The Hum Goes On Forever

Product Information

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. 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. Thor’s Hammer isn’t just a curio, though. There’s a lot of gnarly stuff on The Hum Goes on Forever. Over the years, Brasch, Cavaliere and Steinborn have become dialled in to the emotional squalls of Campbell’s writing. As he has developed further as a storyteller, scratching away the pop-punk veneer to reveal lyrics that meld Craig Finn-style parables with vivid first-person writing, his bandmates have found ways to adapt, retreating to a whisper one moment before bringing out the blood and thunder the next.

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.” 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. It’s not quite as simple as calling The Wonder Years a pop-punk band anymore, even if they did make their name that way. To many they remain as one of, if not the , greatest pop-punk outfit in the history of the genre. While their output in the early 2010s was definitive, they have since matured and wisened to the point where they’ve transcended the scene that they were once forefathers of. ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ is the latest instalment from this legendary Lansdale sextet and marks their most complete and accomplished record to date. Spoiler alert though: it’s not a complete miss of a record. On the contrary, The Hum Goes On Forever is the band’s most powerful record yet, in an attempt to bring together all eras of the band under one umbrella. From the opening bars of ‘ Doors I Painted Shut’, you can most definitely feel vocalist Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell’s struggle to find his words in his music. This record is a culmination of the musician’s challenges throughout a pandemic, finding deeper purpose and ultimately, coming to terms with his new role as a father.

Notes

Sacher, Andrew (April 21, 2022). "The Wonder Years return with 'Oldest Daughter,' confirm new album". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.

The total pressing quantity is 15,000 LPs with 5,000 7”. The most current list of variants is as follows.Sacher, Andrew (June 22, 2022). "The Wonder Years announce new album 'The Hum Goes On Forever,' share new song". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022. 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. The band decided they couldn’t make the record they wanted unless they were together in the same room again, so they rented a farmhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania, wrote and demoed the songs for a week straight and, as Campbell puts it, “lived inside of the record for a while.” Soon, vaccines became available and variants were less deadly, which allowed the guys to work together in person again and push the record across the finish line. Though the fears of what awaited the band on the other side of the pandemic’s greatest uncertainties were initially detrimental to making The Hum Goes On Forever , quarantine allotted them the space and time to write the best collection of songs for the best record they’ve ever made.

Gordon, Arielle (September 29, 2022). "The Wonder Years: The Hum Goes on Forever Album Review". Pitchfork . Retrieved September 29, 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. 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. In “Songs About Death,” Campbell sings, “Out in front of everyone/I sing them songs about death/And they sing along/It’s gotta stop.” It’s impossible to know what an audience at a Wonder Years show will look like in 2022, or how the crowd will react when the band play a song like “ Cigarettes & Saints” or “ Dismantling Summer.” But it’s easy to imagine there will be a lot of people leaning on each other, as they carry a countless number of fears across a world that’s inexplicably unraveling. When we were much younger, it was, ‘Does this rip? Is it fast? Is it loud? Yes, let’s go.’ And people say bands overthink things, or try and get too complex for no good reason, later in their career. We didn’t want to necessarily do that with this record, too. We wanted to make room for the on-the-ground-in-a-sea-of-pedals experimentation, but make sure it had a reason, it had a place, and had an intention.”

Track listing

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.”

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. 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.” 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. 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.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 (May 19, 2022). "The Wonder Years release new song 'Summer Clothes' (listen)". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022. As powerful and sure of itself as The Hum Goes on Forever sounds, its writing process was littered with challenges, the pandemic chief among them. The Wonder Years might run off being able to see the whites of their audience’s eyes night after night, but their creative process is founded on trust and communication stemming from a decades-long friendship. “We discovered how hard it was to write with Dan hiding in my laundry room with the door shut, and all of us with masks on,” Steinborn says. Brasch takes over: “We all keep our emotions on our faces.” Feibel, Adam (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years Find Defiance in Defeat on 'The Hum Goes on Forever' ". Exclaim! . Retrieved April 17, 2023. Sacher, Andrew (July 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years announce tour; reunited Fireworks opening!". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.