New York pop-punk band State Champs’ self-titled album is one fans of the genre have heard before — a band musing about awkward interactions at parties, overthinking their romantic relationships and scorning the mundane. Across 12 tracks, the album is charming, but unchallenging.
Typically, when an artist chooses to name an album after themselves, they’re communicating something — that this is their most definitive work, the release they most identify with. In the case of State Champs, the album released 14 years into their career stays true to the angsty identity they established in their early music, while expressing a reluctance to branch into something more.
In a collective statement, the band described the record as embodying all of State Champs’ discography, and it’s true. The new album’s tracks could belong to their debut EP in 2010 or their last album, 2022’s “Kings of the New Age.” There’s something to be said for consistency, but overwhelmingly, their matured pop-punk coupled with risk aversion leans more into the safety of pop territory than punk.
A good example of this is the first song, “The Constant,” all peppy drums, sultry guitars and punctuating tambourines; it launches into an energy that is carried throughout the record. The instrumentals are edgy, but the lyrics are surface level. “Do you think I deserve this/Keeping me in the dark/While you got what you wanted," frontman Derek DiScanio sings.
He declares a similar thesis five songs in at “Too Late to Say,” over drum-heavy production: “When there’s a good thing coming/I turn around instead/I’m getting good at ignoring it."
Influences from iconic bands in the genre like All Time Low and Blink-182 are heard throughout. Lyrics are generic and universal, avoiding any real controversy. Even profanities are meticulously placed to be affectual and nonthreatening — even more reserved than what you’d find on an Olivia Rodrigo record.
Across the album, State Champs wrestle with self-doubt. It takes on a few forms. On “Just a Dream” and the closer “Golden Years,” the band is stuck on the past, unsure of the future. “'Cause now it takes everything in me/Putting the past up on a shelf/And falling in love with something else,” DiScanio sings on the latter track.
But there are standouts, like the palm-muted power chords of “Clueless,” driving bass of “Light Blue” and the explosive, lovesick brooding and gang vocals of “Save Face Story." They’re not reinventing the wheel here, but in those moments, their customariness works.
Overall, State Champ’s eponymous album colors comfortably within pop-punk’s lines, choosing familiarity over experimentation. It makes for a predictable but enjoyable album, evoking the image of a suburban house party or while practicing tricks at the skatepark.
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This cove image released by Pure Noise Records shows the self-titled album for State Champs. (Pure Noise Records via AP)
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — The United Nations' annual climate talks pushed into overtime Saturday under a cloud of anger and disappointment as negotiators were well short of a deal on money for developing nations to curb and adapt to climate change.
A draft of the final agreement Friday pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal of $100 billion set 15 years ago but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed. Through the early hours of Saturday morning, The Associated Press saw lead negotiators from the European Union, the United States and other nations going through the empty halls from meeting to meeting as delegates tried to hash out a new version of the deal.
“We're still working hard,” U.S. climate envoy John Podesta told the AP past 4 a.m. local time. And by late Saturday morning, he and other delegations said talks on a new deal were still ongoing.
Alden Meyer, of the European think tank E3G, said negotiators now have very little room for error.
“They’ve got to make sure whatever they put on the table is something that can fly. ... Because otherwise we start to lose critical mass as ministers start to leave tonight and into tomorrow,” Meyer said. “So, they are under a deadline, but this is when it gets real.”
The climate talks, called COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, were scheduled to end Friday. Workers have already begun dismantling the venue for the talks.
Wealthy nations are obligated to help vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015. Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy.
Representatives of some of the nations that are obliged to contribute the cash said the $250 billion climate finance figure is realistic and reflects their limits at a time when their own economies are stretched.
But on Saturday morning, Irish environment minister Eamon Ryan said that he felt there'll be a new number in the next draft.
"We’ll have to see what the final number is. I don’t think it’ll be the one initially published yesterday," Ryan said. “But it’s not just that number — it's how do you get to 1.3 trillion."
Ryan said that any number reached at the COP will have to be supplemented with other sources of finance, for example through a market for carbon emissions where polluters would pay to offset what they emit.
The amount in any deal reached at COP negotiations — often considered a “core” — will then be mobilized or leveraged for greater climate spending. But much of that means loans for countries drowning in debt.
“We have to get agreement quickly. And I hope and believe we can,” Ryan said.
Vulnerable nations, many already battered by extreme weather made worse largely by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels they've had little to do with were angered by the draft text published on Friday.
“Developed countries must commit trillions, not empty promises," said Harjeet Singh, Director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. "Anything less makes them squarely responsible for the failure of these talks and the betrayal of billions across the globe.”
Meyer of E3G said it’s still up in the air whether a deal will come out of Baku at all.
“It is still not out of the question that there could be an inability to close the gap on the finance issue,” he said. “That obviously is not an ideal scenario.”
Several dozen activists marched in silence outside the halls where delegates meet late Friday, raising and crossing their arms in front of themselves to indicate rejection of the draft text.
Also late Friday, 355 civil society organizations released a letter in support of the G77 and China negotiating group’s rejection of the latest draft.
The letter urged negotiators to “stand up for the people of the Global South," saying that “no deal in Baku is better than a bad deal.”
Lidy Nacpil, a Filipino coordinator with the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, said activists would still be unhappy if the climate finance number doubles to $500 billion.
“We’re still at this point where we are asking developing countries to stay strong and not just give in to far, far less than what should be,” she said.
With bleary eyes, seated around cold pizza, a group of youth activists chatted to keep each other awake through the early hours of Saturday in one of the main halls of the venue.
“All of us are kind of in mourning in a way,” said Jessica Dunne, with the Alliance of Non-Governmental Radical Youth. But the group said being in community eases the painful emotions that come with a process Dunne called an “abject failure.”
“In these halls tonight, as we’re sitting here and we’re talking and we’re dancing and crying and laughing, it kind of gives you hope that there will be another day that we’re going to fight for,” she said.
Associated Press journalists Ahmed Hatem, Aleksandar Furtula and Joshua A. Bickel contributed to this report.
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Marina Silva, Brazil environment minister, stands near a sign for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
John Podesta, U.S. climate envoy, center right, and U.S. Deputy Climate Envoy Sue Biniaz, center, walk outside the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
A member of security stands with the Baku Olympic Stadium in the background during the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Attendees pull luggage as they walk into the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Australia Climate Minister Chris Bowen, center, walks through a hallway at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
U.S. Deputy Climate Envoy Sue Biniaz, right, and Wopke Hoekstra, EU climate commissioner, second from right, walk out of an elevator during the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
John Podesta, U.S. climate envoy, right, walks through the hallways of the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
People sleep in the Chinese delegation offices at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
Activists demonstrate in silence protesting a draft of a proposed deal for curbing climate change at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
