(Featured photo by Michelle Baumval)
On September 22, it is National Voter Registration Day in America.
Philadelphia’s emo pop-punk icons The Wonder Years issued themselves a challenge: to register 1,000 new voters/voter actions by October 20. If the goal was reached in time, they’d release a new song.
And that, they did it!
In collaboration with HeadCount.org, the band celebrates making their deadline and registering over 1,000 voter actions with the release of “Brakeless”, a brand-new song streaming everywhere now.
Stream/buy the track here: smarturl.it/TWYBrakeless
Over the course of their career, The Wonder Years have consistently evolved, reaching new heights from record to record. So naturally, they found a way to challenge themselves when deciding how to properly commemorate the upcoming milestones of their earlier work.
Written and recorded in the style of their 2010 breakout album “The Upsides“, “Brakeless” is one of two new songs that The Wonder Years crafted to help commemorate the back-to-back 10 year anniversaries of that album + its follow-up, 2011’s “Suburbia I’ve Given You All & Now I’m Nothing“.
Watch the visual for “Brakeless” here:
Vocalist Dan Campbell explains the retrospective writing approach on the new song:
I was going through old hard-drives full of demos and voice notes when I stumbled onto an idea I had that never got brought to the band: “What if we tried to go back and write songs that sounded like those records? What would that sound like?”
Using that voice note as a jumping-off point, the band put themselves back in that headspace, shaking loose old memories to create something that would feel at home on “The Upsides“. To do that, the entire team from that era was brought back to help––Steve Evetts, who produced “Suburbia“, agreed to produce and Vince Ratti, who produced and mixed “The Upsides“, came back to mix. The artwork was also done by Mitchell Wojcik, who created the original and iconic “The Upsides” album cover.
And much like “The Upsides” found The Wonder Years and Campbell at a turning point, “Brakeless” came together despite the disruption of a global pandemic and a hurricane that flooded several members basements and the control room at the studio they were recording in. When the band finally came together to record, they did so in masks and face shields after temperature checks and hand sanitizer. It also obviously wasn’t safe for anyone to fly, so through some mix of technology and magic, Steve produced from his studio in Garden Grove while the band tracked at Retro City in Germantown, PA. The result is a song that has the energy and gallows humour of their breakout record but with the experience and creativity that comes with 10+ years of touring and releasing ever-evolving music.
For the last four years, The Wonder Years have put together an incredible Halloween extravaganza, featuring a stacked line-up where each band would play both a cover set and an original set. To say TWY took their cover sets seriously would be an understatement––complete with costumes and full-on personality mirroring, they’ve taken on the songs of bands like Limp Bizkit and Queen. Unfortunately this year, with traditional shows off the table, The Wonder Years were once again forced to adapt, but that seems to only have upped the ante.
This year’s Occasionally Annual Halloween Extravaganza will feature the six-piece band splitting into two groups for duelling Blink-182 cover sets, as well as a full-band TWY set. It all goes down on October 30 and tickets are on sale now with an option to purchase a ticket alone or get one free with any merch item: thewonderyears.myshopify.com/collections/live-stream-merch
What The Wonder Years have done so effortlessly over the course of their career, and most recently on their last album “Sister Cities“, is no small feat; through poetic lyricism, ambient guitar swells, and Death Cab-levels of crashing momentum, the Philadelphia-based group truly transforms. Whereas they once sang of the plagues of growing up, they now take a massive, unexpected leap forward both sonically and thematically, now speaking confidently to the world at large.
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