Southport – Armchair Supporters (Boss Tuneage Records)
England’s Southport features members of prominent English punk band Snuff, but you’d never know it by listening to them. Armchair Supporters shows a diversity of range in songwriting styles that Snuff may never have demonstrated. Simon Wells, lead singer and guitar player for Southport, has taken a decidedly slower route with his new band. To trace his work from one band to another might call up comparisons to Blake Schwarzenbach’s songwriting style as he went from Jawbreaker to Jets to Brazil. Whether that is a positive or negative association will probably depend on the listener.
Southport – Armchair Supporters (Boss Tuneage Records)
England’s Southport features members of prominent English punk band Snuff, but you’d never know it by listening to them. Armchair Supporters shows a diversity of range in songwriting styles that Snuff may never have demonstrated. Simon Wells, lead singer and guitar player for Southport, has taken a decidedly slower route with his new band. To trace his work from one band to another might call up comparisons to Blake Schwarzenbach’s songwriting style as he went from Jawbreaker to Jets to Brazil. Whether that is a positive or negative association will probably depend on the listener.
Musically, Armchair Supporters sounds a bit like early Cursive and Lemuria, with tons of muddy, lo-fi guitars and punchy bass riffs. The vocals remind me of the Police. The songwriting is diverse in style, sometimes to a bit of a fault—most of these songs are fantastic, but there are a few moments, including a wildly out of place instrumental song, that feel like filler/less careful songwriting than on the album’s high points. The good songs are really good, however, and manage to make the lower points more bearable. “Tighten Up” and “Edge of Something” come in around the middle of the album, and both are fantastic pop-punk songs—full of great vocal melodies and riffs that keep you guessing and tapping your feet.
At times, Armchair Supporters feels a bit too long. It clocks in at thirteen songs and is nearly forty minutes long. If it had ten or eleven songs on it, and came in at closer to thirty minutes in length, it would be close to perfect. As it is, it’s worth multiple listens, if a little bit long-winded.
