originally published: 07/03/2022
Vancouver, BC pop-punks Chief State have released their debut full-length 'Waiting For Your Colours.' The follow-up to the band's 2021 stand-alone single "Metaphors" and 2020 breakthrough EP 'Tough Love,' 'Waiting For Your Colours' is the culmination of 5 years of relentless hustle (not to mention a boatload of blood, sweat, and tears).
The journey to get here began with frontman Fraser Simpson, who at an impasse in his life, decided on a whim to leave his home in the UK for Japan in 2014 and eventually move to North America to form a band via Craigslist, where he connected with Nik Pang, Chloe Kavanagh, Justin Pham and Joseph Soderholm to create Chief State.
Uncertainty, longing, a search for meaning, and assessing life choices make up the themes on the new album, which chronicles closing out your 20s at a crossroads and examining where we belong, our place in the world, and allowing ourselves the time to figure it all out.
Simpson says, "There’s definitely a coming of age theme on the new album. We're asking ourselves: What am I looking to get out of life, out of being in a band? What joys do I want to pursue and where do I want to place my energy moving forward? We've come to the realization that we all need to stress less on the things we can’t control and enjoy more of what we have, what we can control and the journey itself."
Collectively the band members spent their young adult lives struggling mentally, emotionally and financially, in pursuit of their dreams, but the grind appears to have paid off, as Chief State is now on the cusp of something great! With an ever-growing legion of fans in their corner, a reputation for stellar live shows, and a new album's worth of kickass songs in their arsenal, 2022 is shaping up to be a great year for the band.
COLUMNS
Rock On! This Week's Sound Bites...7/10/25
"Well, I certainly hope so, it seems like it is," laughed Blues Traveler bassist Ben Wilson as he discussed what the band has been up to and their preparations before they hit the road once again for a Summer tour. "The band has been quite active over the years through touring and we managed to continue to record some records. We've done two kinds of covers records, the first one was a blues record which actually got nominated for a Grammy which was pretty cool and the next one, we did some soul covers. That one wasn't quite as well received but it was sure fun to make. So, it's been really cool; you have this massive success for a decade or so and then you kind of dip below that cultural Gestalt line where you're just kind of bubbling below the surface and you can do just fine there even though you're not on the cover of "The Rolling Stone" and that's kind of what we've been doing. We've had a good run, it has been fantastic and these summer tours where we get together with these other kind of bands of similar eras with similar kinds of hits; we're very fortunate as kind of a neo-hippie jam band from that era that kind of bucked some of the trends that were going on at the time but we were lucky enough to have a couple of hits and that has allowed us to have kind of a different career than just the straight jam bands do; not that that wouldn't be awesome as well because obviously many of them are doing just fine but it's just a slightly different road but it has been wonderful. We didn't rehearse a whole lot because we've been playing together for 38 years but things are good and we're stoked for this upcoming tour."
