American Punk band, State Champs, have already played Belfast and Dublin and next on their list was the Liverpool o2 Academy. I must admit to not knowing much about the band but on listening to some of their tracks online I was hopeful that the sound produced on there would work live on stage. I was not about to be disappointed.
From the first moments on stage their enthusiasm and spirit shone through. There is something very accessible about the band which you don’t find in some other groups of this genre. And with the release of their new album, ‘Around the World and back’ and obviously their 2013 album ‘Finer Things’ , they have plenty of material to play with.
Their setlist, obviously focused a lot on the new album, but like any great band they mixed this up with tracks from Finer Things . Tracks like “Prepare To Be Noticed”, “Hard To Please” had the crowd jumping with glee with plenty of head bopping and fist pumping.
The gig had it all. High’s, lows, melancholy and over all, a sense of abandonment and fun.
Although most of State Champs’ fan base is very young the band manage to transcend their music to all ages and this was reflected in the audience with young and old both enjoying the show and if a band can manage to bring people together and make them happy then they must be doing something right.