The Front
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The Front

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"Buzz Bands"

A Front moves into the region

Michael Bauer acknowledges his move from St. Louis to Los Angeles two years ago influenced his music. Not that he's writing paeans to palm trees, or waxing on the glitterati — the pulsing, seething music on "Smiles & Handshakes," the debut of his three-piece the Front, knows no geography.

"It was more just the scene, the community, the people who introduced me to other kinds of music…. It helped me make what I was doing become more palatable," says the Front's frontman.

"Before, I was just kind of listening to Radiohead's 'Kid A' all the time, thinking that the way to stay interesting was to play dissonant chords."

The emotional dissonance remains, along with the kind of guitar squalor you'd expect from a band that gets compared to Fugazi. It's an agit-rock earful, and Bauer credits the studio wizardry of Mathias Schneeberger (Twilight Singers, Queens of the Stone Age, Great Northern) for bringing it all together.

"He was a magician," Bauer says. "We'd step out of the studio for lunch and when we got back there'd be Rhodes piano and another guitar track. We're pleased everything worked out so quickly."

Bauer and bandmates Kelly Kutasy (drums) and Nico Woolley (bass) celebrate their self-released album with a show Wednesday at the Troubadour.
- Los Angeles Times


"The Front is Coming....."

So every now and again I have been known to write about the best underground bands from the city I live in - Los Angeles. Oh wait, That's the entire theme of this website. Still, I thought it would be fun to start a new feature on the site called "Undiscovered L.A." Don't give me crap, I was bored and had Photoshop open.

"Undiscovered L.A." will be a whenever-I-feel-like-it feature highlighting the best undiscovered music from all over city of angels. What better band to kick off with than fuzzy guitar laden grunge rock and roll 3 piece The Front.

The Front's new album, Smiles & Handshakes, is an 8 song full on auditory assault. This ain't your timid Eastside acoustic folk trio. The Front would draw closer comparison to early 90s Seattle scene bands along the vein of Mudhoney , Failure and that little trio named Nirvana. Singer Michael Bauer's vocals and raw and cutting. The guitar is freakin' insane and loaded with delicious feedback. The Front are not afraid to be loud and certainly unafraid to rock out. In a wash of delightful indie pop bands choking the LA music scene (I'm saying that's a bad thing. Indie Pop is my crack) they are a painfully awesome reminder that music sometimes just needs to be cranked up to 11.

Rock Insider is more than tickled pink to present The Front's CD Release show next Wednesday June 6th at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Also performing: The freakin' bananas San Fran duo The Dodos, RI Favs Mezzanine Owls and Sunday Drivers. Tickets are $8 cash only at the door. This is one show you will be kicking yourself if you miss. - Rock Insider


"Cold Weather Kids"

"Monday, 9:43 p.m.: "Machine guns pointed at my head... I wish I was American instead." Michael Bauer, lead singer of Eastside trio The Front, is masked behind a veil of hair, delivering an anti-war statement in the form of a narrative tune. Midway through a rumbling, distortion-heavy set at The Silverlake Lounge, he affably suggests between songs that George Bush's justifications for oil are akin to a smack addict's quest for a fix, which earns a round of whoops and some pint glasses raised in the air. They continue to thunder through less political numbers, and the vitriolic and catchy "Social Bat" (which has earned recent airplay on Indie 103) is tangled in my head for days before I find out that the lyrics are, incidentally, about a chick who goes out to too many shows."
- LA Weekly


"Great Northern, The Pity Party and The Front @ the Viper Room"

The Viper Room has recently been making desperate attempts to persuade east-siders to make the trek, and $10 parking fee, over to their venue. But if they’re going to put together lineups like tonight they may have a shot at being a club who showcases bands people actually care about. Tonight’s lineup is a homerun with 3 solid acts: Great Northern, The Pity Party and The Front. Email the bands to get in for free, or pay another $10. Ouch.

- Little Radio


"Given To Flier"

Michael Bauer is putting up a “broke-ass flier” for his band The Front on a phone pole at the corner of Sanborn and Sunset in the heart of Silver Lake.

