Consumer Guide Album

The Front Bottoms: The Front Bottoms [Bar/None, 2011]
Comprising New Jersey vocalist-guitarist Brian Sella and drummer Mat Uychich and then picking up help here and there, self-branded folk-punk even if I still call it indie-rock, the Front Bottoms remained stalwartly productive for over a decade after self-releasing albums (plus several of the many EPs I haven't heard) in 2008 and 2009. So for this pass, at least, I'll stick to their five label-supported long-players, perhaps the most self-aware and fundamentally likable oeuvre in a vanishing musical subculture of white male post-collegiate slackers making a self-employed lifestyle out of recreational consciousness adjusters and romantic musical chairs. Were those really just fireworks Sella bought in Pennsylvania? Is it literally true that he spent a summer on steroids because the girl he was crushing on liked muscles? Does he actually want to reread American Psycho, poor guy? Did his father knock him around so bad he dreams about hitting him with a baseball bat? Although in 2012 I semi-dismissed them as a "two-'man' Bergen County Nerd Liberation Front cell," they've grown in my mind as they've grown older and kept at it. So yes to all the above questions is my takeaway. Tell me more. A-