The Wonder Years Tease New Record, 'Sister Cities'

A brand new record from The Wonder Years is coming in 2018 and we're very excited about it. 

It's been three years since the last time we had a new album from The Wonder Years - 2015's 'No Closer To Heaven'. Thankfully, we won't have to wait too much longer for new music from this much-loved Philadelphia alternative/pop-punk outfit.

Last Friday, The Wonder Years made the following post to their Facebook: "I left pins on a map. I’m handing you the string. Tie them together. Unite us.", leading fans to a new website.

When you head to this site, withpinsandstring.com, you'll find 15 different hand-drawn images hung up in storefront windows (most likely visual representations of this new record's supposed 15 songs), with map coordinates listed below each picture. These coordinates are for different locations all over the world - from New York, Dublin, Glasgow, San Jose, Toronto, London, L.A. - but for us Australians, the sixth image, the one of the mountains, is or at least was hanging up in the windows of 24Hundred in Richmond, Melbourne.

You'll also find the option to drop in a password when on this page. Now, I'm not sure who or how, but a quick glance over the comment sections on the band's recent Facebook posts about this new record will reveal from some MVP people who've cracked the code that dropping in the phrase "starttolevitate" will grant you access to the next part of the site. What you unlock is a short teaser mini-doco of the band discussing and creating what will be their sixth LP, 'Sister Cities', all with hints of new music scattered throughout the piece.

In this new video, which you can find below, frontman Dan "Soupy" Campbell delivers a monologue on the wider meaning and deep experience of sonder that his band's new record is aiming to offer to their fans and any other listeners, saying:

"It's a record about distance, or maybe about how little the distance matters anymore. It's a record about how big we thought it all was and how much closer to everyone we really are. It's about a trip around the world during a year that felt like everything was crumbling and seeing how humanity towers over boundaries and borders and walls and oceans and languages. It's about ho we want to love and want to be loved. It's about how we all everntually lose the people that mean the most to us. It's about how we all expereince grief and successes in these alternating tidal waves of joy and devastation. It's a record about connecting people."

A date is also given at the end of this video - 4/6/2018 - and as they're an American band under Hopeless Records, this will be for a Friday, April 6th release by the looks of it. Likewise, a recent lyric listing on Genius says that their new single is supposedly called ‘We Look Like Lighting’ and some fans have even received mail and unlabelled seven-inch records with a new song and a spoken word poem in a bunch of different languages as well. A Twitter page called "The Brilliant “The Wonder Years Shitposting” has also revealed more of this release in a thread about 'Sister Cities'.

Not only that, but a limited edition book is also set to come with this new LP, and if I know The Wonder Years - which I sure do - this will further flesh out the back stories and the lyrics that make up this new record, giving us all deeper context to dive into.

Honestly, I am a real sucker for these kinds of meticulous, hype promo campaigns and I just cannot wait for this new record to drop! Expect more news from the band and their label to be on the way soon enough.