Review Summary: The Wonder Years produce the best album of 2011
In 2007, The Wonder Years emerged as adorably goofy pop-punk pups, their debut album "Get Stoked On It!" playing out in a series of fun but frivolous songs about ninjas, zombies, pirates and parties. In 2010, The Upsides changed the game and gave the genre six new heroes to believe in, channeling the band's combustible energies and storytelling skills into anthemic tracks that struck home with those who spent the time scratching beneath the surface. "Suburbia I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing" - one of several nods to the 1956 Allen Ginsberg poem "America" - is the sound of increasingly weary road dogs backing up their bark with some real bite, fashioning pensive frontman Dan 'Soupy' Campbell as a kind of punk rock poet laureate, even if he does bemoan his apparent lack of 'talent, madness or vision' during the album's closing moments.
It's a raw, stiring and engrossing record that tells tales of friends dying young, questions religious faith, ponders the rootless arrested development of a life touring the world in a band and the high stakes of giving up 'a real job and a girlfriend' to follow that dream. On the mid-point acoustic ballad I've Given You All, Soupy recounts the sad story of an old homeless Vietnam veteran found beaten to death in their hometown of Philadelphia and how the cops figure 'It was probably kids'. Grim stuff, all told. But there's hope and optimism here, too, on life-affirming the reminiscences of Summers In PA or within the driving defiance of Don't Let Me Cave In. That positively never feels false, however - as the refrain of Local Man Ruins Everything goes, 'It's not about forcing happiness/it's about not letting sadness win', a feeling most people can relate to. At the core of the album, in the finer observational detail, in it's stream of colossal choruses and the blood and sweat of the performances, there's a beating heart pumping proudly. Suburbia... might reflect back on a world going down the toilet but the spirit and spit of every utterance say's there's no giving in and raises figurative fists to fight against the seemingly endless tide of bull***.
Within the framework of a genre not traditionally famed for it's scope or ambition, The Wonder Years have not only delivered a genuinely great pop-punk record but a genuinely great record, period.
