

Words by Luke Nuttall