Golden Mixtape

If The Wonder Years are talking about this generation, the one that contains those of us in our late 20’s and early 30’s, then I’d have to disagree that we’re the greatest generation. We’re selfish and focused on whose tragedy is bigger (shout out to Showtime’s Shameless on that one). I could go on about how I am a part of this generation and break it down further, but I won’t. I’ll just include this right here and say that it contains a rant I did about this very topic just the other day, and then get to the core of what we’re here for, The Wonder Years’ The Greatest Generation. Nothing like it reminded me of The Upsides, a couple screamed Suburbia and the rest was an inclination that The Wonder Years are growing up more and more with each record; both personally and musically.

It seems like saying something negative about a Wonder Years’ record is taboo nowadays. They’re the pop punk princes and should be treated like royalty to most, but honey…I’m here to say that there was at least one moment on The Greatest Generation that I wasn’t doing hardcore flips over. By the title alone I wanted to love “Teenage Parents,” but it did as much for me as a rerun of Teen Mom 2 (who even knows those girls?). Other songs like “Cul-de-sac” and “An American Religion (FSF)” fell somewhere in the middle, balancing between “Teenage Parents” and the next few that got my personal seal of approval.

The singles we’ve already heard like “Passing Through A Screen Door” and “Dismantling Summer” were the songs that I thought could’ve been tacked onto Suburbia as B-sides. The other thing that made The Greatest Generation seem like the last Wonder Years record was the way it started and finished. Like that record, Greatest Generation started with a song I thought was one of the top one, “There, There.” Soupy is actually singing when this one starts (he actually does that more often than not on this record). Then things wrap up with the best song, I think, “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” Both have lines about laughing at the wrong time and not at the right time, so it was a great way to come full circle.

Musically The Wonder Years pop punk ways have matured, but they’re still writing songs about being an awkward adult, “Passing Through A Screen Door.” Which I totally identified with…Being 26 and watching everyone you grew up with getting married and having babies, while your biggest dilemma is planning a Disney themed birthday party (yes, I did this year). It’s likely that if you’ve been with The Wonder Years from the start, then you’re not going anywhere when it comes to The Greatest Generation. If you like the new wave of pop punk then you’ll have to make sure to pick up The Wonder Years’ The Greatest Generation, out May 14^th on Hopeless Records.