Review: The Wonder Years – The Hum Goes On Forever

Has there ever been a more emo opening on an album than on The Wonder Years “Doors I Painted Shut” as lead vocalist Dan Campbell croons, “I don’t wanna die / At least not without you / Alone here in the August heat / In the shadows of the afternoon”? The Wonder Years’ latest studio album, entitled The Hum Goes On Forever, may be their best record to date and features several unique callbacks to the sound they have perfected over their collective careers. The set was produced by Steve Evetts and veteran hit-maker Will Yip, and the album sounds like a million bucks. The Hum Goes On Forever also features two outside collaborators/writers on “Wyatt’s Song (Your Name)” (Mark Hoppus) and “Oldest Daughter” (Ace Enders), and showcases a band blossoming gracefully in the later stages of their career.

After the cautious opening song, the album explodes into “Wyatt’s Song (Your Name),” the third single released, and possibly one of my favorite songs that the band has ever crafted to date. I found the verse of “I found glass in the garden / Dug it up with my thumb / I won’t let you cut your feet / When you learn to run / But you learned to say, “Moon” / So, we waved from your room / He called to you like it might come to you,” to be particularly well-written since it reminded me a bit of the relationship I have with my kids and wanting to protect them from the worst situations.

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The Wonder Years Talk New Album

The Wonder Years

Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years talked with BrooklynVegan about their new album:

Dan also, as many bands who have been at it this long probably do, has been thinking about the day The Wonder Years just don’t get to do this anymore, and he addresses that on “Lost It In The Lights,” where he muses, “What if the magic’s gone? I guess I should be glad that there was any at all.” “I was thinking about career arcs,” Dan tells us. “It can be very easy to, and I have seen other artists almost get angry towards the end, or like bitter, as they realize their career is like winding down. And I was thinking about how I can’t be anything but grateful, because there’s just like, logically no reason this should’ve happened. There’s a lot of times where I’m like, ‘Is this real?’ Like is my fucking life real that I get to do this thing for a living, for all these people, to commiserate with all these people. So I wanted to make sure that I expressed that like, when the day comes that we don’t get to do that anymore, the only thing that I will feel towards those people is gratitude.”