Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to shield my admiration and reverence for Daniel Campbell, and I'm certainly not referring to him as the voice of this generation. I don't claim to be the epitome of my, or any generation, but if there can be one person that I am able to relate to and appreciate, then perhaps others have the same beliefs about the same person. So why in a world with intellectuals, millionaires, and revolutionaries does one musician possess so much influence? It could be the way that he speaks: sounding like a very modest and unobtrusive man with prominent mentalities. Maybe it's the way that he acts on stage: exploring every inch of the stage and slightly more beyond, basking in the crowd's immense support and audio reproduction of every last word he sings. There's a chance it's just his personality: a soft-spoken English graduate who likes fantasy football, professional wrestling, and punk music. Or, you know, it could be his writing.Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, Dan "Soupy" Campbell was just another kid with broad aspirations. He became the lead singer of a band that became known as The Wonder Years. After two years and two splits, the Wonder Years released Get Stoked On It!, a collection of whimsical keyboard infused pop-punk songs that Campbell now refers to as "fucking abysmal" and refuses to play songs from. The fallout from the album has led Campbell to have great disdain for "seven inch kids"--a play on the old EP kids adage for fans who constantly say "I was listening to this band when (insert obscure release here)" and claim a clearly inferior album is band's finest. So how has a guy who made a very capricious (and in retrospect, very comedic) debut, become a talking idol? The change is found on the next Wonder Years release, a four-song EP including one instrumental, Won't Be Pathetic Forever.
The second track "Solo and Chewy: Holdin' It Down" is where the change is immediately noticed, blending together the effervescent mentality on their debut and a biographical self-analysis. Then there are two songs that give you a clear representation of where the band is headed. The title track speaks of a discontent and sorrowful love-hate relationship with the city around him, culminating in the band chanting "I fucking love this town / I fucking hate this town". Along with the melancholy comes the optimistic, the words resonating whenever Soupy sings "I refuse to sink". Then there's "You're Not Salinger. Get Over It", the middle finger to people who are holding society back from its natural evolution. The track also serves as a helpful note to those who listen, with the band chanting "Chin up and we'll drown a little slower" at the end of the song. This new pessimist-optimist back-and-forth worked on three songs, but how would it stand up on a full-length? The world found out on The Upsides.
Soupy stated that the theme for their new full-length would be about facing obstacles and not allowing the people or troubles you face daily to get you down. That theme culminates on the lead-off track of an album. No matter if it's an instrumental, poetic introduction, or a straight for-the-throat starting point. "My Last Semester" serves as a picture of the college experience from today's perspective. The first thing you hear on The Upsides is Soupy singing the theme of the entire album: "I'm not sad anymore, I'm just tired of the place. The weight of the world would be okay if it would pick a shoulder to lean on so I could stand up straight." The soft, subtle singing quickly erupts with the rest of the song, but the honesty never waivers. In the follow-up song, "Logan Circle", Soupy expresses to us that he finds hope out of no hope at all and quickly conveys that optimism with his opening line: "They turned on the fountain today at Logan Circle, I felt something in me change".Of course with playing in a touring band come the struggles with being on the road and having to put yourself out there in relation to the fans. In "New Year's Eve With Carl Weathers" Soupy speaks about the pains the road takes on someone and how the good can come from that, while "Hotels And Brothels" is about the European tour that The Wonder Years was on and the longing for a home that occurred while being so far away from it. The tracks "Melrose Diner" and "Hey Thanks" are direct letters to an ex-girlfriend who Soupy says has the kindest heart, but still the realization of seeing her embrace another man is very unnerving. Having said all of that, there are songs on the album that Soupy doesn't pull punches on. "This Party Sucks" is a statement on the current culture of the party scene, referencing the people as lifeless and refusing to take part in a land of excess where the participants are all virtually comatose. Nothing on that song, however, can compare with the non-stop ruthless verbal onslaught that Campbell delivers on "Dynamite Shovel". On this 64 second sonic attack, Soupy delivers the verbal middle-finger to "people who use religion as a crutch for hatred and bigotry". In one of the selected phrases, Campbell says: "You can hide behind a bible, but we still know you're fucks. Inbreeding can claim this one, so chalk it up. These small town minds stay small".
The last pledge of hope that Soupy delivers to us on The Upsides, a semi-concept album about--what Soupy would later say--"not about forcing happiness, it's about not letting sadness win", is "Washington Square Park". Campbell interrupts a blistering guitar riff on the song with the first lines: "I'm looking for the upsides to these panic attack nights, while I'm staying in eating take-out food by T.V. light". By the end of the song Soupy has convinced us that despite being in direct competition with your thinking patterns, everything eventually improves and you would then see the world in a brighter light. With one album, Dan Campbell not only relates to the masses, but helps them with his own set of inspirational material. In the ultimate show of solidarity, the album closes with a group of friends singing the same message that started the album and became the motto for fan base: "I'm not sad anymore, I'm just tired of this place. If this year would just end, I think we'd all be okay".
