The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever (Sept 23rd 2022) Album • Page 86

I think the band is at its strongest when Dan’s writing is introspective. They stood out to me from the scene during their pop punk days because Dan was saying things I haven’t heard any other band say back in TGG. There were still clunkers, but Sister Cities showcases a side that takes itself seriously. There’s powerful stuff at every corner. While I know that the band, especially Dan, owes me nothing, it feels disappointing to see all that growth and then be met with “I’m growing out my hair, cuz who gives a shit?”. It feels like placeholder lyrics to me just meant to exist until something better was thought up lol. It’s not the type of lyrics I’d want to see from a band 6 (7) albums in, especially from the follow up record to the album with his best writing

 

Counterpoint: Upsides era is/was great.

 

Sure, if you like singing along to “I don’t need to pump my fists to look sweet,” but like @Iago said, at this point, following the record with his absolute strongest and most introspective songwriting, I don’t want to return to that

 

i cant get into any Upsides stuff except for Washington Square Park sometimes. got into the band during TGG so I wasnt there for the Upsides revolution in the scene, so its all alien to me.

 

I absolutely don't mind that line and to be honest I'm glad they're not taking it as seriously as to not let anything slide from time to time. Still far from some of the worse Upsides lyrics.

 

i will admit though, if Low Tide somehow snuck in a Local Man reference with the hair line, maybe something like “I’m growing out my hair and there’s still sadness there”, I wouldve ate that shit up

 

I kind of view that line/chorus as a sign of regression. He's sliding back into earlier habits/mindsets because of a defeatist attitude at the state of everything. The rest of the lyrics of the song very much tell the story of someone spiraling a bit. "For the first time I'm not sure that everything'll be okay" etc

It's not really meant to be an introspective song

 

Low Tide has some strong lyrics in the outro/elsewhere to make up for the chorus, but I also think the song is meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. Dan was visibly amused when he sang the 'low tide at serotonin bay' lyric. and it's fun as hell live, which is a big part of what they were trying to do here

 

Mike Kennedy is a fucking great drummer

 

My favorite lyric on The Upsides is definitely “Drowning my sorrows in lucky charms and soy milk” because I can really relate to it at almost 31 like no other lyric Dan has written

 

it reads like an early-pandemic depressive spiral because that's what it is, with some anxiety and low-level 'just FUCK IT' thrown in

 

This is a joke, in case it wasn’t clear. I eat Rice Krispies, not lucky charms

 

I think it comes down to that’s just not what I want from this band at this point. I can listen to the upsides or suburbia if I want a humorous and self aware take on depression, but now I know they can do so much more than that

 

I don’t even think the line is humorous, I find it an incredibly relatable line that applied to me and many of my friends during the peak of the pandemic.

 

You know, this really stood out to me when I saw them last weekend in Worcester. As I'd previously mentioned, the band sounded better than ever, and Mike's drumming stood out to me more than usual. There was a time near the end of the set where they all kind of highlighted him for a second and I was like "oh, holy shit."

 

at risk of sounding pedantic about someone else’s writing when they’ve used vulgar language in the past (in ways that i love)…

i think i find more qualms with the “cuz who gives a shit” part of the line than the hair half. like, i get it. it’s expressing discontent and a lack of motivation in a succinct, relatable manner… but idk. i’ve always found that idiom lazy/boring in writing. it’s just not for me personally. it’s too literal and it takes me out of it

 

generally when the package arrives with two heavily bashed corners you know something's gone wrong but fuck it, we move. aside from the top corners being creased I'd say this arrived in pretty good condition. and don't even get me started on the hoodie... ❤️

 

Yeah. It feels lazy. People have brought up the line from local man, but the second half of that line extends the metaphor. This one doesn’t

 

I don't think I'd like it as much if it wasn't "lazy" tbh

 

It's classic Wonder Years to me. Something so small but making it sound huge.

For me it's also a nice callback to 'receding like my hairline'.

 

I agree that NCTH was a half step forward and SC was the full step. I just feel like they stepped away from some of their strengths. And with Hum I feel like they're playing to their strengths again and just making the best Wonder Years songs they can, instead of consciously trying to "progress". I like all their albums but Hum is definitely my kind of Wonder Years. AOTY for me by some margin.

 

i feel like i enjoyed this album but i haven't gone back to it since the first listen. i'm not sure if that speaks on the album's quality or my general disinterest with pop punk at this point.

 

For me, the chorus of Low Tide is "lazy" or whatever because that's just the message of that particular song. For a band that appears to think about and work through everything they do in a pretty thoughtful way, I feel like the simplicity of that line has to have been a conscious choice and for me I think it works well.

Obviously it may not be for everyone, however I think the vibe of that song--I just picture it being written in the absolute bleakest points of the pandemic, I mean, they had to be if you were watching Korean baseball--I think the song was written from a perspective of someone who has so down and defeated by the pandemic that there was nothing deep to say. The pandemic, at it's worst, was a truly hopeless experience for a lot of folks. Sometimes there's nothing profound to say about that and it feels like "I'm growing out my hair, 'cause who gives a shit?" is the lyrical equivalent of someone who is so deep in the throes of depression that there's nothing deeper to say. I think this point made way more sense in my head, but I don't think the hopeless of the state of mind of someone in that point in the pandemic would be conveyed as well by four elegantly written lines or something.

Or maybe I just love it because I grew out my hair during the pandemic, who knows haha

 

Stream of the entire Boston Upsides/Suburbia show is on YouTube for anyone who couldn't go or wants to relive it.

Still sad the 2015 Band Anniversery shows never made it anywhere. Considering how much the essence of this band revolves around the live show, I'm surprised we've never gotten a live album. Hell Aaron West already has one.

 

As I've said in this thread before, the verses on Low Tide are so full of metaphors and showy lyrics, that the very basic, primal nature of the chorus actually works really well for me. I didn't like it initially, but I've now come to really like the gear shift from the picturesque verses to the blunt delivery of the chorus. It's a song about feeling helpless, and I think those raw words within the chorus actually work well because they're cut from a completely different cloth to the rest of the song.