The Greatest Generation (album)

Background

In the teaser video the band talked about the recording and writing process of the album. They wrote the album in a small apartment above an abandoned sandwich shop. In the teaser, "Soupy" Campbell called it a third piece in a trilogy about growing up. He also stated the album was about the end of the war he had within himself fighting depression and anxiety. The title is taken from the term coined by Tom Brokaw about how the generation that fought in World War II was 'the greatest generation'.

The Greatest Generation is a part of a trilogy (along with The Upsides [2010] and Suburbia I've Given You All and Now I'm Nothing) that dealt with vocalist Dan Campbell's struggles of being scared, loneliness and feeling lost. Grantland writer Steven Hyden compared albums by Japandroids, Fucked Up, and Cloud Nothings to The Greatest Generation due to them "shar[ing musical] DNA with Generation." "Dismantling Summer" was written after Campbell's grandfather had a heart attack.

Release

On March 6, 2013 the band announced the album's title, artwork and track listing. On March 25, the band held a live chat on the AbsolutePunk website, where they streamed the first single from the album, "Passing Through a Screen Door". The song was made available for download via the iTunes Store on March 27, 2013.

On April 15, the song 'Dismantling Summer' was released online for streaming. The band played four record release shows in 24 hours in support of The Greatest Generation: Philadelphia at 6pm on May 10 with Modern Baseball; New York City at 12am on May 11 with A Loss for Words; Chicago at 10am on May 11 with Mixtapes; and Anaheim at 6pm on May 11 with Versus the World and the Sheds. Due to travel complications the Anaheim show did not begin until 8pm.

Reception

The Greatest Generation has received critical acclaim upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics the album holds an overall rating of 96, which indicates "universal acclaim," based on 4 reviews. Scott Heisel of Alternative Press gave the album 4.5 out 5 stars saying, "It's fast, it's honest, and it'll probably make you tear up more than once." Thomas Nassif of Absolute Punk did not even give the album a standard rating from 10 to 10, stating "It is my firm belief that The Greatest Generation has no real precedent in this community. It’s my belief that there isn’t another band in pop-punk right now that can write a record this good." David Allen of TheCelebrityCafe.com, gave the album a 5/5, stating, "This album, more than ever, speaks to the fast, the angry, and the unforgiving part of the human subconscious...It feels as if this album, by itself, has been able to repossess every inch of teenage angst over the past 60 years and throw it back up into arrangements, lining it up half-hazardly, and yet purposefully, to hear.".

Commercially, it was also successful. It was their first to crack the top 20 at Billboard 200, moving 19,673 copies on its first week and reaching the number 20 spot. The album has sold 50,000 copies in the United States as of August 2015.

In retrospect, Rock Sound included The Greatest Generation on their best albums of 2013 list, calling it "the defining album of what may well have been the genre's best year for a decade." Kerrang! said the album "ripped up the pop-punk blueprint" pushing the genre to "new peaks of invention, both lyrically and musically."

Track listing

All tracks written by The Wonder Years.

Personnel

Personnel per digital booklet.