The Front Bottoms You Are Who You Hang Out With
(Fueled by Ramen)Vacillating between intimate and anthemic, The Front Bottoms have proudly worn their hearts on their sleeves over their decade-long-plus career. It's essentially their mission objective: pointing to the everyday hardships of life with whimsical musical cues that remind you that everything will be okay. The New Jersey folk-punk duo carry through with that positive outlook on their eighth LP, all while taking the occasional detours to keep things fresh. While the bulk of the album retains a bittersweet, pop-punk sensibility, in part due to Brian Sella's emphatic speak-singing, they do venture into '90s leaning power pop with chugging riffs and open-hearted singalongs on Clear Path and Not Joking. Clearly, they've taken cues from fellow counterparts Modern Baseball and the Sidekicks' final releases before they both dissolved. The life-affirming Bleachers-meets-Springsteen Outlook is another noble attempt at emulating their hometown roots, but they can't quite put their own spin on the trope. It's a shame how the rest of You Are Who You Hang Out With can't sustain the peaks it reaches with quasi-confessional observations (there's a song called Emotional, for crying out loud) that, while occasionally powerful, come across as rote.
7 August, 2023 - 03:59 — Juan Edgardo Rodriguez