Aaron West is a fictional character, the brainchild of Dan Campbell from The Wonder Years. For those unfamiliar, Aaron’s story started with Campbell writing an album “about the worst year of Aaron West’s life,” in which his father dies, Aaron and his wife Diane lose a baby, and their marriage falls apart.
Campbell has discussed in interviews that Aaron’s story is canonical—it occurs on the same timeline as the rest of us. Fans of the band will recognize callbacks to previous tracks, albums, and characters. The album combines banjos, saxophones, pedal steel guitar, and punk rock to great effect.
It’s been five years since we last heard from Aaron. The title track of the previous record, Routine Maintenance, finds Aaron in his childhood home with his mother, his newly widowed sister, and his nephew, Colin. The song is a one-sided conversation with his deceased father in which Aaron finds some peace with what remains of his family. He attempts to comfort his nephew and be a sort of father figure, trying to keep him safe.
The first single off of In Lieu of Flowers, also the title track, is actually the second to last song. In a podcast interview, Campbell said that the song serves as a “So, I’ll bet you’re wondering how exactly I got here” moment that one would expect from a television serial.
In fact, Campbell sees Aaron West’s records as seasons of a television show. He discussed how, unlike a 30-60 minute show, musically, he has roughly 3-5 minutes to tell a complete story and, as such, is very intentional about imagery and repetition.
Right away, the track finds Aaron sitting in a parked car, apologizing to a new character named Sam. Who is Sam? Why is Aaron apologizing to her in a parked car instead of inside? The listener knows there must be some romantic connection as Aaron says, “I’ve been hollow for so long. I figured that’s how I’d stay. No one’s seen me without my clothes on in almost a decade.”
The chorus begins with Sam saying, “Hold on, the wound is gonna mend, and when it’s all gone, I’ll write in wet cement, in lieu of flowers, shake the dirt off, I’m with you ’til the bitter end.” The next two verses find Aaron trying to make amends with his band (the Roaring Twenties) and, perhaps most importantly, his nephew Colin. Each verse ends with the same chorus, giving the listener a sense of hope that those close to Aaron won’t abandon him despite his repeated failings. The reference to the permanency of concrete and “the bitter end” gives us hope.
So, how did Aaron get here? The album opens with “Smoking Rooms”, a track that begins acoustically and sounds as if Aaron is playing by himself in a dive bar where the sound of people talking can be heard behind the music. The first line of the entire record is, “It feels like shit to be alone again.”
Aaron calls his nephew home, saying, “I’ll be gone a few weeks, kid/I hope you understand. I made promises and planned on keeping them, but everybody always leaves. I know you’ve had it bad.” Aaron returns to New Jersey, where the COVID pandemic is just beginning in “Roman Candles.
On the track “Paying Bills at the End of the World,” we find Aaron back to performing manual labour to help support Catherine (his sister) and Colin. Because Catherine is a piano teacher, the pandemic has decimated any economic security they once enjoyed. Additionally, this track shows Aaron’s humanist evolution. He worries about the impact that his death would have on the security of his family rather than the borderline suicidal state we’ve seen him in previous albums.
Aaron is both funny and sad at the same moment. He is laughing with Colin for one moment, which is then juxtaposed by the chorus: “I’ve been having that dream where I’m dying again/The one where I get sick, and we can’t afford it/I’ve been walking around here with no health insurance/And we can barely keep the lights on as it is.”
Importantly, this track introduces us to Sam. The significance of this is evidenced by the change in the music, which goes from a country-style song with a steel guitar to a piano. Sam and Aaron knew each other years ago before Sam moved away, and they planned to meet and catch up.
Aaron and Sam meet up in “Monongahela Park”, the aftermath of which leads to the driveway apology in In Lieu of Flowers. The title track is also the only track on the album where all 16 band members appear. It gives way to huge choruses that contrast with delicately instrumented verses, which get especially quiet during the verse in which Aaron is trying to apologize to Colin.
In “Alone at St. Luke’s” we find Aaron on tour with his band where his drinking, initially celebratory, becomes problematic, Campbell’s intentional use of repetition comes into play to highlight this as the chorus takes on less celebratory and increasingly darker meanings with each passing verse, “Spitting curses, hopping fences/Burning out like true romantics/Picking fights, its fucking reckless/We’ve been thinking/As long as we’re still here, we might as well be drinking.”
The track is autobiographical as well. Dan Campbell and the band were touring in Europe when COVID struck one of the members. The rest of the band returned to the US, where they all later tested positive. Campbell continued on alone, playing the last show at St. Luke’s in Glasgow.
Musically, the beginning of the track is fast-paced and joyous, leading to a single guitar as Aaron finds himself alone. After the tour, Aaron is angry and bitter in the following tracks. Playing a show back on the West Coast, we see Rosa (from Rosa and Reseda) appear as Aaron’s drinking spirals out of control. A call from Catherine, in which she reveals that their father drank himself to death, a road on which Aaron is currently, results in a stint in rehab as described in “Runnin’ Out of Excuses.”
This brings the listener to the title track and the first single, nearly the album’s end. Aaron returns to the beginning of the album and the entire story—New York, Brooklyn, the home he once shared with his ex-wife, the home where they lost their baby, the place where their marriage died, and the source of so much misery.
I won’t reveal the ending of this “season” of Aaron West. This is a welcome chapter, like any story in which we’ve become so invested.
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