Ten years ago, Philadelphia’s The Wonder Years released The Greatest Generation, a masterpiece of an album packed with both the snarl and sensitivity of growing up. It has since been called one of the greatest pop-punk albums of all time by Rolling Stone; a tour de force of where the genres of punk and emo collide, The Greatest Generation has garnered critical acclaim over the years for its introspective and mature approach to themes like nostalgia, politics, grief, and the struggles of the working class.
To celebrate the album’s ten year anniversary, the band return to the UK this November for five special live shows. The tour kicks off in Glasgow on November 9th, before shows in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff and Brighton, culminating in a show at London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on November 15th.
Speaking of tour, frontman Dan Campbell says, “The second leg of The Greatest Generation 10 Year Anniversary is coming to the United Kingdom this November. We’re ripping six shows with our pals in Origami Angel and Kississippi where we’ll be playing the entire album plus a second set of songs spanning our whole catalog.”
Full dates below:
NOVEMBER
09: GLASGOW SWG3 (TV Studio)
10: MANCHESTER O2 Ritz
11: LEEDS Leeds Beckett Students Union
12: CARDIFF Y Plas
14: BRIGHTON Concorde 2
15: LONDON O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Earlier this year, in May, The Wonder Years share a revived TGG b-side called “GODDAMNITALL,” which was accompanied by an archival music video that takes viewers back to the days of The Greatest Generation.
“GODDAMNITALL is a song that almost was, and then, for a long time, categorically was not, and now is,” vocalist Dan Campbell says of the track out today.
“When it came time to find bonus content for the box set, we went grave digging in old hard-drives to find the demos from TGG that didn’t get finished and then exhumed and reanimated this one. It was the closest to being done at the time. All of the music was there. The chorus had lyrics and melody but, for budget and time constraints it got abandoned before it had verses and a bridge. Now, a decade later, it’s finally finished. We asked Steve Evetts to produce it the same way he would have if it were on the original album and it now stands as a spiritual and somewhat literal b-side to The Greatest Generation.”
