Music

The Front Bottoms

The Front Bottoms

About The Front Bottoms


What can we say about The Front Bottoms? We know we love them: a punk band that uses acoustic guitar, indie-rock dance grooves, Springsteen-y keyboard lines (this they might deny). It's hook-filled… it's anthemic… it's confessional. Maybe Joni Mitchell by way of Green Day? They must have heard some Replacements along the way, and it seems like what Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers did for the Boston suburbs these guys are doing for Bergen County, NJ. But they still leave us scratching our heads. Just what the hell have the Front Bottoms alchemized?

With the wonders of the internet and their obsessive gigging, they are now known from New Jersey to…Spain (?) where director Pablo Nieto found them online and asked to create a video for "Maps." The video features Williamsburg, a farm (where Mathew sometimes works), and that aforementioned Econoline as well as some "loveable" hand puppets. Word of mouth and great reviews has them fielding calls from promoters all over the tri-state area.

New Jersey's The Star-Ledger called them "one of the leading lights of the New Jersey pop underground. The group's amalgam of punk, guitar-folk, lo-fi experimentalism, imagist-inspired poetry (drawing heavily on Sella's upbringing in the Jersey suburbs) and playful humor (that betrays the singer's youth) has caught discriminating ears on both sides of the Hudson."

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