State Champs - Around The World And Back (Album Review)

I've been pretty fond of State Champs for a while. I enjoyed their EPs and thought their debut album, The Finer Things, was pretty good. I didn't think it was anything groundbreaking, but the band had a lot going for them with solid vocals, good pop/punk songwriting, and the release of their the album on a pretty buzzing pop/punk label, Purenoise. Since that album the band has been out building a bigger fan base, they landed a tour with major label machine pop/punk heartthrobs 5 Seconds Of Summer, and they seemed to have most everything going for them leading up to this new album, Around The World And Back

This is a super clean sounding pop/punk album that leans really heavily towards just being straight pop/rock. It's not so clean that it loses all of that rock feel. The guitars have some nice loudness to them and although they do sound clean, they give the album an overall heavy fast upbeat feel. The drums also sound pretty fantastic on this album. I feel like this sounds like a little of the punkier side of The Starting Line mixed with Yellowcard and cleaned up really nicely. Lead singer Derek DiScanio channels his inner Kenny Vasoli on "Secrets". He also has very Ryan Key-ish sounding vocals when he sings on the chorus of the song. Due to comparisons like these that keep popping up in my mind throughout various songs I don't think Derek DiScanio necessarily has the most standout voice in pop/punk, but he has an insanely good voice. His vocal strength benefits this album on basically every song. His vocals are really enjoyable and ear pleasing and I think he might sound the best he ever has on a recorded project. His performance is a big highlight of the album. Ansley Newman duets with DiScanio on the title track and it's a good song. It's your go to somber, more acoustic based pop/punk song on the album. It's neat to hear this band do a duet. I think they pull it off pretty well. It's definitely a good vocal pairing. I really like that they placed this song near the end but followed it up with two more rockers after. "Tooth And Nail" ends the album pretty solidly. It has some heavy riffs, nice build-ups throughout the song, and I think it's one of the better songs on the album. This album starts and ends pretty solidly as I think both the opener and closer are really good songs and two of my favorites on the album.

Overall, I'm liking this. In some ways I wanted this band to stick out a little more from the pack on this album than they did on their debut album. I'm not sure this album does that. I think this album surprises me at how good it is while being just a tad bit underwhelming. They do step up their songwriting and performance from the first album. I think this is a more solid album. What it does accomplish is continuing to improve the already solid foundation this band has. Everything on this album is performed pretty well. Everything sounds really good. The production is very nice. It doesn't have some of those pesky production issues that riddled fellow pop/punkers Knuckle Puck on their debut album, Copacetic. I'd probably recommend this to somebody who enjoyed albums like Yellowcard's Ocean Avenue, The Starting Line's Say It Like You Mean It, or All Time Low's So Wrong It's Right. Check it out; there are quite a few good songs on this one. I wouldn't be surprised if this continued to grow on me.