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About twice a year I manage to get back to my hometown of Syracuse, New York. I’ve always been an avid pedestrian, so inevitably I end up taking some long walks around the neighborhood. The past couple years, my soundtrack has become The Wonder Years, because as I’ve gotten older, my relationship to home has changed dramatically. Like most angsty teenagers, all I wanted was to get out, and now that I have, there are many times when I desperately want to be back. Home is complicated, it can be suffocating, but it’s familiar. I spend a lot of time aching for the cold and snow of a Syracuse winter, but realistically would I ever be able to live there again? I don’t know. That question has gotten a lot harder to answer the longer I’ve been away.

And so, while The Upsides is about getting out, Suburbia, I’ve Given You All… is about coming back and learning the reasons you might want to stay, even if things aren’t the same as when you left them. In the intro for today, I talked about the three songs that really tie the album together, but there are moments throughout the whole album that really exemplify the truly complicated relationship that can exist between a person and where, or what, home is.

“Summers in PA” is about the nostalgia we feel for fleeting moments that have just passed. The late summer nights we remember from our youth, and how the recreation never lives up to the memories, but it’s because you and your friends change, hopefully for the better. The bridge screams “We’re sick of running away/We’ll stay,” and it’s a line that calls back to the end of “Bar Bands.” Getting out didn’t solve all the problems Campbell thought it would, and coming back isn’t the end of the world.

“Coffee Eyes” is the winter of “Summers In PA.” It’s the darker memories, friendships falling apart, spending the night in the hospital, all centered around a townie diner. It’s the places that gave you sanctuary when you needed it the most, and knowing that no matter what, they’re still there for you after all these years. For Campbell, this diner is an anchor, a comfort in knowing some things never change.

And finally, “Hoodie Weather,” the penultimate track, which sees Campbell finally accepting his home as a flawed, probably fundamentally broken place. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to save. All the friends from “Bar Bands” are still here, working their shitty jobs, struggling with addiction or poverty or both. The kids graduating from high school have the same itch he once did, eager to leave and see what the world has to offer, a journey that changed who he was, maybe for the better, maybe not. But the trip was worth it.

The refrain of “I’ve got my grandmother’s veins in the back of my hands and just a hint of a South Philly accent/I was born here/I’ll probably die here/Let’s go home,” is acceptance. Campbell’s finally made his peace. This town made him the person he is, made him strong enough to handle being out on his own, and it has made him strong enough to come back, “I won’t run away/Cause as fucked as this place got it made me me.” It doesn’t mean he can never leave again, he can and will, but this place will always be here.

Like I said in the intro for today, No Closer To Heaven is a deeper examination of death, and in particular, how the loss of Pellone so affected the band, and how that loss is likely never something that they will be able to shake. But it’s also about trying to figure out what to do with that anger and sadness. “We’re no saviors if we can’t save our brothers.” So how do we do that? No Closer To Heaven doesn’t get a definitive answer to that question, but that it asks it in the first place is important, because after a loss, we eventually have to start healing. That process never ends, and we are never the same person we were before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

The swelling chorus of voices on “Brothers &” cuts directly to the opening guitar riff of “Cardinals.” It builds on the anger that Campbell has been holding onto all these years, this time unleashing it not only on himself, but the society that ignores and punishes addiction. He oscillates between blaming himself for not doing more and raging at an illness and a system he is powerless to control. Even though he knows that he is not to blame for Pellone’s death, he plays the what if game-what if he had called more, what if they had hung out one last time, what if that tour had been timed differently. But in the end, there’s nothing that can be done except be there for the people that are still here. We’re no saviors if we can’t save our brothers, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others to save.

“Cigarettes and Saints” is the centerpiece of No Closer to Heaven, and the song that fully encapsulates what the years of anger and guilt have been building towards. Opening with organ chords and a lonely guitar line, Campbell sings about the day of Pellone’s funeral, an extended take on “You Made Me Want To Be A Saint.” But where that song was filled the rage of immediacy and shock, “Cigarettes and Saints” is, at least partially, what Campbell said Pellone wouldn’t have wanted his song to be, a ballad. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a powerful, beautiful track, probably one of the strongest and most poignant in TWY’s catalogue. Five years later, Campbell still seems to be cycling through the stages of grief, this song oscillating between acceptance and anger. He pictures his friend in heaven, a place he doesn’t believe exists. But he wants to imagine Pellone goofily singing along to songs he loved and bugging heavenly hosts for a smoke. He is unforgettable, and Campbell promises to keep his memory with him always, the spring bloom of flowers an annual reminder.

