10th anniversary review: The Wonder Years – “Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing”

This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.

Hopeless Records – 14 June, 2011

It’s not a self-help book but its so fucking good

I was nearly 30 when The Wonder Years released Suburbia… and honestly I was past the point where new songs about loving and loathing my hometown and had already been married, had a child and thought I had gotten past my “where do I go from here” phase. Then again, this record came out at a time when I was able to wholly connect to the lyrics of Dan Campbell and company. 

I had never listened to The Wonder Years, I felt a bit out of touch with the scene itself in the years leading up to its release.  I remember people telling me The Upsides was great, but I just never felt a pull to give it a shot.  Honestly, I really only checked out Suburbia because its album title was so similar to a poem from a personal hero of mine, Allen Ginsberg. I had written my term paper in US History II on the impact of the Jersey-born Beat when I was a Junior in high school, and did not think some pop-punk band from the suburbs of Philly could do anything but insult his memory. My God was I wrong, the album knowingly harkened to lines from the Ginsberg classic with perfect timing and understanding.  

In the year prior to the release of Suburbia, my wife and I experienced a miscarriage, less than a year after this release we would go through a second, I had been fired and was stuck delivering pizza to make ends meet while trying to provide for the 2 year old at home. The existential dread may have been written for a 20 year old confronting the reality of their future instead of the fantasy of their goals, but thanks to my own series of missteps, mistakes and maladies, the album felt autobiographical and disturbingly therapeutic. 

I had literally “spent this year as a ghost” and I had no idea what I was looking for when Soupy et al put out the most relatable record of the 2010s.  10 years ago I’d have said this was a solid record, looking back today, it is more important than that.  This is a record that has remained in steady rotation for the last 3,652 or so days, because of my own personal relations to it and I tend to find more and more people with similar deeply personal connections to the album, despite us having very few shared experiences.  Suburbia hits each of us at a subdermal level, and seems to be a positive force in our own development and growth.  That’s the sign of timelessness in music, right?  That we can go back to it at any age and feel a pull toward the lyrics and musicianship.

That’s what really sets TWE apart, the songs they wrote at 20 still don’t “feel short-sighted or naive” a decade later. Plenty of albums have brought me back to the places I was in when I first heard them, but Suburbia doesn’t need to bring me back… I still relate to it today.

The band brought with it a resurgence of pop-punk that was more than just a fun bounce and posturing for their profile pics, they had depth, heart and historical perspective.  In a genre too often saturated by overwrought lyrics of heartbreak, juvenile whining and self-victimization, Suburbia is mature, intelligent and self-aware.