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.”

Christopher Browder knows he isn’t perfect. He knows he has flaws, similar to those most adolescents secretly carry in their pocket, and the way he reviews his bottled emotions is what drives the American songwriter’s second album. He isn’t the type to croon or break out into a guitar solo that etches out his blues with every pick. He’s a lyricist, one that uses the frailty in his voice to connect with a listener’s youthful character. On a level or two, Dig Up The Dead is a reflection of Brand New’s The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me and Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends, where well-crafted rants have you relating every line to your own life story before cascading into an assault of bold alternative riffs (“Blackest Sky”, “Dig Up The Dead”).

What differentiates Browder from the grandiose is his taste. Whereas Dig Up The Dead has a seamless flow and pushes to be empowering, it strips down to reveal a mix of dark, broody fuzz rock jams.”Close That Door” is cathartic with it’s honesty, while “Seven Years” is a raw piece of work displaying the creative backbone that binds the record. “If I find that wormhole then I’ll take it back,” Browder laments at the halfway point, before a build-up channels inner angst and the worst kind of heartbreak that’s hard to unshake after a few listens.