The next year was spent on the road, with The Wonder Years hopping on tours with the likes of Streetlight Manifesto, New Found Glory, Set Your Goals, Comeback Kid, and an Australian tour with Tonight Alive. It was during this time that they started writing the follow-up to their breakthrough success album. A pivotal European tour with Good Charlotte and Four Years Strong was the last foreign tour that the band embarked on, providing a larger overseas audience and Dan Campbell some new challenges to face. Finally, a short tour with Fireworks and Such Gold was arranged, where the band debut a few new songs and finished writing the new record. On that tour, Such Gold and Fireworks were forced to drop off and This Time Next Year joined to finish out the rest of the leg. It was shortly after the tour completed that the band announced they would be releasing a new album in the summer that is essentially a love letter to Alan Ginsberg and a staple in time of where the band was mentally. In the same moment we were introduced to Suburbia: I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing.From the very start, Dan Campbell was unapologetic and unwavering in his admiration for Ginsberg. When asked about his inspiration, Campbell would essentially go on rants about how Ginsberg's writings and musings would be almost identical to today's culture and his personal mental culture. Putting his labor of love together would spawn a deeply personal album that is, also musically, the most adventurous record the band has ever released. From the moment you hit play or drop the needle on the record, all of the emphatic energy strikes. The first noises stressed on the record is the audio tape of Ginsberg's "America" (from which the title of the album is based), with the lines being "My mind is made up" and "There's going to be trouble", repeated. Soupy breaks through the building guitars with a furious passion on a song about the exhaustion of touring and the adjustments made when the touring stops. Summarizing the experience in the lines: "I spent a whole year in airports and the floor feels like home" and "I'm running on empty and the late nights and the long drives start to get to me, I'm just so tired", Soupy explains his position with nothing more than a voice and his attempt at self-explanation. No part of the song ever waivers from the brutal honesty of his journey, especially the closing line of the chorus: "I spent this year as a ghost and I'm not sure where home is anymore".
A subject on Upsides was exploring the relationship of an ex-girlfriend ("Melrose Diner", "Hey Thanks"), also a subject that doesn't go untouched on Suburbia. "Woke Up Older" takes the listener through a journey is almost more about maturity and rationalization than about any girl. Also, Soupy blends some of his personal affects into the song (Bukowski novel, Blacklisted LP) and contests that the song is also a love letter to The Mountain Goats. All of those subjects are blended together to make a personal time-capsule into a song about a girl, "Hey Jess, I watched you wake up and get dressed. Left the room, reseeded like my hairline". The next song to appear on the album is possibly the most directly biographical of the album. Referencing songs from Upsides, Soupy tells us that some people missed the point of the previous album. In interviews and on the album, Campbell tells us that his last record wasn't about "forcing happiness, it's about not letting sadness win". On "Local Man Ruins Everything" Soupy expresses how his depression returned with new problems and relapsing issues.
The short "Suburbia", is a trip through the hometown that Soupy grew up knowing but after years of touring has changed dramatically. In this 51-second song, Campbell expresses to us that everything changes and we can't stay dormant. Picking the tempo up again "My Life As A Pigeon", there is different sediment about being in a band than we've heard from Campbell in the past. Whenever you hear him talk about his fans and the life of touring, Soupy will be the first to tell you that there is no experience like it and that all the fans keep him grounded and loved. On this track, Campbell deals with the negative aspect of the people who will shun you out, a new attitude that we hadn't seen or heard from Soupy before. The following track takes a complete turn and talks about the fun of socializing and making bad decisions with friends. Soupy explains that "Summers In PA" is as simple as you can take life, there's no feeling like being with good friends and making bad decisions. Now, we see the most controversial track on the album, "I Won't Say The Lord's Prayer". On this song, Campbell writes his thoughts about religion, saying that he means no disrespect to the friends he has who are religious. In Christianity, one of the laws is there is no other god than yours, Soupy pleads that he is making the same sort of stance but with no god of his own. The song is well written and I will not quote it, for it is better in full context.
On the song "Coffee Eyes", Soupy goes through a run of nostalgia for the place where he grew up, and talks about the people who made it special for him. That subject matter is something that we can all understand and sympathize with. "I've Given You All" sets a scene more than it is a song, with Campbell telling us a story about an old homeless war veteran that was beaten to death in the park around his neighborhood. Next there's "Don't Let Me Cave In", a song about how you dream of one day moving away and getting to where you think that you belong, but in some ways the place you are at was where you belonged all along. Taking cues from his real-life struggle with possibly moving from Philadelphia to Chicago, Soupy lays out his situation and inevitably touches base with everyone who has experienced the same thing. "You Made Me Want To Be A Saint" is a touching song written about a friend who passed away while the band was on tour in August of 2010, relating to many who have suffered through the same experience. The following "Hoodie Weather" blends a feeling of no matter where you are there will be problems to face and you have to face them head on with one of maturing. The stand-out line "Growing up means watching my heroes turn human in front of me. The songs we wrote at 18 seem short sided and naive...as fucked as this place got, it made me, me" incorporates all of its parts into a stunningly touching line of writing.Finally, there is "Now I'm Nothing", a song that encompasses the entire back catalog and experiences the band and Campbell have endured. The track is quotes Ginsberg's poem "America" many times, including the last line "I'm putting my shoulder to the wheel". As a whole, the song serves as a status update of where the band, and Soupy, is at in their music and mentally. Despite the entire album being deeply personal, this song is the culmination of everything that came before it and expresses a great sense of optimism drenched in sorrow, and is the most adventurous song that Soupy has written to date.
In a way, people have become turned off by how autobiographical and honest Dan Campbell is with his writing. They have hurled hatred towards the band and what Soupy stands for as a whole. Some see a man standing tall with his friends at his side and emotions held in check with emotionally powered lyrics as a common occurrence and dismiss him as the a character who is no more special than the average singer in a pop-punk band. Others have said that Soupy's writing was at its best when he wasn't writing about his own personal problems and that his lyrics were better when whimsical. All of those people dismiss the progress of a human being and reject the notion of supporting a man who plays in a "mediocre-to-shitty pop-punk band". Speaking honestly, as he always does, Dan "Soupy" Campbell wouldn't have it any other way.
