Back in October, The Wonder Years released a new song called “Brakeless,” which was written in the style of their 2010 breakthrough album, The Upsides. The band had a whole celebration planned for the 10th anniversary of the album, as well as 2011’s Suburbia, I’ve Given You All & Now I’m Nothing, but of course the COVID-19 pandemic has put a halt to (almost) all of those plans.
But, the show goes on, and The Wonder Years refused to give up and still give their fans a way to celebrate the release of these two seminal albums. Today, the band have released a new song and retrospective new music video, “Out On My Feet.” The song is the second and last new song that The Wonder Years had written in the style of The Upsides and Suburbia. Using voice notes of unused riffs or scribbled down lyrics that never made their way into a song from that era, “Out On My Feet” and “Brakeless” each find the band exploring sonic territory of their past, present, and future, all at the same time.
Speaking on the two new songs, vocalist Dan Campbell explains the retrospective writing style: “I was going through old hard-drives full of demos and voice notes when I stumbled onto an idea I had that never got brought to the band. Listening to it ten years later inspired an idea: ‘what if we tried to go back and write songs that sounded like those records? What would that sound like?’”
To truly encapsulate the era from those earlier times, The Wonder Years brought back the entire team to help: Steve Evetts, who produced Suburbia, agreed to produce and Vince Ratti, who produced and mixed The Upsides, came back to mix. The artwork was also done by Mitchell Wojcik, who created the original and iconic The Upsides album cover.
Listen to “Out On My Feet” below.
In addition, pre-orders for their 4xLP 10-year commemorative box set are available now; this epic collection features the two albums in their entirety, one bonus/rarities LP, and one archival/demo LP. The bonus LP features b-sides and acoustic tracks, as well as the two new tracks “Brakeless” and “Out On My Feet.” The archival LP features never-before-released demos and voice notes, giving fans a special look into the making of these classic albums.
