Dancing, Drunk, Cool Punks: 10 Years of The Front Bottoms' 'Rose'

The Front Bottoms released their 'Rose' EP a decade ago next week.

The first time that I ever heard “12 Feet Deep,” I thought that it was a new song. By that point in their career, The Front Bottoms had made “The Plan (Fuck Jobs)” a staple of the setlist about a full year before the song would be released as part of their underrated third (or fifth) album Back on Top. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that. The band were on the rise after dropping their sophomore album and magnum opus Talon of the Hawk, and an EP to bridge the gap between albums seemed like it would make sense to tide fans over.

Normally, the way that I feel like most fans look at EPs are that they’re a chance for an artist to experiment, dump some of their better B-sides, or tease out their next album. Diehard fans may find some mandatory listening, but for the more casual crowd, it’s likely that they may not venture too deeply into the EP territory. One of the things that set Rose apart was that it was significantly better than your standard EP from a pop-punk band. It felt like it could’ve been half of an album. The Front Bottoms really seemed like they were on a roll.

Of course, I soon realized that these weren’t new songs, but rather re-recordings of some of the better tracks from TFB’s first two independently released albums I Hate My Friends and My Grandma vs. Pneumonia, as well as their first EP Brothers Can’t Be Friends. These releases are not available on streaming platforms, but can be found with enough searching online. The EP was named for drummer Matthew Uychich’s grandmother, who was drawn in a similar style to the band’s self-titled album and Talon covers. It was the first in a series of releases named for their grandmas where they re-recorded their old material. The band released the next installment Ann in 2018 (although it had the new original “Tie Dye Dragon”) and Theresa in 2022. Besides material from those original albums and EPs, they also included some tracks that had existed as Brian Sella’s solo work (such as “Today Is Not Real” and “The Bongo Song”).

While it’s been nice to see a new life breathed into some of the standout tracks from those early works (“Squeeze”, “Lonely Eyes”, and “More Than It Hurts You”), Ann and Theresa don’t have the same zest that Rose does.

I think that a large part of why Rose worked wasn’t so much that they chose the best or most memorable songs from those first few albums. While “12 Feet Deep” or “Be Nice to Me” are certainly some of the better songs from those early years, fan-favorite “Pale Beneath the Tan (Squeeze)” was held for Ann or “You Wouldn’t Be Laughing” still hasn’t gotten the grandma EP treatment. The fact of the matter was that they struck gold in the sweet spot for when TFB were absolutely on fire.

While Talon remains the group’s most celebrated work¹, Rose landed at the best possible time for the band. At this point in time, The Front Bottoms are a legitimately big band. They play pretty sizeable venues on their tours, and more often than not, I’m surprised to learn that someone that I wouldn’t expect to likes² TFB. In mid-2014, they still felt like a band who was on the rise. Something of a secret even though they were establishing themselves as one of the biggest bands in the scene.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if a fair number of people also thought that these songs were also brand new, previously unreleased TFB tracks. The band had just released a genuine hit of a record for the scene, and most of the tracks on Rose don’t sound too far from where the group was from the time between their self-titled to Back on Top. Even though listening to the original versions of these songs show the outline of what the tracks were doing, the songs didn’t fully come to life until they were fully fleshed out on Rose. Mixing the poetic simplicity and occasional eccentricities of Sella’s voice with a legitimately strong band, more so than where the group was when they recorded those first releases.

While the bones and elements are all the same, a track like “Lipstick Covered Magnet” doesn’t actually became a real song until you hear the reworked version. Even though there’s some energy in the I Hate My Friends version, there’s still some insecurity in Sella’s voice. You can hear him restraining himself, but on Rose, the chorus, which lands with beloved emo tropes, he sounds like he’s celebrating and making light of the self-deprecating nature of the song. “I’m gonna get on my knees, will you kick me in the face please? It’ll make whatever I say sound like poetry,” he belts out in the chorus.

Even a song like “Be Nice to Me” feels like it has heightened sincerity. While puns about flashlights and getting blackout drunk and references to werewolves truly highlight the track, it’s the lines in the chorus reflecting on the nature of changing in a relationship that really mark the true emotions in the track. We all change as we get older, and it’s going to cost some friendships, relationships, and blood. Sticking those lines about drinking and getting turned on lighten the mood, but it just masks the darkness in the song.

The EP did give The Front Bottoms something of a mission statement where it felt like even more of a calling card than those first few notes of “Twin Size Mattress.” Sella would often perform a solo rendition of “Twelve Feet Deep” pretty late in the band’s shows (he still does with some regularity). Even though it’s something of a breakup song and a reflection on growing apart post-high school, it also gave the band an attitude that it seems to carry to this day: “Now, we’re dancing. We’re so drunk. We are so cool. We are so punk.”

In 2014, this felt like the perfect battle call for a night of pounding Pabst Blue Ribbons in my parents’ backyard while home for summer break. It was also ironically the time that I can now see that some of the friendships that I was forming in my youth were beginning to disintegrate. I was also seeing how sometimes my own faults were the reasons that relationships weren’t always working out. Even though real life ramifications were slowly rolling in, I was still young enough to write it off as fun being drunk, cool, and punk.

Now, a decade since Rose was dropped, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some fans who checked out after it dropped. Even though I consider Back on Top to be the last great TFB release, Rose feels like a bookend to the Talon era. Both “Be Nice to Me” and “Lipstick Covered Magnet” are in TFB’s top 10 songs on Spotify at number 2 and 7, respectively³.

Each time I’ve seen The Front Bottoms over the decade since the album came out, I’ve heard them do at least one song from Rose if not more. While most of these songs go back to the early years of the “emo revival,” before the scene really popped off around the time that Talon was released, they still feel contemporary to the era that the EP dropped. It also was a chance for an artist to actively re-consider their songs in almost real-time. Even though now with Taylor’s Versions or the countless other artists who have released re-interpretations of old songs (or even current songs with different versions), it was a chance for The Front Bottoms to recontextualize the songs that were pretty good from their early days with a more mature, well thought out song. These songs may not be the best that TFB ever released, but they were certainly worth listening to for the fans who may not have looked far enough back to the songs that weren’t findable on their streaming channels. While the latter two grandma EPs weren’t as strong as Rose, I certainly hope that by the time that they release the fourth (and final?) installment it includes some interesting fan favorites and maintains the same sense of fun that Rose did.

1. Most TFB shows end with “Twin Size Mattress,” and it remains the band’s most popular song. It even became a bit of a meme in mid-to-late 2020 to signify a certain type of a pop-punk fan.

2. Or has at least heard of or has some familiarity with.

3. “Be Nice to Me” has about 100 million less streams than “Twin Size Mattress,” which is at number 1.