Sella - Well I Mean Sella

While The Front Bottoms continue to record and tour, Brian Sella has also struck out on his own in an effort to keep things fresh.

“I’ve tried different hobbies over the years,” he explains. “But ultimately the thing I always come back to is songwriting and story telling. It’s just something I have to do and I have to find new ways to do it.”

Lyrically, the album moves around geographically with references to an American shark in an Australian river, along with songs titled after South Dakota and Wichita, Kansas. Sella has titled songs after places in the past (‘Rhode Island’, ‘Santa Monica’ and ‘West Virginia’ all come to mind) but these new songs feel more like internal landscapes, metaphoric places for what’s going on inside Sella’s head.

Sonically, many of the songs feature ambient rivers of sound that run parallel to the voice and guitar rivers of blended instruments; repeated piano and guitar melodies play off each other, horn sections ebb and flow, there’s even a flugelhorn that bends around the edges of jazz.

Sella stays out there searching for new currents and inlets in that river of sound, the shark out on the prowl with a devil clutching his fin. Prepare to be enveloped!