Review Summary: The distance once felt infinite & now feels meaningless; I am everywhere at once.
I am writing to you from the stomach of a
whale where I am swallowed but still alive.
I am sleeping in shifts so that I don’t
miss a shot at redemption.
I am writing down my dreams dutifully
but in the morning they make little-to-no sense.
I am sending postcards to the cemetery
with your plot number written down.
I am hoping the office will tape them
to your headstone.
This record is really just forty-four minutes of rain
falling on the roof of a parked car.
This record is really just me looking up synonyms
for dying over and over and over.
Over the course of my (relatively) young life, I’ve come to understand that few things will ever speak to me as clearly as music can. It may sound extremely cliche and hyperbolic, but none of that matters in the end. No matter what I may be facing, be it death, grief, or anxiety, I’ve always found a home in my speakers and headphones. I can’t imagine my life without it anymore. And I’m always left confused when I meet another soul who says that they just don’t listen or care for any music. The reason for it is that, to me, music is the great equalizer. It crosses all barriers. There could be someone a thousands of miles away on another continent, going through their own unique struggle and living a life you couldn’t even begin to imagine. The two of you will never meet and are playing out completely different stories. But the both of you decide to put on some music, maybe Radiohead or some Bon Iver, and in that one moment you’re connected to the other. This was the message Dan Campbell and the rest of the guys in The Wonder Years were pushing in the lead-up to this album. The idea that while you may be going through the roughest patch of your life, you’re never truly alone. That in some way, shape, or form, we’re all connected. I mean, here you are reading this review about a Wonder Years album. Most likely, we’re both Sputnik users. In that sense, we’re connected by an interest for the same thing. It doesn’t really matter that the specific interest is music, it could be love or the next episode of My Hero Academia. What matters is that we were both interested in the same thing, and that means that the two of us - two people who have never met or spoken to one another - are not so different. I don’t know about you, but I find that idea moving.
I owe a lot to The Wonder Years then, as they were the band that got me into music. When The Upsides entered my life, it’s like I had an eye-opening epiphany. It opened countless doors for me in terms of music. It made me want to explore. It made me want to branch out and listen to more. In the past 2 years alone, I have listened to at least 1 new album everyday. My taste in music is still widening and growing. What’s truly amazing, however, is how The Wonder Years grew up alongside me and my neverending journey for more music. The Upsides was juvenile and short sighted, but it was fun and energetic and most of all genuine. Suburbia hit close to home with notes of dissociation and perseverance through the twists and turns of normal life. No Closer to Heaven was an emotional exercise in grief and living beyond the death of a brother. The Greatest Generation, though, spoke the most to me. It was an album I fell in love with right away and one I still hold in the highest regard. Every moment and every word painted picture after picture of self-denial and failure and grief and just straight pure honesty. Everything hit exactly the way it needed to in all the right spots. I might not come back to it as much as I once did when I was younger, but it still holds a very dear space in my heart for being the album I consider the be all and end all in terms of something I could effortlessly relate to.
Sister Cities is majestic. It’s the logical conclusion of the band’s sound, everything prior leading up to this one album. This is something evident as soon as “Raining in Kyoto” kicks off without warning, dragging and engulfing you into a tale of mourning. No other album in The Wonder Years catalog starts this abruptly, there’s always a fade-in or a little intro section. Sister Cities throws you into the waves headfirst. It’s telling of a larger stylistic change, one that deals with less beating around the bush with teenage emotions and more sharing real heartfelt words about death and the wonders around the concept of
living. Trust me, I’m well aware of how hyperbolic that just sounded right now. But when you have someone like Soupy constantly writing line after line dealing with his grandfather’s death and journeys across the globe, you can’t help but be caught up in the romanticism of it all. “Flowers Where Your Face Should Be”, “Heaven’s Gate (Sad and Sober)”, “When The Blue Finally Came”; these are the songs that transport you into a space where you can connect with and understand the emotions Soupy puts on display time and time again. Sister Cities plays around with expanding and fleshing out this space more than mostly every album before it. The result being a wholly unique experience in the Wonder Years’ catalog, which is a feat in of itself.
It’s been no secret that they’ve been moving away from their pop-punk sound. As much as /r/emo tries to deny it, The Wonder Years have expanded their horizons far and wide beyond the days when they were analogous to Fireworks or The Swellers. The overall record is slathered in a monumental indie rock sound and vibe. Flashes of post-hardcore influence shine bright on songs like “Heaven’s Gate (Sad and Sober)”. They play around with spacious and
epic sounding slow indie jams on “Pyramids of Salt” and “We Look Like Lightning”. A point I very much would like to bring up is that The Wonder Years show an attribute here that really hasn’t been utilized enough on their previous works: restraint. Cliche is a harsh word to use, but The Wonder Years have a tendency to always make the same kind of decisions when it comes to songwriting. Bombastic first half, play a little quieter after the second chorus, then come back at full force for the finale. It was pretty much a given every time you listened to a song by these guys. It’s a large part as to why my first listen to this made me audibly go ‘wow’. Every time I expected the band to pull the same strings over and over, they kept proving me wrong. They’ve never really made a soft song all the through - even “The Devil in Your Bloodstream” had that explosive second half - but “When The Blue Finally Came” swept me off my feet in pure astonishment. It’s just something I hadn’t expected coming, it was something I hoped would happen, but it wasn’t expected. If you’ve neglected this band for years citing it as “pop-punk garbage”, this is the one most likely to change your mind.
I understand my word doesn’t hold a lot of weight behind it though. Chan wrote a much better review a few days ago that much better describes what makes this album top tier. But this review is just something I had to write. The Wonder Years isn’t just a band for me anymore. It’s a part of my history. My identity. The day they stop making music will be a heavy one indeed for me. Until then, my arms are open to all the songs about anxiety, loss, and grief that these guys churn out. And even though I may never be able to fully explain why I feel so strongly about these guys, I’ll still carry on having the time of my life listening to all the new music in the world. All because of one band.
Thank you, The Wonder Years.
