![]() They had gone only a mile or so from the cliff when the land sloped down into a wide shallow depression, where the ground was soft and wet Mist lay there, pale glimmering in the last rays of the sickle moon The dark shapes of the Orcs in front grew dim, and then were swallowed up Do you imagine it would prevent me from doing my duty to so old a friend?Īnd you must not despair, she continued because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. Good heavens, Holmes Do you suppose that such a consideration weighs with me of an instant? It would not affect me in the case of a stranger. Which version of himself is screaming, “Did I fuck up?” For the Wonder Years, the past and present are always intertwined.Then if it was removed it was while you were within a dozen yards of it? Campbell still sings “Passing Through a Screen Door” at shows. Their incessant self-referentiality makes this growth all the more emotionally resonant: You can measure your life by the characters in Campbell’s songs, by a riff that returns as a motif, by a lyric that comes back again and again, slightly different each time. There’s a poetic symmetry to the arc of the Wonder Years, a band from the Philadelphia suburbs who wound up, a little older and questionably wiser, in a different Philadelphia suburb. This consistency is hard-earned, and their careful approach to making records has resulted in a discography that can age gracefully with them. “Wyatt’s Song” and “Oldest Daughter” would fit alongside the thrashing, high-energy anthems from their debut. Opener “Doors I Painted Shut” begins with just Campbell’s voice and a guitar and builds anticipation by layering doubled vocals, guitars, and percussion until it surges into an appropriately Wonder Years refrain: “I don’t like me.” The exceptions prove the rule: “Laura and the Beehive,” with its quiet piano accompaniment, is strained and sleepy, especially on an album that demonstrates the band is still capable of sounding huge. But luckily on The Hum Goes on Forever, the Wonder Years deliver the shredded vocals and taut palm-muted guitars that made them Warped Tour heroes without sacrificing the depth and nuance in Campbell’s writing. Their most recent release was a toothless 2020 acoustic rework of their catalog, complete with wispy string accompaniments. Sister Cities backed away from the outbursts and intensity in favor of fingerpicked melodies to mixed success. When Campbell calls back to a line from that album-“We both know how this ends”-it echoes with the distance between who he was in 2013 and who he is now.Īmong aging punks who felt old at 26, there’s an unspeakable fear of cooling off, quieting down, and hanging up the riffs. He wants to send her a birthday gift and pictures of his children, but she doesn’t have a permanent address. Nick Foles.” There’s Madelyn, a dark, brooding companion on The Greatest Generation who now appears increasingly itinerant on “Oldest Daughter.” She’s sleeping in public libraries Campbell is settled in the suburbs. The Eagles won their first Super Bowl after the Wonder Years finished recording 2018’s Sister Cities, and Campbell makes up for lost time with nostalgic shrines to “St. Colleen, who skipped town on 2011’s “ Coffee Eyes,” still weighs heavy on “The Paris of Nowhere.” The song is a love letter to Philadelphia, with all of its potholes and junkyard fires. Like the best the Wonder Years songs, it is both littered with specific details and so fervently emotional that it feels universal.Īs he stares terrified into the future, Campbell also revisits proper nouns from the band’s past and tries to tie up loose ends. There he is haunting Campbell’s nightmares on “Cardinals II” his tiny gloves tucked into Campbell’s winter coat are a “reminder that I’m not alone.” And then there’s his very own “Wyatt’s Song (Your Name),” which measures his son in heartbeats, in first words, in breaths while he’s sleeping. There’s a new addition in the cast on The Hum Goes on Forever: His son, Wyatt, who stars as the album’s thematic center. He writes about what, and who, he knows: his college dropout friends, his ex-girlfriends, specific locations in Philadelphia, down to the street number. The Wonder Years take a serialized approach to songwriting, connecting characters across albums, with Campbell as an unreliable narrator. ![]()
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