“You’re just trying to read/but I’m always standing in your light/You’re just trying to sleep/but I always wake you up to apologize/I’m sorry I don’t laugh at the right times.”
So begins The Greatest Generation, the fourth full-length effort from the Philadelphia based act The Wonder Years. Not with a bang or a catchy hook, but with a somber apology for being a screw-up.
See, The Greatest Generation is actually the last installment in a trilogy of albums that revolve around themes of growing-up, anxiety, and man-against-self conflicts. It’s not the brand of pop-punk that’s fun to listen to with friends, nor the type to accompany a crest-fallen heart. Instead, it’s the side of the genre for people who feel they’re up against the wall, who feel the weight of the world bearing down upon them. However, wallowing in the gutter is far from what makes this sextet who they are.
A few more lines of self-deprecation later, and lead singer Soupy continues to punch himself, again singing the brutally honest and poignant, “I’m sorry I don’t laugh at the right times.” But this time around, it’s different. Accompanied by an angst-filled guitar rift, his voice escalates to that thin line between shouting and singing and he makes one thing clear: he’s fighting back; against himself, against the world, against whatever is thrown at him.
The opening track, “There, There”, sets the tone early and raises the bar. This isn’t just a band-defining song; it’s a genre-defining one.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album doesn’t quite live up to that standard.
There are songs that certainly standout, among which are “Passing Through a Screen Door” and “Dismantling Summer”, the former being a reflection of the singer’s personal life (and how much better his peers seem to be doing) while the latter has arguably the best chorus on the record.
Things pick up to a blistering pace with “The Bastards”, “The Vultures”, and “The Wolves”, and the gang vocals will have you singing along and raising your fists in an alley behind a bar before it segues to the mellow beginnings of “The Devil in My Bloodstream”, a song that interestingly includes a quick history of Midwest America.
The melodies on the record are nothing drastically different from their recent records, except for “Madelyn”, a song that feels as if it was recorded in a garage with a tape recorder (not necessarily a bad thing). But more or less it’s the deceptively fun tunes you can expect from the band. The hooks on “A Raindance in Traffic” and “Cul-de-sac” best exemplify this.
The lyrics are really what stand out on this record. Each song is a little peak into the lives of the band, and in some places it’s more revealing than anything they’ve ever written. Take “Teenage Parents”, which tells the story of how Soupy grew up relatively poor and how that affected how people looked at his future. It’s the hard-nosed, honest lyrics that have gotten them to be the standard-bearers of the genre today. Also littered around are recurring metaphors of devils, pigeons, and war that add longevity.
These are all great songs, and it’s a really great record, but most of the album just doesn’t reach the heights of the first song. And it’s a shame because had it done so, it might have been the pop-punk record of the past decade.
The finale, “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral”, is arguably the jewel of the record (the only other contender being “There, There”) and ends the album magnificently. The song explores subjects such as trying to be good enough for everyone and manning up to your flaws, and without spoiling anything, it really ties the album together. It’s the type of ending that sends shivers down your spine, and is a testament to the band’s creativity. After telling about his life in the previous thirteen tracks, Soupy sends us off with a mantra of sorts, something for us to carry as we take on the battle in our own lives.
The Greatest Generation is a term journalist Tom Brokaw used to describe the generation that grew up in World War I and went on to fight in World War II, a generation that fought because it was the “right thing to do.”
But The Wonder Years have redefined that. If their first full-length, The Upsides, was about fighting anxiety for that better condition just around the corner, and the subsequent Ginbserg-reference-laded Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing was about continuing that struggle with self-doubt and realizing that there might not be an end to it, then The Greatest Generation is about reaffirming that “there’s no sunset on the horizon to ride off to,” but that’s okay.
Sure, we may not have a literal war of bullets and guns, but that’s what makes us the greatest generation: we all have our personal struggles, our personal wars, and we have to deal with that every single day for the rest of our lives. And sometimes it may seem bleak as if we’re losing that war, giving up more space each day. But sometimes it takes an album like this to keep us fighting, not to win, but just not to let life beat us.
In the short album teaser the band posted on youtube, Soupy sums it up: “People say the greatest generation has come and gone, but they’re wrong. They haven’t seen what we’re capable of.”
