Here Comes a New Challenger! is an unassuming, but none the less unparalleled, released from the Wuhan-based emo band Chinese Football. The EP is somewhat of a pivot point for the group, marking the period in 2017 when they were starting to come into their own as artists while getting better international press- due in part to the accelerating pace of conversation around the then-current phase of emo revival in the US. Stylistically, it serves as a transition point for the band's sound, continuing the Mineral meets Cap'n Jazz conceits of their 2015 debut self-titled with the melody-forward, "Mandarin" rock of their 2019 EP Continue?.
It's worth noting at this point that Chinese Football is not part of any emo revival as we would understand it. The band is certainly paying homage to classic second-wave emo, but in a way that is clearly developing along a different evolutionary logic than their US counterparts.
Getting back on track- one of the more striking differences between Chinese Football's later work and their early albums, up to and including Here Comes a New Challenger!, is that band are significantly more confident in their guitar work than in their singing abilities on these earlier releases. As a result, there is an incredible, almost overwhelming, amount of texture and detail in the mathy chord progressions on Here Comes a New Challenger!- far more delicate minutia than you could absorb in half a dozen listens (at least that ended up being the case for me!).
This busyness can cause a few tracks on the EP to feel like they are dragging a bit- but only if you are listening more casually. Therefore multitasking while listening to this album is not recommended. If you're going to properly metabolize everything Here Comes a New Challenger! serves up, you're going to have to sit with it a while and let those mathy chords solve for some integers and do some scratch calculations on the interior of your skull.
Sure, enjoying this album can take a little extra effort on your part, but you can't say that the band didn't warn you that this might be the case. After all, it has the word "challenger" in the title.
Here Comes a New Challenger! was released through Wild Records.
