You made clear the difficulties of writing music that stays true to the bands “sound”, whilst also staying current and original – it’s clear that you achieved this on ‘Suburbia’ – how do you think you will continue to do this for the next record? The same way we did it for Suburbia. The name of the game is expand, don't abandon. We wanna stretch our limits but we don't want to change who we are.
You’ve been announced as the headliners for the Glamour Kills Tour, you guys must be pretty stoked to be the main act for such a prestigious tour? I am excited. The past two GK tours were headlined by All Time Low and The Ready Set so it's cool to do one with more of a grass roots feel. Nothing against those bands. We hung out with both of them all summer and I have a ton of respect for them. I just know that the people at GK love music that ATL or TRS make but also love bands like ours or things as far removed from that as The Mountain Goats or La Dispute or Fucked Up so it's cool to see the company show another side of themselves with this year's tour.
What’s it been like to tour with Polar Bear Club, Transit, The Story So Far, A Loss For Words and Into It. Over It. ? It's amazing to be able to do a tour with so many of our friends and so many bands that I'm personally excited to watch play every night.
Many critics have a problem with the genre pop-punk. With so many of the aforementioned bands classed as pop-punk, as well as many other pop-punk bands releasing albums last year, how do you feel about the genre? Do you see it having a place in the music world in the future? People want to put everything into genre and sub-genre boxes so they can say they hate it all or they love it all and really, I don't give a fuck. I don't think it matters what you call the music. What's important is the heart behind it. I see people talking about how bands like ours must play this kind of music because we want the money and women and drugs or some bullshit that come with it. Here's the reality. They don't come with it. If I wanted that shit I'd start making dubstep or something. We do this because we love it. What's important here is that the bands in this set of genres whether it be bands like The Wonder Years or A Loss for Words or bands like Touche Amore and Defeater or bands like Into It Over It or The Front Bottoms is that we all actually truly believe in what we do. There's an ethic behind it and that will always have a place in the music world.
The Wonder Years has never shied away from hard work and no-one can question the years of determination that you guys have put in to get to where you are today. How does it feel now that everything seems to be going in your favour? It feels like we better keep working that hard if not harder because resting on our laurels is not in our skill set.
How do you plan to maintain and surpass your current achievements in 2012? We'll be working as hard as we can as long as we can. We'll be working to put on the best show every night on tour, to be putting together the best merch designs for fans, to be creating videos and photo content and to create the best record we can for our next release. We want to stretch ourselves and think of new things to give to our fans that other people aren't. We want to be creative and innovative and we never, ever want to be complacent.