As they hit the road to celebrate a decade of their seminal fourth album ‘No Closer To Heaven’, The Wonder Years vocalist Dan Campbell takes us through the grief and growth that inspired it, from front to back.
Brothers &
Our intent is always to make something where, when you put the record on, something interesting happens that you didn’t expect. We’re always looking to invert expectations. I think that one ‘Cardinals’ as a song was done, I knew it had to sit at the top of this record. And I feel like the ampersand used here on ‘Brothers &’ is a little bit undervalued. To me, it should read ‘Brothers & Cardinals’. It is an extension of ‘Cardinals’, or at least a way to extend it back further. I wanted ‘Cardinals’ to be the first real statement song on the record, but I didn’t want it to start the record. I wanted to start by subverting expectations. And we were, on this record, leaning a lot more into some post-rock influences. It’s one of Nick [Steinborn, Guitarist] ’s biggest influences and what he brings to the table the most. So, let’s show that and ham it up right off the bat. Let’s do something no one expects.
Cardinals
Two things happened concurrently with this song, and one of them is a little bit harder to admit because it makes you feel a bit stupider. That one is that this was the first song that we wrote, so it was first in the demo playlist, and I got so used to hearing it first. That’s how I knew that I wanted it to be so early. But at the same time, when this song was written, it lit a little fire in me. One that made me know that we could do this. It felt like it had so much energy and pulse, was so driving and heavy, yet so melodic. It felt like the right way to reintroduce ourselves.
I know that it’s a common conception that this song is about the same person as ‘Cigarettes & Saints’, but that’s not actually true. A lot of songs on this record are less about one person and more about amalgams of several people. But when I’m talking about my brother in this one, I’m talking about my brother. My actual brother, who I’m five years older than, was at a point in their life when they could use some guidance. That older brother figure. And being at the age when he could have used that, I was so myopically and selfishly focused on The Wonder Years. I just felt like I could have been a better big brother here.
But it does play into the record’s conceit that we will always be imperfect, yet the effort to get better still has value. And you can hear that right away.
A Song For Patsy Cline
This song and ‘A Song For Ernest Hemingway’ are twinned in my mind. It was these realisations that all of these people who create or have found some commiseration with were all so deeply depressed. Is it me? Is that my fate too? Do these things go hand in hand? If this is the art you make, then you are destined to always have the pull of that darkness at you.
The writer’s block from this record was driving me crazy, and this was at the intersection of all of those things. But when you believe that the only value is the art you create, and your body and mind start to fail you. You can hear that in this song. ‘So when my vocal cords rip /
So when my knees give in / So when I bury all of this / Who’s gonna give a shit if I’m breathing’. Do I have any value without the art that I make? Then I was thinking about how depressed I was because I couldn’t write. For someone who already feels the pull of that darkness and whose value in this world is intrinsically tied to what they create, not feeling like I could create was really weighing heavily on me.
I Don’t Like Who I Was Then
This song returns to the idea of being better, even when we know we have been imperfect. Looking back at the stupid shit that you do or say as a kid, and instead of accepting that as who you are, you’re so embarrassed about it that you try to bury it. I think right now is a really interesting time in politics because there are people who maybe believed something, and now they are too afraid to admit they were duped, because it would make them feel stupid. So you double down and dig your heels in and say, ‘No, I was definitely right, and I’ve been right the whole time.
So this song is not only saying that it’s okay to evolve, but also that it is good and necessary. You should be purposefully evolving. You look at yourself from 20 years ago and think, ‘Man what a dumbass’. Then you look at yourself from ten years ago and think, ‘Man, what a dumbass’. Then you look at something you did five years ago or something you did last week and still think, ‘Man, what a dumbass.’ You just wanted to keep learning and progressing. And that idea translates to the whole message of this record, that just because it was doesn’t mean that it has to be.
Cigarettes & Saints
I feel like this comes from the amount of time that it takes to process loss and process grief. More so, where your anger should be pointed. I think that when you lose someone, you’re always looking for someone to be pissed at. I feel like that’s just genuinely true, as it’s part of the process. Stage three of the seven stages of grief is anger. It could be anybody, and you point it wherever it feels easiest at the time, but then you go back later and go, ‘Was that appropriate?’ That then leaves you wondering whether there should even be anger at all, and, if so, where it should be focused.
For a song like this, it does one of the things that I am good at. I tell you something personal that affects me deeply, and I allow you to commiserate with me. But then I turn it and go, ‘This is how you can make a change that could affect that’. This is what I am hurt by; this is the system that allowed that to occur, and if you felt similarly hurt, here is the place to direct some of that anger and ire.
There’s such an A-B in this song. The front half is a eulogy, and the back half is a battle cry.
The Bluest Things On Earth
This song is about watching what happens when friends deal with severe mental illness. It’s often in your early 20s when things like schizophrenia start to set in. I’m not a doctor, so don’t quote me on it! But it tends to be true, and I saw it happen to more than one person. It was wild to see that the person you knew had changed so dramatically, and then to try to understand what their life would be like now.
A Song For Ernest Hemingway
There’s a thing that I say all the time. Among the things that I am most grateful for is that what I’m able to do as a songwriter is take the things that have hurt me and break them down into component parts and rebuild them as weapons and tools to hand to you. This was a thing that hurt me, and now you can use it to protect yourself. That’s what we are doing as writers.
Another thing I am grateful for is that, 20 years into a career, moving into our 21st year, we are still writing songs that are as useful to people as the ones from the past. One of the overriding things people say to us is, ‘I listened to this band when I was depressed in college and didn’t understand the world, and that’s when I listened to ‘The Upsides’. Now I have a child, and I feel fearful for the world that they live in, and that’s when I listen to ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’. Thank you for growing with me. What a gift it is to grow with people. To make art that is useful for them at every stage of their life.
