The thing about having kids is that it puts you in a Back To The Future type mode, first you live your childhood and then you watch it replayed through children (and maybe grandchildren), you see your life twice and hopefully you fix the mistakes your parents made with you, or get right what they got right.
But I don’t have any children and except in a daydreamy way I can’t think of a person better off without them: instead of living my life twice, I manage to never quite grow up at all. The responsibilities of adulthood are shrugged off by me in a constant nowness of self-gratification.
And what I might miss, being turned on to current music by my children, I don’t need in the slightest… or didn’t. Mary Magpie has been writing about the Pennsylvanian band The Wonder Years a lot lately and I had heard and reviewed their Top 20 album from this May The Greatest Generation and considered it standard issue emo, though given the song titles maybe more pop punk than emo is closer to the truth. But I trust Mary’s opinion although only to a degree so when deciding to give the Wonder Years the time I don’t have and listen, I was being guided by Mary not as a tastemaker, but as a guide to her generation.
But I am not seventeen and the frustrations of a life in stall are not nearly mine, I can’t go far past the music and definitely, the songs don’t work well enough as songs despite a “Dismantling Summer” here and there thought they may work on other levels, as a levelling of a generation, as a voice speaking for more than a voice. . Here is the Wonder Year’s lead singer discussing the album title: “People say the greatest generation has come and gone, but they’re wrong. They haven’t seen what we’re capable of.” That is interesting enough a thought to cut me out of the loop, Campbell is of a generation discussing his own generation and it is such a positive, powerful sentiment it sent me back to the music for a third time.
Formed in 2005, the Wonder Years spent their first three years recording split records before releasing a debut album they have essentially disowned, and then following it with 2011’s more songs about girls and college on the outskirts of the big city, Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing. The album might be a leap forward but it isn’t a leap forward enough, though those that it was written for loved it intensely. It is easy to pinpoint the problem with Emo, too much tempo and not enough melody. It takes the lo-hi of grunge and ties it to a hardcore sense of melody. That’s what the Wonder Years do on Suburbia.
But the Greatest Generation is much better, I missed it and I missed it because it isn’t written for me. Not only are my ears not attuned to lo-hi, but I need a different singer than Campbell, then most of the emo bands leaders, I need a singer who can manipulate a melody. Campbell’s type of singing hits me as all wrong even if lyrically the songs are impressive. This becomes much clearer on “The Devil’s In My Bloodstream” where rock nyc fave Laura Stevenson lends her voice to what is indeed an excellent song and makes you imagine what they could do with these tracks if they weren’t a pop punk band.
Look at it this way: with The Greatest Generation the Wonder Years becomee as close to the voice of their generation as they can and while it isn’t close enough for me, I am not part of their generation. Indeed, IGeneration (I made that up, catchy, right?) are perhaps the most compassionate Generation of them all; stuff that me and my likes fought for in the 60s, 70s, 80s, don’t go far enough. IGeneration take LGBT as a given, as is female and black equality, but perhaps of greater importance, the IGeneration is the first to seriously delve into animal rights. It is this generation that has made me even consider what it is to kill animals for food. The bugaboo, that social networking has made them antisocial is stupid, what is the difference between a teenage girl locking herself in her room and speaking on the phone all weekend long to her friends in 1984 and a teenage girl locking herself in her room and speaking on the IPhone all weekend long to her friends in 2014?
It isn’t hubris, or snottiness, or anything that has the hysterically funny nicknamed Dan “Soupy” Campbell calling his the greatest generation; there is something low key and folded into society about IGeneration, there are lowered expectations in a nature in decline but they don’t hit out in retaliation; by being smaller they are also closer. They are, indeed, so small, that The Wonder Years can be the displaced voice of a generation of white middle class suburban kids and not even sell a million copies of their last album, not even 100, 000 or 50,000. Even less (500K streams and counting on Spotify).
If I was a teenager and wanted a voice of a generation, I would probably go with Titus Andronicus or Bright Eyes, but the scene is so diffused that there is more than one person speaking for them.
Which brings me back to The Wonder Years. I’ve listened to the album a number of times, and it lacks a certain stickiness TO MY EARS. “The Devil In My Bloodstream” reminds me, though not musically, of the concept behind Nirvana: a certain fragileness wherein “I know how it feels to be at war with a world that never loved me” is teenage angst exhibit A.
But don’t judge a band by its chorus, the seven minute “I Just Want to Want To Sell Out My Funeral” has the band ascending to a huge tempo shift and descending again over and over while they contemplate the residue from the inside out:
“Oh, we all wanna know.
Where’d the American dream go?
Did you give up and go home?
Am I here alone?
Oh, when the credits roll,
I’ll watch as the screen glows;
The moments when I choked, all the fears that I’ve outgrown.
At least I hope so.”
It is a good question because it isn’t asking whether the dream is over, Igeneration just know every thing is on the down side. But there is something here, and maybe it is something The Wonder Years instinctively move towards: when things are at their worst we know for certain who we are, something that is occluded from our vision when things are going good.
From time to time, and after really giving it every chance in the world to click, three or four stand out, and if I was 18 or 20 or 25, “I came here for a fight” would be an awesome rallying call. I bet on the stage –and I am going to their April 17 th gig at Best Buy next year, these songs –written by the band collectively, would translate into anthems and the lyrics themselves are shiftingly solipsistic. The lyrics are wide open and shut off. This is the greatest generation, all grinding teeth and stomach acid fighting through the anxiety of a shapeless future and doing the right thing because they don’t know any better:
“Clear the apartment.
I plan on collapsing and I could have sworn I heard a car door slam.
I’m stuck at the corner of grinding teeth and stomach acid,
All alone under a soft rain and streetlamp.
I spent my life weighed down by a stone heart,
Drowning in irony and settling for anything.
Somewhere down the line all the wiring went faulty.
I’m scared shitless of failure and I’m staring out at where I wanna be”
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