Sounds Like Summer: Stateside Deliver On Debut Album

ALBUM REVIEW | Stateside – Where You Found Me by Craig Harston

Summer is finally upon us. The days are getting warmer, the nights are getting shorter and it’s the perfect time to bust out the summery music – and there’s no music more summery than pop punk! California’s Stateside know this all too well and they’ve delivered one of the sunniest pop punk albums of the year (so far) with their debut album ‘Where You Found Me‘.

Following in the footsteps of bands like New Found Glory, Four Year Strong and Knuckle Puck, Stateside have an aggressive edge to their sound, mixing hardcore structures with the more melodic sound of pop punk, and this is found across all ten tracks here. ‘Heads Up Big Guy‘ gets things off to an upbeat start with an excellent beefy riff throughout the song and is quickly followed by the more melodic ‘Stay Sweet‘ (which features Knuckle Puck’s Joe Taylor joining on vocals) with it’s nostalgic lyrics (“Sometimes I wish I could go back to when I was sixteen, just me and my burnt CD of Siamese Dream”). Stateside‘s heavier side is at the forefront on ‘Vista Verde (So Far So Good), all aggressive guitars alongside lyrics that lament the loss of a loved one who’s no longer around with sped up choruses and ‘metalcore’ backing vocals.

This lamentation is carried over into subsequent tracks ‘The End’s Not Near It’s Hear‘, which focuses on a relationship that’s clearly already ended but both party’s are hanging on as they’re not ready to move on, ‘Like A Rosary‘, which is a layered emo song with slightly muted vocals and reminiscences on not having the right words to say good bye, and ‘Bitter Spring‘, all about the struggles with moving on while the world continues to move around you (“Sitting in my room, spiraling thoughts of you, this bitter spring that’s coming soon, these times I just won’t forget you”).

Elsewhere, ‘California Calls You Home‘ flips the trope of pop punk bands wanting to leave their hometown on it’s head and is a love letter to the state Stateside call home as well as being the summeriest song on the album, ‘Aly’s Song‘ is a superfast song that documents a possessive relationship and ‘Mile Marker‘ closes out the album in a melodic and hopeful fashion. Of course, it wouldn’t be a true pop punk album without a ballad and ‘Where You Found Me‘ has this covered with ‘On A Clear Day You Can See Forever‘ with it’s soaring guitars and introspective lyrics.

Stateside have put together a very strong debut – it’s a well paced album that flows naturally and as well as the songs being great they consistently show they’re absolute masters of bridges and break downs!

‘Where You Found Me‘ is out now via Pure Noise Records and available to purchase here https://www.purenoisestoreuk.com/collections/stateside/products/stateside-where-you-found-me-various-green-smoke-lp