wakelee – Under Construction Forever | Album Review
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Wax Bodega
I never have the right words to say. Being a writer comes with the expectation that I should know what to say and that I should have the right words, but for the people who matter most, I seldom do. In his 1982 novella, The Body, Stephen King wrote, “The most important things are the hardest things to say.” This sentiment has stuck with me like gum on the bottom of a shoe, largely because I related so closely to the protagonist, Gordie Lachance, an offbeat kid with an affinity for writing and familial trauma to boot. In the wake of his older brother’s unexpected death, Lachance and his group of misfit buddies set off to find a dead body in the woods, seeking small-town acceptance for locating a missing boy. Throughout the coming-of-age tale, our narrator struggles to put his feelings of isolation, grief, and parental neglect into words.
As an adolescent, this is largely expected; however, no one prepares you to carry that loss of words into adulthood. Frustratingly, it almost gets harder to say what’s on your mind as feelings, relationships, and life become increasingly complex. Even when it comes to things we feel strongly about, often once we try to put them into words, they fall flat. On their new LP, Under Construction Forever, the Brooklyn-based indie unit wakelee grapple with this perpetual struggle to find the right words in the most difficult circumstances.
wakelee are a group that lean into the nostalgic idiosyncrasies of life. This is evident even in their band name, which comes from a park in New Jersey where twin brothers Alex and David Bulmer grew up playing baseball. Although they eventually became high school benchwarmers, the yearning remained, and they decided to channel their energy into music. After playing in a handful of different bands throughout high school and college, Alex and David enlisted Elliot Shiang on bass after a chance meeting at a party in New York. What emerged was wakelee, a project with an eclectic mix of influences that ebb and flow seamlessly, proving the trio to be anything but a run-of-the-mill emo unit.
Photo by Gabe Drechsler
The group’s 2023 self-titled album features tracks like “Mood Rings” and “Texas” that draw on Pingrove and Macseal, while 2025’s Doghouse EP keeps those same emo foundations but also pulls in influences ranging from The Story So Far to Tyga and Korn. The group flexes this wide range of inspiration throughout that EP, crafting emo/pop-punk bangers like “mildlyinteresting” before switching to the alt-rock vibes of “Gary's Outcome” just a few songs later. Doghouse catapulted the trio from another passing NYC band to one that not only commands but deserves attention.
Under Construction Forever is wakelee’s first release with a label, the band now backed by the eternally tapped-in Wax Bodega. On their sophomore LP, the trio embrace their assorted tastes, resulting in one of the most exciting emo-adjacent releases in quite some time. Brisk album opener “Sundial” clocks in at just under two minutes and finds Bulmer grounding the listener in his reality, “Shaking / all my thoughts turning physical.” The introductory track finds the group dipping into some of their most aggressive material thus far, with the above lyrics screaming in on a red carpet of cymbal crashes and guttural bass lines. The song tackles the difficulties of owning up to your shortcomings at the end of a tenuous relationship as Bulmer sings, “In a different timeline / I’d have it all laid out / I know it’s my fault / I’ve been hanging on to you for so long."
The lead single, “Joyce Kilmer Service Area,” named after a rest stop about halfway between New York and Philly, is a polished pop-punk heater where the co-production from Zach Aumueller and Chris Freeman (Hot Mulligan) shines through. Debuting the first d-beat in a wakelee cut, it’s a song packed with family gripes and fast-tempoed instruments that mirror the lyrics’ palpable frustration. The song depicts a snafu where Bulmer’s unidentified relative seemingly forgot to meet him at the aforementioned service area, and he rebuts: “You’re forever slipping in an absent-minded mode / So I’ll stay home now / There’s little left between us / And I guarantee that you know it hurts me so bad.” Under Construction Forever forwardly mulls over blood-related barriers that tend to harbor lifetimes of pent-up resentments when left untended.
Being plagued with familial dissonance is an overarching theme in The Body as well, which, if you haven't figured it out yet, also served as the inspiration for the 1986 film Stand by Me. Yes, the same film that features one Davie “Lard Ass” Hogan, who transforms a pie-eating contest into a puke-induced revenge fest. Despite the occasional absurdity of King’s writing, he eclipses it with truth-laden prose that sticks with readers for an eternity. Lachance feels largely invisible to his parents, who are in the depths of grief following the loss of their first-born. Much like the iconic story-turned-film, Under Construction Forever seems, at least in part, to be a cautionary tale about unresolved grief. On the mid-album cut “Box Fan,” Bulmer compares ever-present grief to the constant hum of a box fan, one that never goes away but simply becomes less noticeable over time. “Well, I know this went south / But I can drive there / A subtle distance / That’s always kept us apart,” he musters after the screeching tremolo of the bridge.
Both “Decision Tree” and “Box Fan” put forth this concept of intentionally placed distance, both physical and hypothetical, that is woven throughout the LP. It’s here where Bulmer recognizes: “I tried to measure all the distance / There were signs I just missed them / Every thought is a misstep.” wakelee’s use of metaphorical gaps between loved ones aligns with the overall theme of an awkward barrier where words fail to adequately penetrate. “Decision Tree” traverses complicated feelings in relationships (familial and romantic alike) in which words could never define the brooding resentment, guilt, and longing that fester. Musically and lyrically, the track finds the band at the top of their game with pensive instrumentation and devastatingly catchy vocals that will bring tears to the eyes of even the most stoic of individuals: “There’s so much left to say, but I can’t get it out.”
Summoning Worst Part Ever-esque vibes, “See It Now” immediately follows and finds wakelee licking their wounds while attempting to articulate complex feelings. With stripped-down lyrics and instrumentation, this song captures what happens when reality crushes romanticism, as the guilt-fueled song sheds lyrics like, “Should’ve had your back when I swore that I’d be there / I still wear your Crocs around the apartment.” In a vexed attempt to put complicated emotions into words, it confirms that oftentimes our expectations of how things should sound, or how situations should play out, are rarely as embellished as we imagine.
The album’s second single, “Statue,” certainly embodies emo elements, but leans more into alternative rock influences while the lyrics bring the family discourse to a head. Detailing trivial arguments with a forgetful relative, like forgotten passwords and inherited lower back pains, Bulmer sings, “One day we’ll gather to spread your ashes all over the ground / And it’ll be hard not to think about where things went wrong.” A few tracks later, the numbing feeling strung throughout the Aphex Twin-inspired “080808” further captures the convoluted mess of feelings that come with the loss of a loved one.
Under Construction Forever's closing tracks, "Open Ended" and "Glitterbox," tie the album up quaintly, as the band recognize their flaws whilst showing themselves some grace. Bulmer compares his destructive rumination to an oversteeped bag of tea, wonders why water is his number one enemy, and acknowledges that he’s “under construction forever,” before repeating “get used to it.” wakelee wrestles with the troubling realization that we rarely live up to who we expect ourselves to be, our loved ones are often not who we need them to be, and life tends to violently veer off the roads we desperately want to stay on.
In an interview with SPIN, the band says of the album, “There’s the angle of anger, and ‘you shouldn’t have done this,’ and then there’s the angle of ‘I wish I said more. I wish I listened to you more,’ or realizing that you aren’t that great of a person.” Life is chock-full of what-ifs and should-ofs that we absolutely will dwell on if allowed to. Stephen King's assertion that “The most important things are the hardest things to say” also doubles as a recognition of things left unsaid. As acknowledged throughout this album, there's so much that wakelee (and I) would say if only we could find the right words.
Brandon Cortez is a coffee, football, and music nerd from Texas. He’s on Twitter @numetalrev.