But as the bridge slowly builds, the song takes a fierce, rage filled turn. Campbell begins low, like someone trying to remain calm as they speak through gritted teeth. He puts the blame squarely on a pharmaceutical industry that doesn’t give two shits about the lives it destroys, it justs wants people hooked and paying. And finally the song explodes in a wall of distorted guitar and soaring background vocals repeating, again, “We’re no saviors, if we can’t save our brothers,” as Campbell screams against a faceless machine that only cares about a bottom line, that took his friend. But he won’t let them take anyone else he loves. Pellone is gone, and there’s no way to get him back, but the best way honor him is to make sure it doesn’t happen to his friends, his brothers.

Suburbia, I’ve Given You All, And Now I’m Nothing builds a bit on the The Upsides’ themes of trying to fight depression through sheer power of will, but it finally starts to realize, in moments of desperation, that sometimes it is necessary to ask for help.

The album opens with “Came Out Swinging,” a song that was brought into this world as a set closer (and almost always is at this point in TWY’s career) about life on the road and the pain of readjusting to being home. I’m going to have a lot more to say about Suburbia, I’ve Given You All… on Thursday, but I just want to touch briefly on “Came Out Swinging” because it shows this glimmer of growth that I talked about yesterday. Like I said, the song is about the loneliness of readjustment, of getting home after a year of touring the world with your best friends, of being truly alone for the first time in months. Campbell sings he spent the “year as a ghost,” away from Philly and the friends and family he left behind. He moves into a friend’s basement and hibernates for the winter, writing songs and learning to be by himself. The depression ebbs and flows, and the bridge builds until it explodes into a yell of “I came out swinging from a South Philly basement…I spent the winter writing songs about getting better, and if I’m being honest, I’m getting there.” It’s not the rallying cry of “I’m not sad anymore,” it’s something more powerful. Isolating himself didn’t fix the problem totally, he’s on his way, but it’s the coming out swinging, into a basement show caked in stale beer and the sweat of his friends which makes things feel a little brighter.

“Don’t let Me Cave In,” is a dark song, frantic and rushed in points, mimicking Campbell’s lyrics about quickly collapsing. And in it, he is finally actively asking for help from someone, a huge step from fighting tooth and nail on his own to get better. But it only happens because he seems at the very edge of what he can handle. He’s crying at the airport, not able to make it to a dinner reservation, imagining himself collapse like the Sears building in Philly that was demo-ed during his childhood. He calls himself a mess. And it’s in that moment of desperation that he finally reaches out to whoever this song is addressed to, “don’t let me cave in.” No one person can fix his sadness, but realizing that he can ask for help is huge. Realizing when the options are ask or collapse, whatever that means, and choosing to ask, means truly not letting sadness win.

“I’m not sad anymore, I’m just tired of this place, the weight of the world would be okay, if it would pick a shoulder to lean on, so I could stand up straight.”

These lyrics open The Upsides, The Wonder Years’ second full length, and they act as a mission statement for the record. Struggles with mental health are at the core of TWY. Depression and anxiety loom large over a lot of their catalogue, and I think it’s one of the reasons fans connect to the band so much. They are upfront and honest about these struggles, and they act as a recurring theme because mental health issues don’t go away. They aren’t easily resolved, and living with them is a journey that often ebbs and flows. The Upsides begins with the the statement “I’m not sad anymore,” but as the band’s career has gone on, that hasn’t always been the case. Sadness returns, but then there are moments of joy and relief, followed by more lows. Depression is lonely, but it can’t be fought alone, because that is a sure way to lose.

The Upsides is about trying to find your place in a world that increasingly doesn’t seem to fit, while trying to bounce back from a depressive episode. These depression cycles pop up again and again in TWY’s discography, and as time has gone on, they’ve become a routine part of their lives. “It’s Never Sunny In South Philadelphia”  exemplifies the band’s early attitudes towards mental illness, as something to fight by yourself, to avoid putting on anyone else. Depression is easy to blame on yourself. Oh, it’s not so bad, other folks have it worse, I just need to get out of my head. And depression wants to trick you into thinking that so it wins. In the chorus Campbell insists that “most days are bad days, but we can’t just wait, for someone to pull me off of the concrete,” and then “I can’t believe I got this weak,” implying that this sadness is his fault and he’s the only one that can drag himself out of the mess he got himself in. That he should be the one to do it, because that’s what he’s been taught as a white man in a society of white masculinity. Sadness is weakness, and you cannot be weak.

