“I’m pumped up,” exclaims The Front Bottoms' frontman, Brian Sella. The band have just finished sound checking for the first UK show on their tour at Manchester’s Albert Hall and are taking a break before taking to the stage that evening.

Sella has lost track of exactly how many times he’s been to the UK now, but this tour – supported by The Smith Street Band and Brick + Mortar – marks the band’s first time playing the UK since their latest album ‘Going Grey’ was released. It’s an album that came together with little thought as to what the finished product would sound like, taking a more freestyle approach to writing than with The Front Bottoms’ previous albums. At the start of the process, Sella claims that he had no idea what the outcome would be, laughing as he stated, “When we started the album it was just as likely to turn out like a friggin’ country album.”

When described by Sella, the writing process comes across as being almost nonchalant, although that’s difficult to believe considering the album is so tightly recorded, produced and curated, feeling deliberate and coherent throughout. The freestyle way in which it came together was unlike anything the band had done before, reflecting the past few years of the band’s career, during which they toured extensively and found themselves trying to be creative when any small opportunity arose. The entire vibe of the album comes back to growing up and changing, and this process is just a small part of taking the necessary steps to continue to add to his catalogue of art; art that stands out from its predecessors and shows progress.

It’s impossible to deny that The Front Bottoms have made progress, evident in the change in sound that TFB have taken on in ‘Going Grey’. The addition of synths is something that many bands are incorporating, and yet for TFB it was another ‘accident’, so to speak – a result of discovering and then playing around with programmes such as Garage Band and then incorporating other elements until it became what is now ‘Going Grey’. Sella makes an almost conscious effort to not overthink, “otherwise you just go nuts. You know, I love to write poetry I write all the words and then I’m just like, yeah let’s make some music.”

While this method clearly works for TFB (‘Going Grey’ is, after all, an exceptional album), Sella finds that this way of creating art can be frustrating as well as liberating. It does allow for more creativity and flexibility, though, and it means that whatever the end result may be, authenticity is guaranteed. It’s “more of an experiment really, like having fun with the process which is the whole point, kind of seeing what develops. It gives you the freedom to go anywhere”. This isn’t just exciting for the band, but for fans, too because waiting in anticipation of new material from your favourite band, only to have it end up sounding like a carbon copy of its predecessors will only ever lead to disappointment.

Sadly, it’s often also the case that bands face criticism from fans and music critics alike when they change their sound so radically. Sella hasn’t experienced too much of that though, choosing instead to avoid “all the frickin’ online things” and just be pleased that people are finding their music at a point in their lives where they need it the most. His response to the idea of such criticism is refreshing though, and the more he speaks, the more apparent his positive outlook on life becomes. “If anything it kind of makes me relieved that, people aren’t seeing the development and it makes me happy that people are like you know like oh this band has released friggin’ 10 albums or whatever, each one is different so we get different fans at different times in the history of the band.”

Beyond the shallow criticisms lies a more important issue as well: that there are simply more important things to be worrying about than the route a band has decided to take. Positivity comes up in conversation countless times, highlighting that it is important to The Front Bottoms to maintain good vibes in relation to their music, and focus any negative energy on more important issues: “You know I don’t pay much attention to negative Nancies, there’s so much bullshit happening in the world right now that like if somebody’s gonna get upset over the art that I make, then that’s crazy.”

He eventually casually passes it off as indifference, but Sella seems to have strong feelings about other ways we could be spending our time other than complaining:  “Read about science. Spend the time you’ve been listening to the album and go study.’ He makes a noise that sounds like something halfway between a laugh and a sigh, “No but I don’t care, like if it means that they one time cared about the music and you know that means more to me, that side of it, than you know, the negativity about it.”

Aside from the fact that a band’s sound naturally grows and changes throughout their career, the members are growing up too, and that’s really what ‘Going Grey’ is all about. Brian and Matt have changed, (“Shit, I mean I got older!”), and their music is a reflection of that – looking back and wondering where all the time has gone and how different life is now as they pick up new fans and see new corners of the world.

“The vibe of ‘Going Grey’ is about getting older and you know, figuring out life and you know on everything that goes on personally between me and the relationships I have, that’s all real life and then this art that I’m making, that’s my way of venting, it’s the band’s way of expressing themselves so yeah just like an extension of like you know, life.”

Throughout it all, one thing that has never changed is the uninhibited honesty in The Front Bottoms’ music. While the music he wrote years ago is his most revealing, he’s thankful to have written “a lot of the revealing stuff” at a time when he never anticipated anyone hearing it, and so that was never a factor in his songwriting, making it some of the most honest and vulnerable. Now, with the knowledge that he will be reaching an audience far wider than just his inner circle will hear his music, Sella has lost a little of the bluntness with which he used to write lyrics, but they still tell a story of his feelings and experiences – a story that he’s happy to gift to his fans to turn into their own: “Once I sing it, once the words are out there on the recording, they don’t mean shit to me.”

