Hopeless Records, Loneliest Place on Earth – 23 Sep 2022
Pop-punk heroes return to form after 4 year absence (FFO: mature pop-punk)
Once upon a time, the The Wonder Years were a band that was very important to me. My own adulthood travails aligned with the band. The goofy easycore of Get Stoked on It! morphed in the post-collegiate anthems of The Upsides, finally culminating in the stark catharsis of Suburbia I’ve Given You My All and Now I’m Nothing. Because of this, the songs hit hard.
Somewhere around their fourth LP (The Greatest Generation), vocalist Dan “Soupy” Campbell and I diverged. When he declared “I’m 26 / All the people I graduated with all have kids, all have wives”, I was 29, married and struggling with infertility. While their songcraft may have improved, the songs just didn’t hit the way they used to.
Fast forward to 2022. The Wonder Years are fresh off their combined anniversary tours for The Upsides and Suburbia and have released their seventh LP, The Hum Goes On Forever. Like one Michael Corleone, I’ve been pulled back into their orbit for another 12 tracks.
Album opener “Doors I Painted Shut” is a slow burner of an intro that sets forth the theme of the record. The record immediately moves into album highlight “Wyatt’s Song”, which wouldn’t sound out of place in the middle of Suburbia. Now a parent, Soupy paints a picture of raising his son in South Philly. As a fellow parent of a two year old, this song hits hardest when he croons that he’s “never been so afraid of failing at anything.” (Pardon me, as I appear to be chopping onions.)
What would a The Wonder Years record be without an anthem to Philadelphia? On Hum, “The Paris of Nowhere” proffers up Nick Foles for sainthood. With fresh eyes, Soupy navigates the same streets that he did in “It’s Never Sunny in South Philadelphia”, “Washington Square Park” and “Local Man Ruins Everything”.
Penultimate track “Old Friends Like Lost Teeth” sounds like a punched up B-side from The Upsides. This is an anthem to loss of friendship — not due to death or drugs, as is the case in their early work, but growing apart. I can’t count the number of friends I would like to “build back from memory” — it appears that The Wonder Years have caught back up to me.
There are references to the cast of characters in other records in songs like “Cardinals II” and “Oldest Daughter” that will likely appeal to the diehard fans. Other songs, like “Summer Clothes”, “Songs About Death” and “Laura and the Beehive”, tend to be slower and jangly, more akin to later Wonder Years’ records like Sister Cities or Burst & Decay. However, I think The Hum Goes On Forever does a good job of blending the band’s distinct eras. If you’re looking for Suburbia Part 2, you’re not going to find it, but fans of each record will find something they enjoy. If you weren’t a fan before, this might serve as a good entry point into the back catalog.
Once hailing from the salty tundra of Syracuse, NY, Ben now calls the DC suburbs his home. He fell in love with punk after listening to Punk-O-Rama 3, Less Than Jake and MXPX in middle school. He loves to slam dance but is too large to stage dive.
When he’s not pretending to have exquisite musical taste, he’s raising two children, designing RPG products and practicing law. (Who knows if he’ll ever get the hang of it.)
