REVIEW: State Champs – ‘The Acoustic Things’ EP

Artist: State Champs
Title: The Acoustic Things EP
Label: Pure Noise Records
Genre: Acoustic Pop-Punk

After every solid full-band release comes an internal, unspoken desire for an entirely acoustic follow-up of said solid full-band release. The whole “how could this have sounded differently?” mindset comes to play within the corners of the non-audio engineer’s brain. Whether or not this is actually executed (and executed well, at that) is only a matter of the band’s ability to deliver the same solid content without the help of aggressive percussions and tasteful bass guitar riffs; two of the key elements to a good pop-punk effort.

Insert a good amount of grinning right about here. Thank the heavens State Champs followed through on this one. Their upcoming seven-track The Acoustic Things EP, which is the successor to their Billboard spot-snagging debut record, The Finer Things, served as a very good buffer while the band is in the midst of touring and working things out for LP #2.

Arguably one of the best tracks on The Finer Things, a completely acoustic version of “Elevated” also opened this EP. Lead singer Derek Descanio did not hold back at all in terms of his vocal performance. He sang with the same Melismatic grunting here as he did for the full-band record, allowing listeners to identify and appreciate the same material in an almost entirely different light.

“Deadly Conversation” and “Hard to Please” feature the same sonic elements with more pretty harmonies layered onto almost every line, while “Simple Enough” sought out a little more percussion with some tambourines and the occasional shaker, proving that it really isn’t possible to make good acoustic jams completely percussion-less.

Even the last minute and a half of my personal favorite track for both this and TFT, “Easy Enough,” where Descanio sings a cappella, was a great moment. This only says that you can never go wrong with powerful vocal performances. This track was the best ending for The Finer Things, so seeing that it was third to last on this EP was pretty surprising and made me look forward to the rest.

“Leave You In The Dark” is one of the two tracks they put out solely for this EP. This was a bit less in-your-face, although not all that different from the rest of the record, but probably one of their catalogue’s least energetic tracks to date, making it perfect for this EP. The other original was the EP’s closer. Generally pretty fluorescent-sounding, “If I’m Lucky,” which ended with a very mellow “Hello, Sunshine…” was a lot less combative and more lovey-dovey compared to the other tracks, both lyrically and sonically, closing out the EP on a very positive note.

State Champs will most definitely please most–if not all–of their fans and win over most of their critics with this one. Angsty vocals stapled onto pretty instrumentation and good harmonies are significantly high up on the list of The Finer Things in life, after all.

SCORE: 9/10
Review written by Dana Reandelar

Dana Reandelar
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