Kevin Devine

For a number of years, this would have been an almost-blank page. Back in the mid-2010s, a few years after The Wonder Years had first formed in Lansdale, PA, just north of Philadelphia, the band would be asked to provide a bio for events they were playing. All Dan Campbell would write was The Wonder Years is a band. That was it. Theyd then receive the programs for whatever festival or event it was for and laugh. Most bands, the frontman remembers, would write a full page thing about how their last record charted and ours would just be a blank page with those six words at the top. A lot of time has passed since then, and a lot has changed, although also not that much, at the same time. If The WonderYears completed by guitarists Matt Brasch and Casey Cavaliere, drummer Mike Kennedy, bassist Josh Martin and keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Nick Steinborn could get away with a six-word bio, they probably would.As it happens, when it comes to The Hum Goes On Forever, context is important, which is why youre reading these words. The most important reason is that this is the first record the band has made since Campbell became a father. And so, when he sings its very first words I dont want to die on its very first song, Doors I Painted Shut, they shimmer with a little extra poignancy and potency. Because as someone who has sung candidly about how despondent hes felt at times, thoughts of unexistence are no longer possible. It doesnt mean they stop, but Campbell can no longer succumb to the abject malaise they induce.Youve got to pull it together, he says, because your kids are counting on you. These things that feel hopeless these massive cultural and societal, full-populace problems like climate change and school shootings, all the things that youre afraid of for your children well, they only get fixed if you fix them. I dont want to die because Ive got to protect you. It would be very easy to give in to the depression and just kind of lay there, but my kids are counting on me, so I have to try to pull myself together and do the work.That, then, is the crux of this record: his survival is more important than it ever was before. As Campbell phrases it, How do you take care of someone else that needs you when there are days that you barely want to exist? Now that hes a father, the answer is a lot simpler than it used to be. Quite simply, he doesnt have a choice. Rather, he has to press on against the noise thats been inside his brain for as long as he can remember. Thats what the hum of this albums title is. Taken from a poem he wrote for Sister Cities, it is, he says, a representation of the gloom he tends to carry with him.Even when its not constantly in my face, he admits, theres always a low hum of sadness, a low rumbling of ennui. So The Hum Goes On Forever is the understanding that Im always going to have it, its always going to be there, its always been there for literal generations of my family and its important that I accept that and live and work through it.