Last fall, State Champs went on a spiritual quest to Joshua Tree. At least, that’s how lead singer Derek DiScanio, 31, describes the pop-punk band’s trip there to start work on their new album. “We took a week, and we just had a little team bonding,” he says over a Zoom call from his place in Studio City, Los Angeles. “Joshua Tree is the place where everyone goes and centers themselves and detaches from the real world.”
“Oh, you don’t have to beat around the bush,” bassist Ryan Scott Graham, 34, interjects. “We wanted to take some mushrooms and see what would happen!”
They can’t help but burst into laughter. “Yeah, we did that,” DiScanio admits. “It made us laugh, it made us decompress, and it made us feel like we were just kids at a sleepover.”
The trip started as a logistical first step in the recording process for an Albany-bred band that is now scattered across the U.S. While DiScanio and Scott Graham hold the State Champs fort down in L.A., guitarist Tyler Szalkowski is based out of Columbus, Ohio, and bassist Evan Ambrosio lives in Connecticut. But it turned out to be more than just an opportunity to record and practice together. Through campfires, group trips to the grocery store, pasta dinners, and some hallucinogens, the band reconnected and started to make their fifth LP in a makeshift studio that producer Chris Miller built at their rental house. “It was really to be like, ‘Let’s remember why we do this. Let’s hang out. Let’s actually spend time together,” Graham says. “Let’s glue ourselves back together and make a fun record where it shows how much we’re connected, it shows how much we love each other and how much we want to be doing this.”
This ethos is at the center of State Champs, the self-titled album they’ll release Nov. 8 via Pure Noise Records. After more than a decade making music, the band decided to use their latest record as a defining statement for their career thus far. “This is what State Champs is,” DiScanio says. “It covers all of our eras.”
State Champs has experienced a lot of eras in its decade-plus existence. Founded in 2010 by DiScanio and Szalkowski, an early version of their lineup quickly hit the touring circuit to play their high-powered EPs, and they signed to Pure Noise two years later. In 2013, their stellar debut, The Finer Things, secured their footing as new champions of the pop-punk fourth wave that flooded East Coast basements at the time. The album reached the Billboard 200, peaking at 132, and propelled State Champs to main-stage status at Warped Tour. By 2015, they were opening for All Time Low and 5 Seconds of Summer before following up their debut with the excellent Around the World and Back.
Since then, they’ve released two more LPs (2018’s Living Proof and 2022’s Kings of the New Age) and worked with scene legends like Simple Plan and Mark Hoppus. But State Champs’ greatest achievement is how they’ve stayed at the top of their game, making music that lodges itself into your brain with its clever, convincing mix of pop hooks and gritty guitars.
On their new album, they aim to keep that winning streak. “It sounds like our older stuff, but the production and the songwriting style is above everything else that we’ve ever done,” DiScanio says, adding, “That was the whole point of this record — cover everything that we’ve done, but do it at the best tier that we’ve been able to.”
Songs like “Save Face Story” and the album-opening “Tight Grip” emulate early State Champs favorites “Elevated” and “Critical” with chugging guitars and DiScanio’s signature rasp. Meanwhile, “Light Blue” and single “Silver Cloud” incorporate the pop-leaning focus of the 2022 anthem “Everybody But You.” Even though songs harken back to their old work, it never sounds recycled. Instead, State Champs continue to grow upon what has worked for the band by sharpening their skills and turning to new producers.
It took some convincing to manage this feat. DiScanio reveals that the self-titled LP originally started as a four-song EP meant to satiate fans between albums, and give the band some new material to hit the road with. “We didn’t know what we were going to call it, there wasn’t much intention behind it,” he says. But when State Champs opened for Boys Like Girls on their fall 2023 tour, the headliners’ lead singer, Martin Johnson, convinced them otherwise. “He was like, ‘Do you love the songs? Are you excited about them? Nobody cares about EPs anymore. Get back in the studio and make a full record,’” DiScanio recalls. Less than a month after the tour wrapped, State Champs were taking mushrooms in Joshua Tree.
The members of the band note that their lives look different now in their thirties than they did a decade ago.“This whole record was like the growing pains,” Graham says. “As we get older and people are starting to have families or getting married and whatnot, priorities look differently.” For this album, the band had to deal with that shift and find the answer to “how do you continue to be in a band when everybody’s day-to-day life looks different,” as Graham puts it.
The goal of honoring their past work while thinking toward State Champs’ future comes through on nostalgic number “Golden Years” and standout single “Too Late to Say.” Both tracks show a new vulnerability for DiScanio as he explores his loneliness and figures out his own priorities. “I’ve tried to pour emotions out, and every record Ryan’s got me to do a little bit more and more and more while adding his own relatability to it,” he says.
“It makes me proud,” Graham tells DiScanio. “I feel like you can see the emotional growth of you as a human being,” he adds, continuing, “It made my job easier because I was like, ‘Oh, you’re giving me some stuff to work with here,’ rather than me having to pull it out of you.” Since joining the band in 2013, Graham has continued to play a bigger role in shaping State Champs’ lyrics. He and DiScanio have settled into a songwriting dynamic that’s reminiscent in some ways of Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz: Graham’s role as a bassist with a penchant for clarity and grit helps shape DiScanio’s impeccable melodies and one-liners into full-throttle anthems with enough emotional jolt to hit you as hard as a mosh pit punch to the face.
As they level up their craft, State Champs continue to stand apart for what DiScanio calls their “thriving determination.” It’s especially noteworthy for a scene where so many bands have burnt out or continue to complacently chase their past glories. They’d love to get as big as their heroes, Paramore, or even work with them on a project. “It was never even a goal of ours to put out five albums,” DiScanio says, “It was taking it one step at a time while also adding goals every step along the way.”
On their long list of goals, State Champs hope to headline festivals, finally tour South America (maybe even make a song in Spanish), perform a late night TV slot, and hopefully launch an Eras Tour of their own soon. DiScanio sums up the point of their winning philosophy best: “If you don’t have those goals and you don’t add to the bucket list, then what are you really doing it for?”
