Featured Essay: Burst & Decay and Grace with The Wonder Years

by Timothy Jackson

Certain albums transport you to a time and place. I remember being at the edge of the office complex parking lot near my house, getting ready to cross the street on the way back from the record store, as I listened to London Calling by The Clash on my Discman. I remember it was chilly enough for a hoodie, and I remember my ears perking up at the opening squaws. I remember the late summer afternoon that Gaslight Anthem’s ‘59 Sound came out, being at my friend Natalie’s graduation party, and joking about how the trunk of my new car⁠—a 2002 Nissan Altima⁠—was big enough to fit a body in. Somewhere on the internet are pictures of my friend Derrick proving it. 

I still smile when I hear those records because they give me a place to go. That’s an achievement. But it’s different from a place to be, and often I know I need to leave before the whole thing is even done playing. Few records achieve a sound that gives you a place you accept how you got to where you are and lets you smile as you imagine the future. Few records are like Burst & Decay Volume III from The Wonder Years. 

As the record’s title implies, there are two other Burst & Decay EPs. Each is the length of a long EP, topping out at seven or eight tracks. Of the 22 songs across the series only one is new. The rest are acoustic reinterpretations of old ones. They’re not from the vault and they’re not alternate takes. Plenty of bands have made acoustic versions of their songs or records. Reimaginings are almost always fun but also cheap. What’s the purpose beyond providing an alternative to a thing you already know you like? How much can it really provide when you know at least the majority of what’s coming? 

Generally speaking, those questions assume a static interaction: going back to something you know, and considering only that thing in a vacuum. That is not what The Wonder Years do, though, and it never really has been. While the band toured for the newest EP, Dan Campbell, their lead singer, has made it a point to say the songs are broken down and built up new. Sure, the song you hear might have come out a year ago, or a decade ago, but it’s not a navel gazing exercise. Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, whether it’s a person’s or a song’s. The newest Burst & Decay embodies it unlike most anything else. 

The addition of the Little Kruta string ensemble marks the difference in sound even to ears that aren’t paying attention. Consider another choice the band incorporates, though. Numerous songs on the newest Burst & Decay are suddenly without articles⁠ or conjunctions where they’ve been familiar since the original versions were released⁠—words like “a,” “the,” “and,” or “so.” Much of what we know about language are things that we know deeply but subconsciously, and can struggle to articulate. These words function as bridges, allowing us to skate breathlessly through a story. No breaks. No gaps. No room for doubt or having to justify a different perspective. That works well when detailing an asshole in traffic or for an upbeat song built to spill out of itself. Turning one long sentence into multiple shorter ones takes a different tack, though. Suddenly there is space. You go to sing along and realize you need more breath. The songs turn inward and ask something scary. How do you think of it all when you’ve spilled everything you had?

Whatever your answer, you’re also provided an opportunity. The additional space says you have time to think about it. It says you can make the time to do that. And so a bare beat becomes a vessel through which you can see your old self with the empathy of who you’ve become. New points of emphasis strike a tone and reshape the space your heart made to keep those lyrics so long ago. You’re offered a new path instead of the same old one you’ve grooved out for so long that you default to without even recognizing it. You can open in a new way.

It’s not just semantics with bridge words, though. The band has gotten better and better at understanding how to approach the space they’re creating. The beginning of “Came Out Swinging” starts with the lyrics instead of a frenetic build-up made to bust open a pit in a crowd. The original recording of “The Ocean Grew Hands To Hold Me” starts with a slow, retrospective shrill to capture what feels like outsized loss and surrender, and trades it in for a guitar that is unmistakably alive despite those things. Oldest Daughter shifts from sounding like it’s being screamed at the top of a mountain to being spoken on a park bench. You have no idea what will happen next. You will still be surprised after a hundred listens. You will be bewildered in a way that doesn’t upset you, and marvel at such a thing being possible. 

That’s what happens on a song-by-song basis. There is something larger at play, too. After a half hour and change, and the time to process it all, you will start to see how the differences stack up. Words like “reinterpretation” and “reshape” give way to ones like “repurpose” and “renew.” Small changes combine to be of large, meaningful consequence. You start to feel like you can extend yourself the same grace and love in a way you thought was only in the past, tiny piece by tiny piece. 

Tim Jackson is a writer from New Jersey who did most of his growing up in Philadelphia. He lives in Warren county with his wife, dog, and plants.