“Want to know a secret?” the 25-year-old asks, standing back to eye his work. “I just ordered 3,000 stickers. It’s more hardcore than anything I’ve ever done. I see other people have the idea of making stencils and spray-painting their band’s name, but I got stickers. I talked to the guy and he said they stick around three to five years, no matter what the weather.”

Bauer looks down at his thin stack of Xeroxed fliers. “These are gonna blow off inside a week, or someone is gonna tear them down.”

Given the fact that he is using thumbtacks, he’s probably right.

The guitarist and front man for The Front describes his trio as art rock: hard distortion, melodic, sincere, angry and “beautiful in some ways.”

“No artist likes to put their art in boundaries,” he explains. “I guess it’s, like, stoner rock.”

What is stoner rock exactly? Does it mean that the band members are stoners, or the people listening are stoners?

“Neither, necessarily,” he says, sitting down on a bench in the shade. “That’s an interesting question. When I think of ‘stoner rock’ I get ideas of, like: Kinski — this band on Sub Pop — Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. For some reason, that particular term describes a particular kind of music. It’s heavy, drone-y rock. Distorted riffs, but not kickin’ your ass like Metallica’s Kill ’Em All. Maybe because it’s a slower rock?

“I don’t get stoned before shows.”

Bauer, who shares a rent-controlled apartment in Echo Park with two roommates, has played at El Cid, the Knitting Factory, the Silver Lake Lounge and Little Radio. He says his drummer usually makes his band’s fliers, including the one he is posting today, which has a picture of the traffic along the Champs Élysées with Fuck You inserted onto the license plate of one of the cars.

His drummer works at a production company in Hollywood that makes movie trailers, and “when she is supposed to be working,” Bauer explains, “she is making these.”She also gave him the small Ziploc bag he is holding, filled with supplies she took from her office: thumbtacks, staples — no stapler — and Scotch tape. Whenever he puts up fliers, the brown-eyed, full-lipped Bauer goes to the same places: Eastside coffee shops Casbah, Eat Well, Chango, The Downbeat Café, The Brite Spot and also Sea Level Music. All places he considers “Flier hubs. Places people who look at fliers will go.”

But, he adds, “I don’t think fliers really transfer into people coming to our show.”

“I’ve never seen a flier for a band that I’ve never seen and said, ‘Hey, I am gonna go to their show!’ I think it probably just makes me feel good knowing I am doing something to promote my band.”

Do you stop and look at fliers when you pass them?

“Yeah, I check them out . . . and steal ideas.”

Bauer has shoulder-length, naturally brown hair, which makes him look a lot like Michael Pitt’s character in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or a younger, prettier Billy Corgan, if you prefer.

Have you always had long hair?

“Well, I was selling Serta mattresses back in St. Louis. And, when I went for the interview, my boss said, ‘You seem like a really intelligent guy, we really want to give you the job. One thing I want to talk to you about is, you have to cut your hair. We think it will make you look older.’ I went home and I almost cried. It was pathetic that I was getting a job where someone was telling me to cut my hair.”Last year, when Bauer told his boss that he was going to quit and move to L.A. and grow his hair, his boss told him he was going to bump him up from $50,000 to $90,000 a year if he stayed and kept his hair short.

“I told him, ‘Screw that, I want to move to Los Angeles and be poor.’ ”

Since he moved here he has always lived on the Eastside, and some of the local bands he notices regularly putting up fliers are: Future Pigeon, Irving and a new group called Lemon Sun.In fact, he admits that sometimes when he sees a Lemon Sun flier, at, say, Chango, where he buys his coffee every morning, he experiences some anxiety. “The fact that I am even thinking about them is a good thing,” he says of the band, which he hasn’t seen yet, but is thinking about seeing.

