State Champion Rekindles Independent Alt-Country

State Champion, an alt-country quartet with members flung between Louisville and Chicago, isn’t exactly a new band. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Ryan Davis, drummer Sal Cassato, bassist Mikie Poland, and violinist Sabrina Rush formed the band more than 10 years ago while still in art school. Since then, they’ve released four LPs and collaborated with such esteemed voices as Edith Frost and Freakwater’s Catherine Irwin, as well as folk rock luminary Angel Olsen. But even with fans like The Silver Jews’ David Berman and The Black Swans’ Jerry David Decicca, the band with the difficult-to-Google name seems to have slipped past much major press or recognition, making Send Flowers feel like a debut and State Champion a band on the cusp.

In some ways, Send Flowers does encapsulate some firsts. Its seven tracks — all ranging between four and seven-minutes — sound more restrained and contemplative compared to State Champion’s last album, 2015’s Fantasy Error, and even earlier work. In particular, Davis places more emphasis on his vocals — often winding slow and low melodic passages above his rhythm guitar work — instead of the punkier yelps of younger selves.

His singing and nearly spoken word soliloquies direct attention to the stories on Send Flowers, too. Like Pinegrove’s penchant for SAT vocabulary and free verse structures, Davis spins vivid, if sometimes non sequitur tales of Middle America, working class struggles, loneliness, and more, full of references to actors like Jeff Foxworthy (“Lifetime Sentence”), painters like Mondrian (“Death Preferences”), and scientists like Einstein (“When I Come Through”) that require multiple listens and readings of the liner notes. Yet, on the closing “Stonehenge Blues Band Blues,” he shows how can be cuttingly blunt he can be, too, especially in the context of a changing Americana scene: “What happened to all those country boys / The honky-tonks are full of boneheads / The art museums are filled with noise.”

As a band that still books van tours as frugally as possible and plays warehouse gigs for suggested donations, Send Flowers definitely captures some of that DIY sound and ethos prevalent in fringe musical communities and mythologized by early cowpunk and alt-country. Right from the opening track “My Over, My Under,” amps start to hiss as distorted guitars grumble and grate. Poland carries the opening track and rips out a bass outro on “Lifetime Sentence.” Cassato shows his ability to flip from pounding toms to stuttering snare rolls in the span of a one of Davis’ narrative whims. But only when Rush turns up the volume on her fiddle — alternately making it weep or drone — and when guest musician Christopher May’s adds his ethereal, lonesome pedal steel playing, does Send Flowers reach its alt-country peak.

By leaning into the brashier methods that DIY and punk bands often rely on for production, distribution, and gigging, State Champion defiantly stands apart from much of the Americana scene today. Even sonically they’re somewhat outliers, as The Magnolia Electric Co., a group whose last recording came in 2009, might be the band’s closest comparison (fitting, too, considering State Champion recorded Send Flowers in late frontman Jason Molina’s adopted hometown of Bloomington, Indiana). Luckily, State Champion sounds just like itself — a benchmark for fiercely independent alt-country’s potential in these fraught times.