The Hum Goes On Forever

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The greatest peaks, and some of Campbell’s own favorite songs, on The Hum Goes On Forever come via the cuts not heard before the full release. The album is bookended by “Doors I Painted Shut” and “You’re the Reason I Don’t Want the World to End,” two songs written for Campbell’s wife Alison and his oldest son Wyatt. The former is a product of a postpartum depression he battled with after Wyatt’s birth. The rest of the pieces fell into place over the following six months in scattered writing conflabs and sessions with Evetts and Will Yip. The level of care behind this drawn out spell of creativity is reflected in the way The Hum Goes on Forever moves – surging from each highpoint in search of another one that says something different about how the Wonder Years came to be where they are today. “If the song makes it through the six of us in a room, it’s always going to be a Wonder Years song,” Cavaliere says. “This record, and how it came together, was us trying to trust that fact and not overthink it. The first type of fan is the pop punk kid who uncovered some of their favourite bands today almost a decade ago, along the lines of Man Overboard, The Story So Far, State Champs and of course, The Wonder Years. You wear your pop punk heart on your sleeve, throw pizza parties with your small group of friends every weekend and probably drink way too much beer. Your go-to karaoke song is ‘ My Last Semester‘ and you’ve thrashed Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothingon your record player so much, you need more than one copy. To summarise, you’re more familiar with the band’s first two LPs than anything else.

Gordon, Arielle (September 29, 2022). "The Wonder Years: The Hum Goes on Forever Album Review". Pitchfork . Retrieved September 29, 2022. Spoiler alert though: it’s not a complete miss of a record. On the contrary, The Hum Goes On Forever is the band’s most powerful record yet, in an attempt to bring together all eras of the band under one umbrella. From the opening bars of ‘ Doors I Painted Shut’, you can most definitely feel vocalist Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell’s struggle to find his words in his music. This record is a culmination of the musician’s challenges throughout a pandemic, finding deeper purpose and ultimately, coming to terms with his new role as a father. a b Sacher, Andrew (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years on fatherhood, Mark Hoppus, and making a record that's RIYL The Wonder Years". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.

Sacher, Andrew (July 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years announce tour; reunited Fireworks opening!". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.

As the people who have lived through it, I think there’s an interesting energy where there’s the question of your older works being like a different band,” guitarist Casey Cavaliere says. “Every band evolves, right? We wouldn’t have gotten here if we didn’t have those albums where it was more about the energy and how fast we can play. From the off, frontman Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell declares “I don’t want to die” and in doing so introduces the overarching message of this album. The sentiment, albeit gloomy, is one of hope. Following shifts in perspectives and approaches to life since the birth of his first child, Soupy uses this album as a vehicle to explore what it means to live with “the hum”. He explains, “there’s always a low hum of sadness, a low rumbling of ennui. So ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ is the understanding that I’m always going to have it, it’s always going to be there, it’s always been there for literal generations of my family and it’s important that I accept that and live and work through it.” Emerging in the mainstream pop punk era of the mid 2000s, The Wonder Years have themselves over the years grown up with and beyond the confines of their overarching parent genre.

Blow for blow

Feibel, Adam (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years Find Defiance in Defeat on 'The Hum Goes on Forever' ". Exclaim! . Retrieved April 17, 2023.