The Wonder Years Band • Page 104

It's on the Target deluxe version of the CD

 

Sophie's Floorboard is your friend

 

Super intrigued by an acoustic Lightening mostly due to the back half of that song thats hard to hear. Curious how thats handled acoustically lol

 

Went back to The Upsides today and holy shit, even today if a band came out with this album it would blow a massive hole in the scene.

Imagine being in a pop punk band and hearing that. You just can't compete.

The fact I'd put it third/fourth best of their albums says a lot.

 

oh ok

 

Ehhh I deleted my comment cause there’s no real need for negativity. Don’t love The Upsides though but glad other people do

 

lol now it looks like I'm disagreeing with the previous commenter

ftr: love that album, especially the deluxe bonus tracks. actually "...Bar Bands" and "Logan Circle: A New Hope" are two of my favourite Wonder Years songs

 

Hahaha sorry! Just felt like my negativity was better erased. I actually love Logan Circle A New Hope too so it’s not all bad!

 

I’ve never had an album change my life like The Upsides did. I remember listening to the leak and being so completely floored; from there I got into that whole scene with Transit, Tigers Jaw, MO, Balance, etc. It was completely complementary to my life with just starting college and everything I was going through and feeling.

That said, I tried listening to it a few weeks back and WOOF does it not hold up beyond nostalgia. I think it is very much a product of its time and place.

 

The Upsides is one of the first albums I ever listened to front to back. For a while I just listened to singles or whatever songs I could find on YouTube. In high school everyone I knew went through this phase of loving pop punk, emo, metal core, etc but only certain things were “cool”. For whatever reason one of my friends really dug “My Last Semester” and that was all it took for me to fall in love

 

I think its value for me as a music listener can't be overstated (although i don't spin it too often now) it was the record that me and my entire group of friends knew by heart. It was the album that truly invited me into the scene of underground punk music. it led me through the struggles of high school with a message of positivity. it changed my life and I can wholeheartedly say I would not have most of the friends and some of the best experiences in my life without it.

that being said yeah I do think TGG and Sister Cities are better album but that really shows how good the band is.

 

The Upsides will always be one of my favorites of all time

Suburbia and TGG are definitely steps up and 10/10 albums for me as well but The Upsides really did change everything for me

 

I think they've gotten better as they've gone on, with the caveat that No Closer to Heaven's production really holds it back. If it wasn't for The Upsides coming into my life at a very specific time there's a good chance I probably wouldn't be alive today so I can't overstate the impact it had on my life, even if I regard it these days as my least favourite TWY album. That is, if we don't count GSOI, but the band don't really consider it canon these days so...

 

yeah i think if they got a do over on NCTH it could have come out a lot better. oh well! still has some bangers and sometimes you need a transition album here and there

 

Yep they have a similar career arc to Thursday to me. Full Colapse/Upsides hits the scene in a big way, WATT/Suburbia just builds off the previous and is in a lot of ways better, ACBTLD/TGG is the band at their “most” and feels like a fully realized vision of what the band is, CE/NCTH is more of a sidestep than a progression but is still good (also another weird parallel is it’s the album where both Geoff and Dan really started writing more about social/political issues), and ND/SS is a reinvigorating step forward and then some and is arguably their respective bands best works

 

The Upsides is probably my least favorite TWY album (GSOI not withstanding), but it completely changed my life in ways I can't even describe and helped shape much of the person I am today. That's how much the band's catalog, as a whole, means to me.

 

Burst and Decay Volume II coming 2/14. “We Look Like Lightning” is streaming.

 

Here for it.

 

The bridge sounds really cool in this version.

 

I think I like this version more than the original to be honest.

 

Great tracklist. I hope this becomes a regular thing they do between releases. I’d be down for an album of original songs in this vein too

 

Flipping the script for an acoustic album and then fleshing out into full band versions would be so fucking cool.

 

Really hope they don't play Washington Square Park acoustic on this tour though

 

That was a really beautiful rendition of We Look Like Lightning.

 

would be the same level of anti climatic as the menzingers doing acoustic Casey this past tour.