Finn Wolfhard shares a new track and accompanying music video for the latest offering in his solo music endeavor, “Trailers after dark.” The single is another captivating taste from his debut solo record Happy Birthday, out June 6th via AWAL.
“Trailers after dark” leads with melancholy acoustic guitar strumming before Wolfhard’s textured vocals kick in as he pleads, “Oh my darling, don’t stop loving me.” The single’s sonic landscape is reminiscent of that of the early indie hits of the aughts, while incorporating clean, modern production to create the perfect nostalgia-tinged ballad for a rainy day. The music video, directed by Marcus Mazzulla, is an enthralling, cool-toned and darkly comforting visual accompaniment to the track.
Happy Birthday marks Wolfhard’s first solo release after several releases with his bands Calpurnia and The Aubreys. A dizzying rush of nine songs, the album grew out of Wolfhard’s personal challenge to pen 50 songs by the end of 2022. He admits, “I ended up writing a lot of terrible stuff, but a few of those songs I was really proud of went to the Aubreys. I started realizing a general theme in a lot of the other songs involving my identity, anxieties, nostalgia, childhood and loneliness. All of that was a part of a bigger puzzle. I knew I wanted to make a record, but I didn’t know with which songs.”
For Wolfhard, the album is another accomplished step forward in his evolution as a musician and songwriter. “If I were to walk away and listen to it in 10 years, I think it would feel like the beginning of a specific style and voice,” he says. “It can be interesting being a younger person in any kind of industry, because even though I’ve been acting for a long time, I’m still only 22, and things start to take shape at different times in your life. I hope that when I look back on this record, I’ll be proud of the melodies and the songwriting. I want to be accepting of myself at that time. It was okay that I felt like that and made a record about it and then moved on to new experiences.”
Across the album’s nine tracks, Wolfhard tackles themes of anxiety, losing yourself in a relationship and subsequently finding yourself again, the carefreeness of childhood, and more, through a maturing, refined-yet-growing worldview. The album is a whirling, relatable journey of emerging from adolescence and another striking project from Wolfhard’s creative prowess.
