State Champs nod to their heroes in new album, 'Around The World And Back'
State Champs
Around The World And Back
After breaking through with 2013’s The Finer Things (which featured arguably the year’s best pop-punk song in “Elevated”), the 5 Seconds Of Summer-approved quintet have quietly expanded their taut brand of hooky pop punk on their sophomore album while offering nods to their heroes. “Losing Myself” smacks of A Day To Remember’s poppier side, while “All Or Nothing” is cut from the same cloth as Valencia’s supremely underrated We All Need A Reason To Believe. But the group put enough spin on the source material to make these songs their own. Even the title track—an acoustic ballad that could have very easily been sunk by overwrought emotion—gets a new level of nuance and polish here thanks to songwriting skills that are certainly a few notches more developed than many bands their senior. (PURE NOISE; purenoiserecords.com) Evan Lucy
GO DOWNLOAD: “All Or Nothing”
Pure Noise http://purenoiserecords.com
