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.

a b "The ARIA Report: Week Commencing 3 October 2022". The ARIA Report. No.1700. Australian Recording Industry Association. 3 October 2022. pp.7, 10. Feibel, Adam (September 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years Find Defiance in Defeat on 'The Hum Goes on Forever' ". Exclaim! . Retrieved April 17, 2023. 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. Thor’s Hammer isn’t just a curio, though. There’s a lot of gnarly stuff on The Hum Goes on Forever. Over the years, Brasch, Cavaliere and Steinborn have become dialled in to the emotional squalls of Campbell’s writing. As he has developed further as a storyteller, scratching away the pop-punk veneer to reveal lyrics that meld Craig Finn-style parables with vivid first-person writing, his bandmates have found ways to adapt, retreating to a whisper one moment before bringing out the blood and thunder the next.Sacher, Andrew (July 20, 2022). "The Wonder Years announce tour; reunited Fireworks opening!". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022.

It’s not quite as simple as calling The Wonder Years a pop-punk band anymore, even if they did make their name that way. To many they remain as one of, if not the , greatest pop-punk outfit in the history of the genre. While their output in the early 2010s was definitive, they have since matured and wisened to the point where they’ve transcended the scene that they were once forefathers of. ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ is the latest instalment from this legendary Lansdale sextet and marks their most complete and accomplished record to date. When we were much younger, it was, ‘Does this rip? Is it fast? Is it loud? Yes, let’s go.’ And people say bands overthink things, or try and get too complex for no good reason, later in their career. We didn’t want to necessarily do that with this record, too. We wanted to make room for the on-the-ground-in-a-sea-of-pedals experimentation, but make sure it had a reason, it had a place, and had an intention.” I don’t want to die. I want to light you through your darker months. And I want to swallow the sun, before it can swallow us.”Sacher, Andrew (April 21, 2022). "The Wonder Years return with 'Oldest Daughter,' confirm new album". BrooklynVegan . Retrieved September 23, 2022. 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 Philadelphia group’s three guitarists join the Zoom call in intervals. Matt Brasch, who plays a Les Paul Studio in tandem with a Kurt Cobain Jaguar, is there early, and when Cavaliere, another Les Paul Studio guy, joins a couple of minutes later the pair are obviously stoked to see each other. “Matt Brasch, long time no see!” Cavaliere says excitedly, having swapped Philly for Atlanta in 2021. Their catalog’s narrative unity proceeds not only from self-reference, but from the material’s indelible proximity to Campbell’s lived experience. He’s spent nearly two decades cataloguing the ghosts that haunt his family, addiction and mental illness. “I don’t want my children growing up to be anything like me,” he once sang on “Passing Through a Screen Door,” when fatherhood was only a theoretical. “I feel like the people deserve an update,” he told me. In “Songs About Death,” Campbell sings, “Out in front of everyone/I sing them songs about death/And they sing along/It’s gotta stop.” It’s impossible to know what an audience at a Wonder Years show will look like in 2022, or how the crowd will react when the band play a song like “ Cigarettes & Saints” or “ Dismantling Summer.” But it’s easy to imagine there will be a lot of people leaning on each other, as they carry a countless number of fears across a world that’s inexplicably unraveling.

As powerful and sure of itself as The Hum Goes on Forever sounds, its writing process was littered with challenges, the pandemic chief among them. The Wonder Years might run off being able to see the whites of their audience’s eyes night after night, but their creative process is founded on trust and communication stemming from a decades-long friendship. “We discovered how hard it was to write with Dan hiding in my laundry room with the door shut, and all of us with masks on,” Steinborn says. Brasch takes over: “We all keep our emotions on our faces.”Mitchell, Matt (September 22, 2022). "How the Wonder Years got older and wiser with The Hum Goes on Forever". Alternative Press . Retrieved September 23, 2022.