Massive Champion is the highly anticipated new album from Bristol’s Getdown Services, via Breakfast Records. Massive Champion and has genuinely irresistible thirteen tracks. An odyssey of anarchic joy, seditious wit and boundless energy, the album finds Josh Law and Ben Sadler pushing deeper into the singular world they have been building for years, while opening up new emotional and lyrical ground. Written in green rooms, on long car journeys and in the gaps between relentless touring, it stands as their boldest and most expansive statement to date, an ode to childhood, British cultural detritus and the absurd poetry of everyday life, distilling everything that has made Getdown Services one of the most exhilarating and unpredictable bands around. In the band’s words it is “about self pity and realising that maybe all of the healing your inner child stuff you hear about isn’t actually total bollocks. Musically and lyrically I think it’s about us trying to clean up our act a bit.” New single ‘I Can’t Die Like That’ provides the second taste of the album and is the kind of instant earworm built for festival crowds. Wildly infectious, it is quintessential Getdown Services, pairing huge hooks with the band’s perceptive and poignant lyricism. As the band explain, “‘I Can’t Die Like That’ is about the feeling of simple things becoming complicated. We thought it was interesting to think about the ways in which something as straightforward as dying can be difficult. It’s also about clinging on to feelings that comfort you but aren’t necessarily healthy.” Like much of Massive Champion, it finds catharsis in contradiction, meeting often heavy subject matter with both candour and humour. A triumph of hard work and the grassroots scene, Getdown Services jokingly coined themselves Britain’s Best Band. With Massive Champion, it feels less like a punchline and more like a statement of intent. As their audience continues to grow exponentially both at home and across the world, they look every bit on a fast track to becoming one of the country’s biggest and most vital bands. Joyous and utterly singular, Massive Champion feels set to soundtrack the year ahead and, very likely, many more to come.
