The Wonder Years leader Dan Campbell is bringing his folk-punk project Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties back for a new album. In Lieu of Flowers, due out on April 12 via Hopeless Records, continues the story of Campbell’s alter ego Aaron West, established on 2014’s We Don’t Have Each Other and 2019’s Routine Maintenance. Here’s more from the press release:
The new album picks up where Routine Maintenance left off, starting from the solo tours that Dan went on shortly after its release — onstage, he talked about leaving the band to care for his grieving sister Catherine and nephew Colin, but that solo touring felt like shit. The band soon got back together — as documented on their Live From Asbury Park album recorded over the course of two December 2019 shows.
In the interceding years, Aaron is forced to finally tend to the wounds he’s ignored for over a decade, and that brings us to In Lieu of Flowers.
It’s a triumphant kind of melancholy that colors this entire record as Aaron learns that things don’t go away just because you ignore them. Its message is driven home thanks to the 16-piece band that helped bring it to life with guitar, accordion, keys, banjo, pedal steel, trumpets, trombone, saxophone, cello, and violin.
Read more: 20 greatest Hopeless Records bands
The first single is the anthemic, country-tinged title track, which uses that 16-piece band to great effect. Watch the accompanying video below.
Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties will celebrate the release of In Lieu of Flowers at Asbury Park’s Asbury Lanes on April 11, which is also with Lake Saint Daniel and Never Better Baby. Tickets are on sale now, and for those who can’t make it in person, it’ll also stream live.
In Lieu of Flowers tracklist
1. “Smoking Rooms”
2. “Roman Candles”
3. “Paying Bills at the End of the World”
4. “Monogahela Park”
5. “Alone at St. Luke’s”
6. “Whiplash”
7. “Spitting in the Wind”
8. “I’m an Albatross”
9. “Runnin’ Out of Excuses”
10. “In Lieu of Flowers”
11. “Dead Leaves”
