As the second EP by Chicago pop-punk trio Four Stars – formerly known as Tougher Than You Thought – ‘Headspace’ isn’t just a brave attempt at overcoming the “sophomore slump”. It’s an attempt at returning a genre that has found itself rapidly evolving – incorporating the kind of electronic elements that have weaved their way into rock – to a more old-school, almost low-fi state. Undeniably, aggressively 2000s (somewhere, Tony Hawk looks wistfully at a copy of Pro Skater 3 and smiles), Four Stars have created the soundtrack to seeing your first crush again ten years later: more mature, more experienced, but still the same under layers of growth, and it’s both for the better and worse.
Indeed, this is the kind of EP that a label like Columbia would have foamed at the mouth to have, as the Chicago outfit have managed to encapsulate that old school pop-punk tone to a tee. There’s a tremendous wave of nostalgia through the four tracks as they harken back to the sounds of classics like Jimmy Eat World. ‘Alacrity’, the first single from the EP, is your seminal pop-punk anthem: feel good, lighthearted, but honest. ‘Colour Inside’, however, feels like its opposite: a sharper, darker entry, where the band plays it a little bit more by ear. It’s less classically punk and more homebrew, a strong example of Four Stars being able to develop their own sounds and style as they continue to grow as musicians.
‘Small Hands, Small Spaces’, a slower, lyrically driven piece and perhaps the best of the four, seems to echo the sounds of Harvey Danger circa ‘Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?’, and it plays beautifully alongside the other heavier tracks as a point of respite and reflection. This serenity is thrown out for a speedfreak finish in, ironically, ‘Serenity’, with tinges of prog-rock and emo injected into the riffs that front man and vocalist Aida Ahmed confidently struts over.
This all means, however, that try as it might, ‘Headspace’ still suffers from some of the failings of the genre: lack of sonic diversity, and a limited range in instrumentation that can sometimes lead the record to drift into genericism. The shorter length of an EP doesn’t do the group any favours either, as there’s not a lot of room to expand on their sound beyond the four songs. It’s fortunate then, that ‘Headspace’ balances this out by leaning towards the better side of the genre; lighthearted and fun when it fancies, but colder and emotionally baring when it needs to be.
Should Four Stars have stumbled in the production or songwriting of their latest release, these issues would have proved damning for the EP – but as it stands, they are simply minor blemishes on an otherwise solid remembrance of the punk days of old, niggling issues that hopefully can be ironed out through growth and refinement for a full length record (and hopefully, an LP is somewhere on the horizon). It takes a lot of charisma to pull off a solid pop-punk release in 2020. Luckily Four Stars have it in spades.
FIACHRA JOHNSTON