The Hum Goes On Forever

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The greatest peaks, and some of Campbell’s own favorite songs, on The Hum Goes On Forever come via the cuts not heard before the full release. The album is bookended by “Doors I Painted Shut” and “You’re the Reason I Don’t Want the World to End,” two songs written for Campbell’s wife Alison and his oldest son Wyatt. The former is a product of a postpartum depression he battled with after Wyatt’s birth. I think we’ve grown a lot together,” Brasch says. “We all have a lot of different influences. We’re not just going to write fast, super loud songs all the time, we want to have a dynamic record. We’ve all built off one another and built off our influences in other bands, movies, books. I think it’s just a matter of growing up and really finding your sound after a while. We all play off of one another, and that’s what makes our band our band.” The rest of the pieces fell into place over the following six months in scattered writing conflabs and sessions with Evetts and Will Yip. The level of care behind this drawn out spell of creativity is reflected in the way The Hum Goes on Forever moves – surging from each highpoint in search of another one that says something different about how the Wonder Years came to be where they are today. “If the song makes it through the six of us in a room, it’s always going to be a Wonder Years song,” Cavaliere says. “This record, and how it came together, was us trying to trust that fact and not overthink it. a b Sacher, Andrew (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years on fatherhood, Mark Hoppus, and making a record that's RIYL The Wonder Years". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.

The first type of fan is the pop punk kid who uncovered some of their favourite bands today almost a decade ago, along the lines of Man Overboard, The Story So Far, State Champs and of course, The Wonder Years. You wear your pop punk heart on your sleeve, throw pizza parties with your small group of friends every weekend and probably drink way too much beer. Your go-to karaoke song is ‘ My Last Semester‘ and you’ve thrashed Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothingon your record player so much, you need more than one copy. To summarise, you’re more familiar with the band’s first two LPs than anything else. No matter which group you fall into, The Hum Goes On Forever is going to sit well with the entire pop punk community. But I’ll be honest — the last album I listened to from The Wonder Years was No Closer to Heaven, and while I did enjoy it for awhile, I didn’t feel that punch I loved from their earlier material. That’s why I’m a little nervous about going into the band’s brand new album. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect here. Would I hate it? Would I get bored? I’m definitely a listener that is more familiar with their earlier material — pre-2015.Raw emotion and unfaltering passion are The Wonder Years’ DNA. It’s why, even after decades of hard graft, they continue to impress and improve release upon release. Naturally then, ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’, is no different and can stand proud as one of the most important records of 2022.

Mitchell, Matt (September 22, 2022). "How the Wonder Years got older and wiser with The Hum Goes on Forever". Alternative Press . Retrieved September 23, 2022. As the people who have lived through it, I think there’s an interesting energy where there’s the question of your older works being like a different band,” guitarist Casey Cavaliere says. “Every band evolves, right? We wouldn’t have gotten here if we didn’t have those albums where it was more about the energy and how fast we can play.Sacher, Andrew (June 22, 2022). "The Wonder Years announce new album 'The Hum Goes On Forever,' share new song". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022. The Upsides through The Greatest Generation is commonly known as The Wonder Years' Depression Trilogy. It was an odyssey that took us from snotty, reference-heavy pop-punk to a mature and thoughtful band trying to process the weight of the world via the geographical and emotional landmarks Dan Campbell dotted throughout his lyrics, his voice ageing in realtime alongside his songwriting from a nasally whine to a more textured, dynamic force. It's not a stretch to view the subsequent three albums as another linked cycle: it's an interpretation suggested by the title The Hum Goes on Forever, stemming from a poem included in the Sister Cities booklet, and the presence thereon of a sequel song to No Closer to Heaven's "Cardinals". Call it the Head Above Water Trilogy: for as dark as Dan Campbell's writing can still be, I can't escape the impression that he's finally clawing towards the light instead of away from it. Much like the fictional-yet-painfully-real Aaron West character he created, Campbell has found something worth fighting for in the form of family: specifically his children, to whom he dedicates the album and names as the reason he doesn't want the world to end. From the off, frontman Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell declares “I don’t want to die” and in doing so introduces the overarching message of this album. The sentiment, albeit gloomy, is one of hope. Following shifts in perspectives and approaches to life since the birth of his first child, Soupy uses this album as a vehicle to explore what it means to live with “the hum”. He explains, “there’s always a low hum of sadness, a low rumbling of ennui. So ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ is the understanding that I’m always going to have it, it’s always going to be there, it’s always been there for literal generations of my family and it’s important that I accept that and live and work through it.”

Their catalog’s narrative unity proceeds not only from self-reference, but from the material’s indelible proximity to Campbell’s lived experience. He’s spent nearly two decades cataloguing the ghosts that haunt his family, addiction and mental illness. “I don’t want my children growing up to be anything like me,” he once sang on “Passing Through a Screen Door,” when fatherhood was only a theoretical. “I feel like the people deserve an update,” he told me. READ MORE: “Teenagers always need music for solace and inspiration, Joy Division fills that role” Peter Hook on the enduring power of Love Will Tear Us Apart a b "The ARIA Report: Week Commencing 3 October 2022". The ARIA Report. No.1700. Australian Recording Industry Association. 3 October 2022. pp.7, 10.

Emerging in the mainstream pop punk era of the mid 2000s, The Wonder Years have themselves over the years grown up with and beyond the confines of their overarching parent genre. Feibel, Adam (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years Find Defiance in Defeat on 'The Hum Goes on Forever' ". Exclaim! . Retrieved April 17, 2023. But it’s the album’s lead singles, ‘ Summer Clothes‘ and ‘ Low Tide‘ that collectively had me most pumped for The Wonder Years‘ new era. While ‘ Summer Clothes‘ had me longing for summer sunsets with my person, what stood out as I listened to ‘ Low Tide‘ a million times over was the cathartic upbeat melody that was a big highlight on 2011’s Suburbia. With Soupy singing about the struggle to find more seratonin, the rest of the band pull together with a fine taste of an emo pop punk anthem for the ages. Sacher, Andrew (May 19, 2022). "The Wonder Years release new song 'Summer Clothes' (listen)". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022. Campbell conjures a sun-expanding apocalypse in the song. But he doesn’t immediately run from it, instead sitting on a porch swing in the “orange glow and eerie calm,” watching North America fall into the ocean. “[‘Doors I Painted Shut’] is a bit of an apology to Alison because I’m supposed to be the other half of this, but I’m totally breaking down, weeping on the floor. I’m sensibly useless,” he says. “It wasn’t so much that I was interested in dying as much as I was the idea of existence as a whole ceasing to be.” Through all of it, one line stands tall above the pronounced fallout: “I don’t wanna die/At least not without you.”