The Front Bottoms Concert Review – Terminal 5 11/10/23

Review and Photos By Lee Ramrattan

On November 10, 2023, I had the opportunity to see the Midwest emo band The Front Bottoms in Terminal 5 in Manhattan. You may know them from songs such as “Twin Sized Mattress” and “Be Nice to Me,” which were both pretty popular on TikTok. I’ve been a casual listener of them since I was 15, mostly enjoying their hits, their newer album that came out earlier this year, You Are Who You Hang Out With, and a handful of other songs  here and there. Literally nothing could have prepared me for how much this concert would change that for me.

The opening artist, an alternative rock band called Slothrust, definitely got the crowd up and ready. I hadn’t heard of them before this tour and they definitely gained a new fan with this show. The lead singer especially got me, her energy was awesome and she was getting everyone hyped up. I was super surprised when at the end of their set, they started playing a cover of “Pony” by Genuwine, which is a song that I don’t typically listen to, but enjoyed a lot when they covered it!

When The Front Bottoms came out on stage to “Margaritaville” as a tribute to Jimmy Buffet, it was immediately met with complete liveliness from the crowd. They started their set off with “Emotional” off their new album, and just based off their performance of this song, I knew I was in for a really fun night. Everything from lead singer Brian Sella’s stage presence, to the visuals on the screens behind the band, to the light show was insane and perfect at the same time.

Something that I thought was really funny was the fact that there were about four or five people dressed up as Batman- which is the name of another one of The Front Bottoms’ songs off their new album. Brian said he was going to give one of them twenty dollars as a little costume contest prize, but can’t tell if he actually did or not. Regardless, it was funny, and someone even let him borrow their mask to play the song “Batman” with a Batman mask on!

At the end of the night, I was really pleased to see they “ended” their set with “Au Revoir (Adios)” before the encore. The encore was probably the best one I’ve ever seen in a concert. They came back to play “Skeleton,” “Lonely Eyes” and ended with their biggest song: “Twin Sized Mattress.”

My personal favorite song of theirs (and one of my favorite songs in general) is “Lonely Eyes.” They haven’t played it every night on this tour – I can only hope you can understand how excited I was when Brian announced that it was the next song. During “Lonely Eyes,” they brought out a giant beach ball- it was MASSIVE. I was under an overhang, so it wasn’t going to come anywhere near me, but it almost barreled on stage multiple times. stage members had to slap it away before it could get near Brian. I already knew “Twin Sized Mattress” was going to be the most exciting song, I kind of expected it to be the last song and I was right, but I never expected how much it was going to be.

Everyone in the crowd was screaming every lyric, and people came from behind the stage to join the band – some of which I think were actually the opening band. It was the perfect way to end the night, and was definitely the best ending I’ve seen in a concert. I left the venue thinking about how this has genuinely been one of the best nights I’ve had this year- going to a concert of a band that I was just a casual fan of. Since the show ended, I’ve found myself listening to their music a lot more than I have before, and they have definitely moved up into my favorite artists list.