I literally knew nothing about this band prior to stumbling upon this song, excepting one lurid notion that they were spearheaders of that depressingly lousy "easycore" subgenre kicked off by mainstream luminaries New Found Glory circa 2000-something. If you're not "in the know", easycore is essentially a hi-fi, spotlighted pastiche of the gnarliest, most consumer-friendly bastardizations of pop-punk, melodic hardcore, and to varying degrees of misfortune, metalcore (for the pinnacle of this misfortune, see Chunk! No Captain Chunk). While I can't yet speak to the quality of The Wonder Years as a band, I have to admit, this is an incredibly solid track I've found stuck in my head for a week. While the sound is as full-bodied, high end and claustrophobically compressed as any given easycore staple, aside the brief flirtation with hardcore's gang chants, I see no real parallels to the Four Year Strong/Set Your Goals book of songcraft. In fact, this strikes me more as convergence point in which the stylistic progenitor's have finally clashed with the mainstream plunderers of said style, and honestly, it works really well.
That said, what most surprised me here was the relative depth of the lyrics. I realize the following sentiments are a redux of another recently disclosed sentiment of this blog, but I've observed the parameters for what I truly relish in pop-punk restrict notably over the past couple years. Much of the "guilty pleasure" shit I indulged in has been shaved down to sweet nothing, and almost every early classic has been all but phased out from the annual album rotation. Why the latter? Mostly the nauseating archaism of the lyrics. I don't need to hear boring sub-Ramones profundities about wanting to take a girl on a date, being a "lame-o" in the high school hierarchy and other caricature-esque encapsulations of youth culture. Who the fuck relates to this shit? I generally seek out pop-punk that can deliver an emotionally coddling, cathartic experience, so pretty much everything dancing about the universe of The Queers, Smoking Popes, Beatnik Termites, Ramones, Green Day, The Exploding Hearts, and The Mr. T Experience fall out outside my reach presently. This isn't to say these bands are entirely devoid of merits, but here's the deal: if music doesn't reverberate within me on a viscerally emotional level*, I likely frequent it's wares due to its fascinating anthropological/historical posturing, psychic usefulness, and out-of-time sound. Pop-Punk just generally doesn't interest me on that level, so I better curl my toes, throw up my fists and bite my bottom lip to it. It might be an embarrassing admission, but lines like this do me in:
I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure what I'm looking for
I'm a voice on a phone that you rarely answer anymore
I came in here alone
Came in here alone
But that doesn't scare me like it did seven months ago
I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure where home is anymore
I came out swinging from a South Philly basement
Caked in stale beer and sweat under half-lit fluorescents
I spent the winter writing songs about getting better
And if I'm being honest, I'm getting there
(*if you're getting hung up on the term "emotional" here i.e. "all music is emotional" then try to focus on the context - a cultural niche where "emo" is a subgenre of music)
On an unrelated note, have you heard the new Gaslight Anthem single, "45"? I've strayed pretty far from the band since 2008's The '59 Sound put me in a coma (yes, how controversial), but I ended up hearing this a number of times whilst slaying minutes digging for unlikely gems in the local FYE, of all places. While the song is certainly solid and devoid of that shitty, reverb-on-fucking-everything Springsteen/Replacements production style, the greatest gift it gave was reminding me how great Tilt was. How? Listen to the chorus. Wouldn't it sound way better with an upward lift in the vocals?
You hear the similarity there, right? No? Then I guess that was drawing a long bow, but it is where my brain guided me. Somehow I imagine re-igniting interest in Tilt wasn't the band's intention here, but I'm glad it did. I should cover this troupe here; they wrote a ton of amazing, bass-heavy pop-punk anthems that go relatively unheard nowadays, perhaps due to their lackluster 3rd and 4th LPs.
Yeah, actually, listening to them back-to-back sort of invalidates this entire section of the post.
Dammit, I never know how to end posts.
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