The Wonder Years Announce ‘A Year As A Ghost’ Book + ‘Suburbia’ Reissue
The Wonder Years will be releasing a 200-page book celebrating the one year anniversary of Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing called A Year As A Ghost. The band will also be reissuing Suburbia with 11 rare recordings filled with demos and b-sides this fall. Order it here and check out the artwork below by clicking “Read More!”
This thing looks seriously great, and at a reasonable price to boot. Big ups to Mitchell, the band, Hopeless, and everyone else involved.
PropertyOfZack Interview : : We Are The In Crowd
Following the release of their new music video featuring Alex Gaskarth, PropertyOfZack is stoked to be posting a new interview with the band that reviewer Jesse Richman conducted at this year’s SXSW Festival. In the interview, Jesse and the band discuss Best Intentions, touring, the decision to redo a song from their album with Alex Gaskarth, recent “drama” regarding Hopeless Records, and more. Check out the great interview below!
Can I get a quick rundown of your names and what you do in the band?
Tay: I’m Tay [Jardine], I play the kazoo and I sing.
Mike: New talent?
Tay: Yup.
Mike: I’m Mike Ferri and I sing.
Jordan: I’m Jordan [Eckes] and I play guitar and sing.
Cameron: I’m Cameron [Hurley] and I play guitar. I’m just going to start saying I do random things.
POZ: We’re going to put that kazoo thing on the interview and that’s going to end up on your Wikipedia page.
Mike: Actually, the three of us got kicked out of the band on Wikipedia recently. We didn’t know why. We were ex-members. They had Jordan playing for Guns N Roses.
Jordan: Yeah, I was in Guns N Roses for like twenty minutes, I took a picture of it.
Mike: And they love to create new ex-members, like dudes that were never in the band. Apparently Goot was an ex-member of our band . He was under the ex-members.
Tay: And Alex is a band member now.
Mike: “Alex Gaskarth joins We are the In Crowd. Headline: “When Two Singers Just Isn’t Enough…Get Three.”
Best Intentions has been out for six months now. How do you think it’s gone over with the fans so far?
Tay: We were really surprised with the outcome of all that. The record came out the same week and the same day as like a thousand other bands that are way bigger than us.
POZ: Yeah, that’s a tough time to release.
Tay: Yeah. So we were really worried about it. But it seemed very positive and it was more than we had hoped for.
Mike: I think everyone wants their first record to be like the …Is A Real Boy situation, where it becomes this instant cult classic. That didn’t happen, but we’re still real pumped on it.
It seems to be building pretty well. You guys have been on the road the entire time since it came out. How has it been touring?
Mike: It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve been doing a lot of touring.
Jordan: I think it’s because we did a lot of international touring. It was almost like inspiration to keep going.
Cameron: It’s not like domestic touring got boring. But the international touring brought something new to it.
POZ: How was Brazil?
Tay: It was beautiful. It was a little scary.
Mike: Yep, terrifying. No, we had security with us. It was crazy. The kids there are a lot different than they are here. They are really touchy-feely and super crazy. So yeah, Tay had a Justin Bieber moment. You got Biebered.
Tay: I got Biibered.
Mike: It was like a red carpet type of creepy thing.
POZ: I guess they just don’t get a lot of American bands down there so when they come it’s a really big deal?
Jordan: We open up the van to get out and it’s like “AHHHH!”
Mike: This girl one time makes it through the fence.
Tay: This is a good example. I had a whole wrist full of bracelets and they’re gone. They were snatched. They are all gone. And they were given to me by my fans. But they were taken as well by fans.
Mike: Their enthusiasm makes me enthusiastic, but I’d like to leave with my skin.
How’s the Every Avenue Tour going so far?
Jordan: It’s good. We only have…
POZ: Yeah, you’re in the home-stretch now.
Jordan: It’s been a while. It’s been like almost five weeks.
Cameron: The tour did go by really, really fast. I don’t know if it’s because we left like halfway through. It’s been really fast and a lot of fun.
So, this is the first of something like fifteen interviews I did while I was down at South By Southwest this year. Most of them will be running on PropertyOfZack, with a handful on a new site I’m going to do some writing for that will be launching at the end of next month. This is probably the only one I’ll be posting here on the blog proper, but I’ll be adding them to the soon-to-be-renamed Reviews Page just like everything else I write for folks other than myself.
This is the first time I’ve done interviews in close to a decade, and I had a blast doing them. It was a really tough setup; the PR agency we were working with basically held an interview day, where you’d sit with one band for 10 minutes, then another would rotate through, then another til you’d hit all of their acts. Which meant there was no way to adequately prepare for each band (I felt bad but I think the bands understood that as well, from the setup). So I asked a lot of stock questions, and wasn’t as prepped as I’d like to have been, but I still really enjoyed the experience. I’d like to start making it more of a regular thing for me.
So yeah, enjoy this one, and be on the lookout for more!
PropertyOfZack Review : : Divided By Friday
It’s a fool’s errand to attempt to write about Divided By Friday’s new EP Prove It without making comparisons to Fall Out Boy; the similarities are so blatant that there’s no getting around it. Vocalist Jose Villanueva is as close to a sonic dead-ringer for Patrick Stump as you’ll find; when he strays, it’s into Brendon Urie or Jamie Woolford territory, and really, aren’t those all just variations on a theme? Whether the roller-coaster chorus of “Lost In Limbo” or the measured vocal restraint of “Closer,” it’s there and it’s obvious, so we might as well take it for the (pleasant) facsimile that it is.
The verisimilitude runs more than singer-deep. Best is opening track “Prove It,” which taps into the scruffy, barre’d chug and single-string, sixteenth-note leads that grounded the best of FOB’s Cork Tree-era tracks (think “Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song” or “XO”) and couples it with a winning vocal melody. And “Growing Up” nicks the Chicago foursome’s signature double-tracked harmonies—as well as a track title—to bright affect.
Strangely, the album’s weakest moments are when it shakes off the formula, like in “Face To Face,” a lame he-said she-said duet that makes the least of Tonight Alive vocalist Jenna McDougall’s talents. Likewise, while guitarist Matt Morgan’s metallic lead on “The Dark Passenger” and Yellowcard-style riffery on “Lost In Limbo” are welcome curveballs, his slightly-snotty secondary vocals there and on “Growing Up” add nothing to the mix. And while Villanueva’s lyrics are perfectly passable, don’t go looking for Pete Wentz-style one liners and bon mots, or anything particularly deep for that matter. (If Fall Out Boy are Bright Eyes, Divided By Friday is decidedly An Angle.)
my latest
y…y…you mean…
HANK ISNT REAL?
*creys*
(seriously please go listen to this album if you haven’t yet it’s streaming for free and it is wonderfully wonderful)