This kind of comment may come across as shocking, but Sella doesn’t mean that the songs he writes aren’t important to him at all, more that once they’re out there in the world, they now belong to the fans who can attach a number of different stories to them, each one just as important as his initial reasoning for writing the words in the first place.

“Those words don’t belong to me anymore, you know like, the story of however the lyric got into the song, it doesn’t matter that’s not how the people are listening to it, you know like, when the kid comes to the show and he sings the lyrics, he’s going to have attached that to his life, not mine, so that’s kind of a relief as well because people kind of use the music and those intense lyrics to like help themselves and that’s like the point you know?”

This is for the most part why Sella doesn’t censor himself in his songwriting. He does, however draw the line at self-fulfilling prophecies: “I was never in a car accident but when I finally get in a car accident it’s like gonna be a big one and it’s gonna be bad like it was that sort of imagery that I was trying to work into a song… I didn’t want to jinx myself you know, I didn’t wanna like get into a car accident that you know, maybe kills me and have this lyric that people can like look to.”

This omission comes across as very caring, acting as a preventative (if a little paranoid) measure to stop fans from romanticising the possible death of a role model. Every move the band makes seems to be about giving back to the fans, and the live show is one of the many ways they can do this. It allows fans to feel their favourite songs pump through their bodies as opposed to just hearing them on a more superficial level and to maintain this energy, ensuring a solid relationship with their touring team is essential. This time around, Australian punk rockers The Smith Street Band jumped on board, and it isn’t the first time the two bands have been overseas together. The 2 bands first met at a festival, where Wil whimsically and somewhat comically invited The Front Bottoms on tour in Australia without any clear precedent: “He was like, ‘Oh I’m in a band called The Smith Street Band’ and I was like, ‘Oh cool, cool, you know we’re The Front Bottoms’ and he was like, ‘Would you guys like to come on tour in Australia?’ And I was like, ‘Hell. Yeah.’ And that is how it happened.” It was the start of a friendship that has since seen The Smith Street Band support The Front Bottoms in America and now in Europe, too. They’re a group of people that clearly get along with one another and with the tense atmosphere that can arise out of the same 12 people sharing a confined space for weeks on end, it’s important that everyone is on the same page.

“You know touring is hard, it’s a hard gig, you know it’s draining but the more positive energy you have, the more people you like to hang out with, just in general the tour is going to be better so, we get along really good with those guys, they’re great to us and vice versa.”

Even their rider is home to a modest list of requirements, including only an air purifier, string cheese (“there’s always string cheese around”), a case of beer, and a toothbrush. While it’s great to hear that the band are into their oral hygiene, there had to be something a little crazy that they’d love to have on tour with them if money wasn’t a factor. Of course, everyone has their dream and Sella’s is to have a “motorcycle to ride up on stage, just rev the engine like Meatloaf style, you know Meatloaf?” (Of course I know Meatloaf) “Yeah so probably something like that.”

Not-so-secret Bat Out of Hell dreams aside, the band remains humble, and despite international fame, they continue to live in awe at what they have achieved. When the band started out, Sella felt that having strangers come to their shows would be a milestone and as such, he has continued to feel nothing but grateful that new fans continue to fill venues worldwide: “So when like strangers started to show up it was like, ‘Oh this is as good as it can get’, and just kind of kept that mindset… Like years ago when like five strangers showed up cause they had like seen on MySpace, like wow this is amazing this, it’s totally insane.” For The Front Bottoms, success isn’t a 30 page rider, or even a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but instead just being able to look into a crowd and not recognise a single face looking back at them.

The band keeps returning to the UK, having played headline shows, supporting slots, and festivals over the 10 or so times they’ve visited, and it would be easy to assume that their first trip would be long forgotten by now. On the contrary though, and in keeping with their humble attitude to success, Sella recalls it being one of their best experiences yet after making the trip with no gigs booked and leaving feeling “fucking world famous” and as though they were a part of something greater than themselves. Granted, today they’re filling up venues a little bigger than the local Wetherspoons nowadays (nothing short of a national treasure), but the hospitable British public continues to be a favourite international memory.

It’s easy to think that every success story starts with an aspiration to achieve something, but The Front Bottoms was born out of boredom: “I can’t emphasise enough it was just straight up me and Matt, we had nothing, we didn’t have any instruments we were just bored and that’s where most of the songs came from.” Whether The Front Bottoms ever really believed that they’d make it to where they are today is almost irrelevant because years later they are travelling the world and filling up venues that they’ve never played in before, in cities they’ve never seen. After agreeing on the dream-like nature of their career, the conversation closed with a comment I almost missed: “Yeah, it’s all just a dream. I hope I never wake up.”

The Front Bottoms have just announced their new EP ‘Ann’ – out May 18 via Fueled By Ramen

TRACKLISTING

1. Today Is Not Real
2. Somebody Else
3. I Think Your Nose Is Bleeding
4. Pale Beneath The Tan (Squeeze)
5. Lonely Eyes
6. Tie Dye Dragon