The Front Bottoms @ Mercury Ballroom - Louisville
October 20th, 2024: The Front Bottoms, Eliza & The Delusionals @ Mercury Ballroom - Louisville, KY
The Front Bottoms | Photos courtesy of: Emily May
New Jersey indie rock/pop band The Front Bottoms performed two sold-out performances at Mercury Ballroom on October 19th and 20th. I was lucky enough to cover night two, and what a night it was! The venue was packed this evening with a long line of fans waiting to enter when doors opened. Consisting of Brian Sella (lead vocalist/guitar) and Mat Uychich (drums) as the main duo, they were joined on stage by touring members AJ Peacox (guitar/backing vocals), Natalie Newbold (bass/backing vocals), and Erik Kase Romero (guitar/backing vocals). The band formed in 2006 and have grown a large and passionate fan base over the years. “Welcome to night two!”, announced Sella early in the set. The band had visited the Louisville Sluggar Museum earlier in the day, with Sella having brought a bat on stage this evening. “We’ll have batting practice later in the set, ok?”, he announced before continuing the music. The band released their latest album You Are Who You Hang Out With in August of 2023 and performed several tracks from the album this evening, including “Outlook”, “Punching Bag”, “Batman”, and “Emotional”, which he played on a guitar with hot dogs on it!
Sella was very engaged with the crowd, chatting quite a bit between songs, asking about and calling out all of the costumes that fans wore this evening, such as a jester, vampire, skeletons, Shrek, and Spiderman. He then gave out money to the winners, Spiderman and the jester. It was a fun part of the set. More fun ensued later when Kurt Skuse, the guitarist for the opening band Eliza & The Delusionals, came out on stage to drink beer from Mat Uychich’s shoe before running back off stage! The time finally arrived for batting practice, for which Sella had the band’s (I assume) tour manager come out onto the stage with a few t-shirts and threw them at Sella for him to hit into the crowd. The fans scrambled to be one of the lucky fans to grab one, with Sella being a good hitter! The band ended their set with “Finding Your Way Home”, with Sella thanking the fans and saying how the band feels so lucky to get to play music, before playing a three-song encore. They ended their set with “12 Feet Deep”, “Father”, and “Twin Size Mattress”.
Opening the show this evening was Australian indie rock group Eliza & The Delusionals. With 2 albums and 3 EPs under their belt, their most recent album is this year’s Make It Feel Like The Garden. The band performed mostly songs from the new album, along with “Halloween” from their 2022 album Now and Then, their 2019 single “Just Exist”, and a great cover of Phoebe Bridger’s song “Motion Sickness”. The band was in good spirits, with guitarist Kurt Skuse joking with the crowd by saying, after asking if everyone was exited for The Front Bottoms, that “Actually, they aren’t here and we’ll be playing a double set!”, which got a lot of laughs. Later in the set, singer/guitarist Eliza Klatt and Skuse talked about how the band had to go to Bass Pro Shop when they got to the US, as they don’t have them in Australia (Skuse and the drummer were wearing Bass Pro Shop hats). Skuse then asked the crowd if they looked cool, to which the crowd clapped and cheered. “Good”, he said. “We were afraid we looked ridiculous!”. After saying how this was the band’s first time ever in Lousiville, Klatt thanked everyone for being so welcoming. It was a great night of music with a fun and uplifting energy!
Eliza & The Delusionals
