UPCOMING EVENTS

THE WONDER YEARS – THE HUM GOES ON FOREVER BIO

For a number of years, this would have been an almost-blank page. Back in the mid-2010s, a few yearsa@er The Wonder Years had first formed in Lansdale, PA, just north of Philadelphia, the band would beasked to provide a bio for events they were playing. All Dan Campbell would write was 'The WonderYears is a band'. That was it. They'd then receive the programs for whatever fesMval or event it was forand laugh. Most bands, the frontman remembers, would write a "full page thing about how their lastrecord charted and ours would just be a blank page with those six words at the top." A lot of Mme haspassed since then, and a lot has changed, although also not that much, at the same Mme. If The WonderYears – completed by guitarists MaT Brasch and Casey Cavaliere, drummer Mike Kennedy, bassist JoshMarMn and keyboardist/mulM-instrumentalist Nick Steinborn – could get away with a six-word bio, theyprobably would.

As it happens, when it comes to The Hum Goes On Forever, context is important, which is why you'rereading these words. The most important reason is that this is the first record the band has made sinceCampbell became a father. And so, when he sings its very first words – 'I don't want to die' – on its veryfirst song, "Doors I Painted Shut", they shimmer with a liTle extra poignancy and potency. Because assomeone who has sung candidly about how despondent he's felt at Mmes, thoughts of unexistence areno longer possible. It doesn't mean they stop, but Campbell can no longer succumb to the abject malaisethey induce.

"You've got to pull it together," he says, "because your kids are counMng on you. These things that feelhopeless – these massive cultural and societal, full-populace problems like climate change and schoolshooMngs, all the things that you're afraid of for your children – well, they only get fixed if you fix them. 'Idon't want to die – because I've got to protect you.' It would be very easy to give in to the depressionand just kind of lay there, but my kids are counMng on me, so I have to try to pull myself together and dothe work. "

That, then, is the crux of this record: his survival is more important than it ever was before. As Campbellphrases it, "How do you take care of someone else that needs you when there are days that you barelywant to exist?" Now that he's a father, the answer is a lot simpler than it used to be. Quite simply, hedoesn't have a choice. Rather, he has to press on against the noise that's been inside his brain for as longas he can remember. That's what the 'hum' of this album's Mtle is. Taken from a poem he wrote for SisterCi:es, it is, he says, a representaMon of the gloom he tends to carry with him.

"Even when it's not constantly in my face," he admits, "there's always a low hum of sadness, a lowrumbling of ennui. So The Hum Goes On Forever is the understanding that I'm always going to have it, it'salways going to be there, it's always been there for literal generaMons of my family and it's importantthat I accept that and live and work through it."

The Hum Goes On Forever, then, is the sound of The Wonder Years navigaMng those dark, cold waters,bringing that ever-present pulse in the back of Campbell's mind to vivid life, while also pushing it as farback into his skull as it will go. It's the kind of effect that's only achievable through true collaboraMon andunderstanding, something that defines how the band has operated from its incepMon. The six-piecewrote the bulk of these songs in a farmhouse in the middle of Pennsylvania in the winter of 2021.Thiswas before vaccines were widely available, so they all quaranMned for 14 days first. Then, a@er gecngvaccinated, they wrote together again in March, April and May, before tracking songs in June. IniMally,the idea was to just make an EP with Will Yip, but it instead became their seventh album, finished withSteve EveTs, a@er the band decided the songs would be under-served on an EP. The result is a record

that captures the taught, fraught uncertainty of the period in which they were wriTen, but also travelsback in Mme and memory to uncover and dwell on and inhabit le@over remnants of the past. It serves,too, as a revealing representaMon of how the six lives that consMtute The Wonder Years interact witheach other. That happens both inside and outside of the band, obviously, but in terms of the former,they've all grown together immensely as musicians. It means the band knows when to be restrained andwhen to explode, filling in space and empMness as needed to create a record that mirrors, sonically, theheart-torn urgency at its core, the way these six individuals interact with each other, each an essenMalcomponent of a greater whole - as well as the next evoluMon of a band that's never stopped growing,never stopped striving, never stopped searching for the truth and the heart of this dumb thing we calllife.

It would be easy to talk about how specific songs do that, but that would also kind of defeat the point ofthis record. Because this is a complete journey and should be taken in as such. It begins in August andends in June and traverses years and decades, as well as the constant cycle of sadness and healing withinthem. Except it never quite gets there. The hum is never totally shaken off.

"Because the tagline for The Upsides was 'I'm not sad anymore'," Campbell explains, "I think people werelike, 'This is the guy who used to be depressed.' But obviously that never goes away. It's a constant, andyou basically have to co-exist with your sadness. It won't go away, but that doesn't mean that peopledon't rely on you and that you can stop. As we've conMnued to make records, that's manifested itself indifferent ways, but I don't think ever as clearly as it has on this record. This one is more clearly about mestruggling and floundering and drowning at points. In fact, I think it's maybe even the most revealing in alot of ways. There's things I'm singing about on this record that I wouldn't have had the guts to confrontin myself prior to it – like being this open about how low I had goTen, starMng in late 2019 and thentumbling into a pandemic, and just thinking and thinking and thinking...."

There's a lot of thinking on this record. A lot of thoughts. But the main one, the important one, is thatvery first line of the first song: I don't want to die. It's something he repeats and reiterates on final track"You're The Reason I Don't Want The World To End", which addresses the change in Campbell's purposesince becoming a dad. That's obvious enough from the Mtle alone, but with the final line – inspired bygardening with his first son during the pandemic – the message becomes truly clear: 'Put the work in,plant a garden, try to stay afloat.' It's a reminder to himself, but it's also for anyone who listens, anyonewho needs it, everyone who's grown up with the band and has sought, and conMnues to seek, refuge intheir songs. Because, yes, The Wonder Years is a band. But it's also much, much more than that.