And that’s one of the biggest ways depression fools you, by making you think that it’s a problem of your own making, and that you and you alone are the only person that can fix it. This lie runs throughout The Upsides, from the opening line of “My Last Semester” to the grasp of hope at the end of “All My Friends Are In Bar Bands,” that getting out of this town will turn a switch and make it better. But there’s no magic cure, and as the band’s career goes on, that impulse and hope never truly fades, but it comes with the realization that mental illness, depression, is not something you have to go through alone, and that you shouldn’t go through alone. 

Pop punk is a young man’s game. Pop punk is a young white man’s game. Pop punk is a young straight white man’s game. Pop punk is a young straight cisgender white man’s game. And from The Descendents to The Story So Far, young straight cisgender white men have been writing songs of heartbreak and middle class suburban angst for decades.

At first glance, I’m the ideal consumer of pop-punk. I’m a white dude from the suburbs who looks 21 on a good day and gets read as straight most of the time. I even have a tattoo of a piece of pizza (holding a sword above her head. I call her Piz-Ra: Princess of Power). But I haven’t always been a dude, and I definitely have pretty much never been straight. My suburban upbringing was always complicated by living near the poverty line for good chunks of my childhood, and as I near 30, my relationship to my hometown has become much fonder than I ever imagined it would be as a teenager.

But despite all these qualifiers, I still love pop-punk, and it’s a genre I’ve managed to find a small piece of a home in. A big reason for that (aside from the obvious nostalgia we all have for the music we love when we’re young) is The Wonder Years, a band that has made me feel seen in a genre that overwhelmingly does not see people that aren’t young, white, straight, cisgender men (although, luckily, that tide has started to shift a bit more rapidly in recent years).

I first listened to The Wonder Years in 2012, not long after their second album, Suburbia, I Have Given You All, And Now I’m Nothing, was released. I was living in rural Iowa, 9 months after graduating from college and being rejected from a veritable slew of PhD programs (which, sidenote, has been a fantastic thing in the long run, but definitely didn’t feel like it at the time). It was the early weeks of a year-long AmeriCorps program that eventually would have me traveling and working all over the upper midwest. I had come out as transgender a couple years before, and I was navigating a world that did not see me the way I saw me. But to be fair, I still didn’t know how I wanted to be seen, if I wanted to be seen at all. I forget how or where I found The Wonder Years, but I heard the opening track to that album, “Came Out Swinging,” and knew immediately that this band was going to be important to me. I was being seen during a time where I felt like a ghost in my own life. I’ve stuck with them ever since, and as all of the members are only a couple years older than me, I’ve felt like I’ve been able to grow up with them.

Later today, I’m going to write a bit about why TWY’s brand of pop-punk is important in a more general sense, and why I think they’re the best band in the genre today. But throughout the week I’m going to be saying a bit more about how I’ve entwined The Wonder Years’ evolution with my own. They’ve helped me figure out what kind of man I want to be, wrestle with my complicated feelings over my hometown, face my struggles with mental health, and so much more.

they’re gonna be getting rid of microsoft paint / ms paint rly soon and replacing it w/ another program so i just wanna give ms paint a huge shout out for giving every fandom kid a start in drawing fanart and being a reliable and basic program for all these years…..ur truly gonna be missed, comrade

rip ms paint, taken from us at 32 years old u will be missed

Yayoi Kusama - Fear of Death, 2008. 

sleep darts dont actually work on orisa, shes pretending. orisa saw they put everyone else to sleep and thinks it’s a game

liberal feminist politics: if you wear flannel you have masculine privilege and oppress anyone currently wearing lipstick, and that’s what gender is. 

Some of you guys are so nice and sweet! Some of y'all? Demons

Some of you guys are so nice and sweet! Some of y'all? Demons

Oh, woe is me!  To be transformed, transmogrified, shapeshifted, bewitched, and bemoaned!  To be naught but a gourd!