--Austin Blakeslee
----Released 21 August 2020 on Fueled by Ramen
As someone who grew up in the sleepy suburbs of New Jersey, The Front Bottoms music has always felt like it was speaking to just me. The Front Bottoms hail from the small suburb of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey and the duo, consisting of guitarist and singer Brian Sella and drummer Mat Uychich, have always been good at tapping into these roots. Writing catchy pop chord progressions but layered with emo lyrics so drenched is teen angst and suburban strife that any teenage emo kid like me was putty in their hands after just one listen.
The band's first two albums, "I Hate My Friends" and "My Grandma vs Pneumonia," were recorded in a basement in one take. No record label. No mixing or mastering required. A real DIY vibe. The band would upload them to the internet the night they were recorded. After these albums, the band signed with New Jersey indie label Bar/None Records, and put out two more records, the eponymously titled The Front Bottoms and its follow-up (and probably their most recognized record) Talon of the Hawk. These albums took what would be dubbed as their “folk emo” style, and with the help of two new members, layered their simple chord progressions and dance punk drums with catchy rock-riffs and smooth basslines. The focus remained on the lyrics, but now the musicianship was there to back it up.
Talon of the Hawk put the band on the map in a way that I don’t think even they expected. They were signed with famed 2000s emo label Fueled By Ramen and released 3 albums with the label. With this change in backing, the simple emo music started to get more complex. Back On Top featured the same chord progressions as before, but with more prominent, country-like riffs and basslines, and a much more pop-like “4 on the floor” beat. All of it produced in true Fueled by Ramen, pop-emo fashion. Up next was Going Grey. As the name suggests, the band was getting older, so the music got older too. The emo lyrics were still there, albeit with a bit less passion. More importantly, the underpinnings were replaced with an arena rock influenced sound. Violins, organs, and synths buried stretched out chord progressions, basslines and drums that were heavily drenched in reverb and effects. Gone was the charm and the intimacy of the early recordings, instead replaced by a pop sound that harkened back to U2 far more than it did growing up in those sleepy suburbs I mentioned earlier.
Which brings me to their latest release, In Sickness & In Flames. It seems like the band is torn between building off of the sound that the band tried to establish with Back On Top and Going Grey, trying to capture the spirit of Talon of the Hawk, AND trying something new. Did they succeed? Simple answer: no. The album feels like a disjointed mess of ideas thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Longer answer? Well, also no, but it’s a little more complicated than that. I initially tried not to go down the list and explain every single track, but it is honestly hard not to. It’s just that disjointed.
The opening track, “everyone blooms” feels ripped directly off of Back On Top. An acoustic guitar in the beginning is enough to lull any early Front Bottoms fan into a false sense of security, but the tinge of reverb and extraneous violins in the background give you that real “there's danger afoot” feeling in the pit of your stomach. Then the song erupts into a reverb-soaked wall of noise and just like that, we’re right back in arena rock territory. The song holds there for most of its run time, taking a break for a spoken word part in the middle that seems to be aimed at old fans like me, but just feels unnecessary. The album continues like this for most of its first half, leading into another track called “camouflage” that feels like a discarded take from Back On Top. The next song “jerk” continues this familiarity, but only after inserting an intro that features what sounds like an 808 bassline with weird filtered singing that resolves back into the same larger-than-life mixing that I have now come to expect from them.
The album then peaks with my favorite song on the album “montgomery forever.” In what is probably their most Talon of the Hawk inspired song, the band kicks it into high gear (but don’t get used to it). Each disparate part of the song feels like a brief dive into the history of the band for a few seconds. The intro is ripped right out of old songs like “Flashlight,” and then it moves on to riffs that sound ripped right out of songs like “Skeleton,” before getting into a spoken verse that sounds very early Front Bottoms, before going into a very catchy chorus. If you Frankenstein a bunch of things I love together, I'm gonna like it. Just, maybe not as much. To clarify, saying it’s my favorite on the album, isn’t actually saying much.
From there, the album starts to fall apart. “the hard way” sounds like a country style song. “leaf pile” is a harder song, with a wall of fuzzed out guitars that repeats the same ideas all the way through. “new song d” sounds like a crack at a more surfy Front Bottoms song, with a synth line and a bunch of oohs in the background. “Fairbanks, Alaska” is more of that Going Grey style, with big choruses, a ton of instruments, and even more oohs. “love at first sight” has the instrumentation and choruses of a 90s band like Third Eye Blind and spoken verses that sound like a bastardized version of The Butthole Surfers. “bus beat” starts with a bunch of feedback before moving into another spoken word vocal part that repeats ad nauseam, and some xylophones thrown in for good measure. And finally, “make way” features that signature acoustic chord progression buried in violins, pianos, electronic drums, real drums, and soft vocals that once again loop around the same ideas without going anywhere.
The longer the album goes on, the less sense it makes as a whole. It spans a whole spectrum of writing, genres, tone, and composition that makes the whole experience feel surreal. It’s like I left on some music playing, fell asleep, and woke up trapped in a fever dream in which my brain is trying to turn every song that comes on into a Front Bottoms song. And I am not asking them to make another album that is exactly the same as the old stuff, I like some of the added effects and weird styles attempted, I just don’t think this album follows through on them. And the lyrics make me question whether or not they ever had the charm I thought they did, or if I was just young and dumb back then.
But, now that I have (thankfully) woken up from this fever dream, I am brought to my final question. Who is this album actually for? The best thing I can say is that this album is certainly interesting, but maybe not in the way you want music to be interesting. More in a “who the fuck thought this was a thing that should be made?” kinda way. If you were a fan of their later releases, there may be some things here for you, but even then, it's a departure. Maybe they are going after the Imagine Dragons crowd? I don’t know and I don’t think the band does either.
If you, like me, are a fan of their early stuff, you may find bits of songs here and there that take you back to those simple angsty years before you had real problems. I just don’t know if there is even one complete song that will resonate with you. It certainly didn’t for me. I wouldn’t recommend a full listen unless you are morbidly curious or like having your heart broken. But if you’ve made it this far into a Front Bottoms review you’re probably an aging emo kid like me who LOVES having your heart broken. If that's the case, then go nuts. Check out "montgomery forever" below:
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