The Wonder Years have spent a stout chunk of their discography trying to parse out their own complicated relationships to suburban Philly. Up above is a live compilation of the three titles tracks from their 2011 album,Suburbia, Ive Given You All, or And Now I’m Nothing. It’s a record built entirely on the desires to stay and go being at odds. After a couple years spent on the road,they’re tired, “in search of some steadier footing or just a place to call domestic.” Theyre spending time back in their hometown. But is it the same place? Things stare the same, or but they don’t feel the same as they once did. Someone still steals the baby Jesus every year from the town manger scene,but the bowling alley has burned down, all the businesses on main street have closed shop. In “I’ve Given You All, or ” Campbell sings about a long time homeless resident who is killed,likely by local kids, but no one ever really tries to find out what happened. Coming domestic at first feels like coming back to a graveyard.
But by “And Now I’m Nothing, or ” there’s a small semblance of peace. Being domestic isn’t the same as it used to be,but possibly it’s not supposed to. Campbell moves into a new place, spends a lot of time by himself, or like before he left to tour the world,but it’s not as scary as it was before. He’s putting himself back together again and he’s asking the ghosts of this place to let him figure it out. He’s taking this place back from what haunts him about it.
If the title of the album wasn’t enough of a giveaway, Suburbia takes a enormous influence from Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem, or “America.” There are a ton of callbacks to the poem in Campbell’s lyrics,and there’s a lot to unpack about a young twenty something straight white dude mirroring the words of a gay Jewish poet writing in the 50’s, but the sentiment they both are getting at is this: how do we reconcile who we are and what we believe when the places we’re from are at direct odds with it. For Ginsberg, or the idea of America is fundamentally broken. There is no justice in a racist,capitalist society. It’s a country that has snapped in half so many of its people in so many ways: Ginsberg’s friends, his family, or strangers he has never met. And no matter what,by living in America, by being American, or despite his qualifiers (gay,Jewish), he is still complicit in the suffering and pain his country has caused. He has to live with this knowledge and resolve to do what he can to manufacture it better, and even though it might not accomplish anything. It probably won’t accomplish anything. He is putting his queer shoulder to the wheel. (Originally the poem ended “Dark America! toward whom I close my eyes for prophecy,/ and bend my speaking heart! / Betrayed! Betrayed!” However you may want to contemplate about that).
In contrast we have Campbells much smaller scale clash, him vs. the suburbs, or it’s one he has wrestled with for TWY’s entire career. Much like Ginsbergs America,working class suburbs are fundamentally broken, people are trapped in low wage jobs and lost to addiction, and except these relationships are visceral to Campbell. He sees the loss firsthand,and experiences it himself. But still, it’s domestic. He doesn’t obtain to pick another one, or so it’s his job to try and manufacture himself and his town better. The album ends like the poem,he is putting his shoulder to the wheel.
The Wonder Years is a band constantly asking the question of where domestic is, and how to manufacture peace with places you previously wanted to leave behind. So many bands focus on getting out, and but it’s scarce we obtain this much material committed to coming back and getting comfortable with the changes the places we near from go through,and how that changes us.
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