Getdown Services – I Can’t Die Like That
Bristol duo Getdown Services — Josh Law and Ben Sadler — are back with “I Can’t Die Like That”, the second single from their upcoming second album Massive Champion, out August 14 via Breakfast Records. We covered The Radiator (W14) back in April, and this follows on from there: two singles in, the album is shaping up to be their most focused statement yet.
Produced entirely by the duo themselves, the track sits in familiar Getdown Services territory: driving guitar, deadpan half-spoken vocals, and a chorus that gets inside your head without asking permission. Where “The Radiator” was built on a joke that turned out not to be a joke, “I Can’t Die Like That” goes somewhere slightly more interior. The band describe it as being about “the feeling of simple things becoming complicated”, specifically the ways dying, something theoretically uncomplicated, can be difficult. “It’s also about clinging on to feelings that comfort you but aren’t necessarily healthy”, they add. That’s a lot of weight to carry in a festival anthem, and the fact that it carries it without buckling is what makes it interesting. The band have noted Massive Champion is “a bit less aggy, a bit less poo, better production” than Crisps, and you can hear that here: the production is cleaner, the guitar work more considered, the groove doing more of the structural work.
Since their BBC appearance on Later… with Jools Holland and a sold-out North American tour, Getdown Services have spent the first half of 2026 building toward this. The album has thirteen tracks and a tracklist that tells you something about them before you’ve heard a note: “Poor Bannister”, “Probiotic”, “Cha Cha Slide”, “Lentils”, “600 Dance Lessons”. They describe Massive Champion as being about self-pity and the realisation that “all that healing your inner child stuff isn’t actually total bollocks.” I’ve been following this band since Crisps and this single is the clearest sign yet that the joke has become something considerably more than a joke.