Thanks For The Ride
There are two times in the Wonder Years’ history when I have changed a song’s name. It is Madelyn, and in this case, it’s Hannah. This song is the first and only time that we have written a song completely in the studio. We showed up with a record and said, ‘Here are the 13 songs’. I’m really big on the alchemy of records. There’s the light and the dark, the quiet and the loud; they all balance each other. When we were listening back to the album, I remember Steve [Evetts, Producer] looking at me and knowing something was wrong. He said, ‘What’s up?’ and I replied, ‘The balance is off. He knew what I was talking about right away and said, ‘It’s one song too dark. We needed a song that sonically has a little bit of brightness and a little bit of energy.
So, I went home that night and was going through all these lyrics I had, and I remember that I had recorded something years ago with Josh [Martin, Bassist]. A college pr@oject for him. I had been thinking about the person in this song a lot, too. And that part with the name in that project was originally a bridge. That’s not a bridge, that’s a chorus.
I showed up the next day and sang it, and Nick said, ‘That would work well with a progression I have for a verse’. All of a sudden, things started snapping into place really quick. It was again a moment when you had all this grief, but you needed enough time to process it and write about it effectively. I had written about her in [poetry book] Paper Boats, but I guess I needed this much more time to be able to write a song. To be able to say that there was a joy to have known you and a joy in imagining how things could have been different in an alternate universe.
Stained Glass Ceilings
When I was finishing my undergraduate, I was doing three things. I was teaching a reading and writing workshop in a public school, a conflict resolution workshop in another public school, and an aftercare programme in another school. Getting to know these kids and their lives and the way that systemic racism and classism and the later stage capitalism were affecting them, it also showed me how it was affecting their value in the world. It was affecting the futures that they had available to them. To hear kids as young as they were tell me what they thought was possible for them was deeply infuriating. But more than that, one of the kids that I knew at one of the schools, in the grade above what I was teaching, died in an incident of gun violence. I found out when we were on tour, and I was just staring for days, thinking, ‘Man, this smart, cool ass kid had this life taken from him for no fucking reason’.
It spiralled into a song from there. But whilst I was writing it, it hit me that I couldn’t do this without Jason [Aalon Butler]. That’s the guy I need for this one. One of the most talented and singular voices, and one of the greatest frontmen I have ever seen. We had him come into the studio, I showed him the song, and then he went upstairs to start writing. When he came back down, he went in and did a take and before Steve could even click the button to finish it up, we both said, ‘It’s done’.
I Wanted So Badly To Be Brave
This song has the best lyric on the record. ‘They’ll put a gun into your hand and call you weak until you’re violent’. No lyric has stood the test of time quite like ‘They’re hateful cause they’re empty’, either. It’s a song about violence in masculinity. It’s a song about abusive parents. It’s a song about what it’s like to live within abuse. It explores the root of that, and I truly still think that most anger comes from a place of sadness. Most hate comes from a place of deep emptiness. I don’t think people who have a lot of hate in them have much joy in their lives. They don’t feel fulfilled. They feel a deep despairing emptiness that they then channel into hate. Generally, anger and violence come from places of deep insecurity, an attempt to fill something. I know that for myself, from when I have been at my angriest.
You In January
On a record that I feel still holds up ten years later, I don’t think there is a song that holds up truer for me than this one. Ten years later, man, I love my fucking wife. That’s my best friend. That’s the coolest person I know. That’s the best mum I could imagine for my kids. It’s cool that ten years after writing a love song, you still feel every note of that love song. I’m walking into the fire with the person who has my back more than anyone else.
Palm Reader
I came to the conclusion that there is some power granted to us via the stage and microphone, and it becomes our responsibility to use it. I was recently asked what I thought of bands that don’t use their platform that way, and I feel like it sucks. You do the thing, and you get sent weird messages that you should die from people that don’t even exist, and you lose opportunities; it sucks. But I chose to do it.
‘I’m gonna stand up straight / I’m gonna clear my throat and speak out, unafraid’. That is me saying that I am still going to say these things, even when they are hard. When I know that there is going to be pushback, and when you know that people are going to threaten you because of what you’re saying. But you are saying it because it’s the right thing to do.
No Closer To Heaven
There will be setbacks in this life. None of this is linear. But you have to keep on moving. Sometimes you will get blown back a couple of steps. But you need to keep going. That is the conceit of this whole album. Whether you’re going to see it or not. Whether you’re going to reach it or not. That is not the point. If you can make it better, then make it better. Even if you can’t make it perfect. You can’t always do everything for everybody, but if there is an opportunity to do a kind thing, then we will take it. You can’t just get caught up in not being able to do the thing that you thought you were going to do. You’re going to lose people, and it’s going to hurt. It all sucks. But if you let that be the end of it, you’re doing a disservice to everyone else you could have helped. So take another step forward.
Slow Dancing With San Andreas
This song runs parallel to ‘Palm Reader’, but the place where it differentiates, thematically and lyrically, is that I was contemplating the fact that bands don’t get the chance to do fourth records very often. Like, damn, we are on our fourth full-length, we are probably almost done, right? Now it’s ten years later, and we have multiple other records, all these other songs, and the life we got to live. To me, this song was me saying goodbye to all the places I may not get to visit as often anymore. I never take that for granted, though. It’s never assumed that we’ll get another one. That someone is going to ask you to make another record. That someone is going to let you do another tour. So I just wanted to make sure I was being grateful for it in real time.
JANUARY
14 – BRISTOL The Prospect Building
15 – GLASGOW SWG3 Galvanizers
16 – MANCHESTER Albert Hall
17 – LONDON O2 Forum Kentish Town
