Philadelphia pop-punk powerhouse, The Wonder Years, brought their latest anniversary tour to the House of Blues in Boston this past week. The veteran group brought some fresher names on tour: Action/Adventure, Anxious and Sweet Pill, to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of their critically acclaimed LP, The Greatest Generation.
The Wonder Years are one of the older names in modern pop-punk, dating back to 2005 and hitting their stride in the early 2010s with their two releases, The Upsides (2010) and Suburbia (2011). Both records took a more realistic and mature approach to the music they grew up in, complemented by singer Dan Campbell’s affinity for poetry, prose and irony, as detailed in his lyrics. Following their heightened popularity, the Wonder Years took their time (albeit less than two years) to record their follow-up, which resulted in their magnum opus The Greatest Generation, breathing a new life into a scene that was already in a revival state. Over the past decade, the band has released three more records that improve upon the last, cementing the Wonder Years as one of the most consistent bands in the scene.
The stage was set up with a three-dimensional figure that adorns the cover of The Greatest Generation, which could be described as a cartoonish, eerie-looking version of the devil, illuminated in red light as the band took the stage. An audio clip of the band recollecting their time while recording their fourth studio album plays over the speakers and the album begins just as it did ten years ago – “You’re just trying to read, but I’m always standing in your light.” The crowd rushes the barricade to scream the lyrics with Campbell, and they don’t let up until they reach catharsis.
Without skipping a beat, bassist Josh Martin slides into “Passing Through a Screen Door,” the lead single on the album, and anyone that wasn’t moving before certainly was now. The compounding energy from “There, There” feeds immediately into the explosion of the second track, leading to crowd surfs, moshing and circle pits. Campbell holds the microphone out to the crowd for them to sing the words, but it isn’t necessary with how loud they already are, celebrating the years of anxiety and pressure that have stuck with them since the album’s release in 2013.
The band goes through the album track-by-track until they finally reach the halfway point and Campbell stops to tell a brief anecdote about “The Devil in My Bloodstream.” “We took a leap of faith,” Campbell says, talking about how unconventional and scary it was to include a piano ballad in the middle of such a dense album, but I’m sure anyone will agree that the song gives listeners space to breathe and digest what they have just heard – before smashing them right in the face with the latter half of the song. They continue the run of their set before they reach the grand finale “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral,” an amazing blend of original songs and a medley of previous tracks that ties the album up in a neat little bow before the band returns to play a second set of other songs from their catalog.
“The Greatest Generation” anniversary tour closes out October 27th in Gainesville, FL at The Fest, though the band has alluded to more tour dates being added in the future.
CATCH THE WONDER YEARS ON TOUR HERE!
LISTEN TO THE WONDER YEARS HERE!
The Wonder Years with openers Sweet pill and Anxious
