Brian Sella of The Front Bottoms continues to make catchy, confessional music on solo album

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A few years ago, Brian Sella was standing on top of the mountain — almost literally. The Front Bottoms, the Jersey duo he started with drummer Mat Uychich nearly two decades ago, were playing to thousands at Red Rocks, signed to Warner Bros., and touring the world.

Then everything changed. The label deal ended, management parted ways, and Sella, the eternal smart-aleck romantic, suddenly had to figure out who he was without the safety net. Well I Mean, his first solo record under the name Sella, sounds like that reckoning — a songwriter taking himself off autopilot and trying to find the joy, or at least the meaning, in making music again.

For anyone who has ever shouted along to a Front Bottoms set (and that’s everyone at all their shows), Sella’s confessional style is like hearing a buddy pour his heart out over beers. But where his younger self asked wide-eyed questions — who am I? where am I going? why don’t you love me? — this time, he’s living with the answers, and they’re not pretty.

Working with Chad Matheny (aka Emperor X), an old tour mate with a DIY ethic and a big heart, Sella recorded these songs in small spaces — apartments, laptop setups, a DIY venue in Berlin.

It’s a homecoming of sorts, since Sella and the Front Bottoms are also returning to Bar/None, the Hoboken-based label that gave them their start. But it’s not the back-to-basics acoustic record you might expect. Matheny fills the songs with symphonic horns, synths and the occasional drum machine, giving the melancholy plenty of color and air. The album has a more polished, mature sound than The Front Bottoms, and its nine tracks run a scant 25 minutes.

The cover of “Well I Mean.”

“American Shark” (listen below) opens with a recording of a crowd shouting “Where’s Brian?” — a joke, but also the big question. Over a low, uneasy groove, Sella sings about swimming straight back into his bad habits, calling himself the devil, but allowing that an angel’s always at his side.

“Skipping Out” (listen below), one of the catchiest songs here, hides its bleakest confessions inside a bouncy rhythm. “I’m drunk every time you see me,” Sella sings. “I’m skipping out on the therapy and doubling up on the medication.”

Elsewhere, “Damage Control” flirts with drama and redemption — approaching “recovery as a process” — lush with strings, while “Stocking Up” recalls The FBs’ use of voicemails, only this time the jokes have been replaced by weary wisdom. Pizzicato strings — violin, banjo — provide a sweet background, but the lyrics offer a stark counterpoint, including one of the fiercest lines on the album: “You’ve got a gun in your hands, but it should be a guitar, shame to change who you were just to get this far.”

Sella still writes about places — “South Dakota” and “Wichita” recall FBs tracks like “West Virginia,” “Rhode Island” and “Fairbanks, Alaska” — but these aren’t happy songs; they’re markers on an emotional map. The former riffs off the monotony and daydreaming endemic to long tour drives, while the latter’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics let random thoughts float to the surface: “Everybody works for the insurance company,” “The garden was a gift, but the police still drive by.” Sella has called himself a poet at heart; for these 80 seconds, every verse is a poem.

“Perfect Worth It” pairs a lonely piano with brutal honesty (“How’d we go from perfect and worth it to ‘Fuck, this feels stupid?’ “) while “Daredevil” sets heartbreak to a drum machine and synthesized pulse that wouldn’t have fit anywhere on a Front Bottoms record. “I was the same old snake,” Sella admits — another reference to the devil? — and the song fades out warily, repeating “this new normal is under heavy disguise.”

An instrumental bit titled “Untitled” closes the record on a ghostly, unresolved note — a benediction for an artist still figuring out where he belongs.

Well I Mean doesn’t feel like an ending — the band and Bar/None insist that The Front Bottoms remain a going concern — but it’s not exactly a new beginning either. It’s the sound of a songwriter taking stock — older, wiser, still a little lost, but too human not to keep going.

For more, visit sellasellasella.bandcamp.com/album/well-i-mean.

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