Live Review - The Wonder Years

The Wonder Years with PUP, Trash Boat and Tiny Moving Parts @ O2 Institute, Birmingham 03/02/17

It has been over a year and a half since The Wonder Years put out fifth studio album ‘No Closer To Heaven’ so it is understandable that with only a handful of tiny headline dates and Enter Shikari support slot, that fans were chomping at the bit and ready to explode when Dan Campbell and company hit the stage at just before ten o’clock and after three exciting support slots. 

Tiny Moving Parts and Trash Boat opened the show, we only caught the tail end of the later in which Dan ‘Soupy’ Campbell made a cameo appearance. Trash Boat to their credit, had pretty much already filled the venue, a great achievement for a band who only played the same venue just over a month before in support of Beartooth. It is also a vision of the future which Trash Boat have, still fairly young in band terms they are quickly making a name for themselves, with energetic performances and the ability to play to fifty people or fifteen-hundred people. 

One of 2016’s standout albums was PUP’s ‘The Dream Is Over’ a joyous slice of Canadian Hardcore Punk. PUP are the kind of guys who you wouldn’t notice on the street, they look like they could easily serve you at the video store or fix your computer, but when this Toronto quartet hit the stage they set themselves apart. Energy and aggression are the flavour of the day, and will be vital to PUPs growth in future years.

You’d think after three other bands that the crowd would be starting to get a little weary, you’d be totally wrong the trio of Tiny Moving Parts, Trash Boat and PUP had left the O2 Institute suitably pumped for The Wonder Years. What The Wonder Years do is write stories and poems, songs with heart, feeling and emotion but which presents itself in an explosion of guitars, drums, keyboards and Soupy’s vocals. Soupy lays everything out there, feeling every single word, surely coming off stage every night emotionally exhausted. A Wonder Years crowd however give back everything given to them, producing possibly the most crowd surfers during one song the Institute has ever seen. The set plays like a greatest hits tour, with not one song falling flat or providing the crowd a chance to get their breath (or voice) back. Pop Punk doesn’t need defending, because it is safe in the hands of The Wonder Years!