Bauer looks away for a moment and says, “I hope someone out there is thinking about The Front.”
- LA Weekly


"The Front"

"The Front Is Coming. And they do. Like a marching army or an inclimate storm, they push it to the forefront with determinate power. From the penetrating drums, the backbone of their sound, forceful with hail-pounding rage, to the deep bass line, soulfully articulated in animated performance like thunder from inside, The Front has captured all, friend or foe. The lightning itself is the final forecast, and that is the rhythmic guitar and vocals, mixed with the lyrics of alienation, suspense, and despair, reminiscent of Nirvana's "Incesticide" or the Pixies--it strikes and electrifies, sending erratic fragments of light. Beautiful, painful, enticing, magnetic, and unpredictable--songs made for usurping. And that is what they do--conquer all. The Front Has Come. And nothing's left behind." (Jenn Kirchoff) - Racket Magazine


Discography

The Front- Smiles and Handshakes (2007)
1. Social Bat
2. It's All Exhaust
3. Panic
4. Natural Selection
5. Life Support
6. Cavalier
7. Insurgency Insecurity
8. Fuck the Tourniquet

You can hear 4 of these tracks at our myspace site which is http://www.myspace.com/thefrontiscoming

"It's All Exhaust" and "Social Bat" have been receiving radio airplay on Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles. Indie 103.1 started playing our cd even before they had received the mastered copy.

We just received our mastered copy about 3 weeks ago, sent it to them and they've been playing it religiously ever since. We are currently turning my apartment into a cd duplication factory and we'll be sending the cd to labels, publications, radio stations nationwide. I'll keep you posted on what happens.

The Front (STL)- Bite Your Lip (2005)
1. Ambulance
2. Minus Words
3. Template
4. Natural Selection
5. Life Support
6. Great Expectations
7. Alka Seltzer Doesn't Work for Me
8. Firecracker
9. You Like Your Arms
10. A Perfect Home
11. Hurricane

Photos

Bio

THE FRONT
www.thefrontiscoming.com www.myspace.com/thefrontiscoming

"This buzzworthy trio churns out beautifully fuzzy, thundering rock, with adhesive riffs and emotive vocals which range from raw and delicate to powerfully full-throttled. Definitely keep an eye on these guys. And girl." - Alie Ward of the LA Weekly

"Very, very cool stuff." - Mark Sovel, Music Director, Indie 103.1, FM Los Angeles

"Lyrics of alienation, suspense, and despair, reminiscent of Nirvana's "Incesticide" or the Pixies--it strikes and electrifies... Beautiful, painful, enticing, magnetic, and unpredictable--songs made for usurping." - Jenn Kirchoff of Racket Magazine

"Fucking awesome." - Chuck P., DeeJay, "Dead Air", Indie 103.1 FM, Los Angeles

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Summer, 2005: Michael Bauer is offered a job for $90,000 a year on the conditions that he stay in St. Louis, Missouri, and cut his hair. Instead, the mild-mannered and level-headed guitarist asks his boss to please fuck off, and moves to Los Angeles to form a rock band. The Front is that band.

Michael (guitar/vocals), Kelly (drums), and Nico (bass) first met outside the infamous Echo nightclub in Echo Park, CA. Sharing an acerbic wit and common interests in hard distortion, melodic beauty, and fearless sincerity, the three soon found themselves sequestered in Michael's Silverlake practice space near the Elliott Smith wall on Sunset Blvd.

After a few months of dedicated rehearsal and occasional beer drinking, they booked their first gig at the Silverlake Lounge, opening for Future Pigeon; 150 people witnessed them rock a tight set of 6 songs.

Since then, The Front has shared stages with The Thermals, Gris Gris, Earl Greyhound, Jucifer, Great Northern, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (fellow Missourian rockers and friends), Burning Brides, Death from Above 1979, and been a fixture on the burgeoning music scene of Echo Park.

They now have over 50 shows under their collective belt, toured the West Coast, played sponsored Indie 103.1 radio shows at the Viper Room, The Knitting Factory, Little Radio, Spaceland, Safari Sam's, El Cid, and The Prospector, among others.

And in late 2006, The Front recorded their EP Smiles and Handshakes with Mathias Schneeberger (Queens of the Stone Age, Burning Brides, Twilight Singers, Great Northern, Mark Lanegan...) which quickly earned near-religious radio play on one of L.A.'s biggest and most respected stations, Indie 103.1. The LA Weekly has also taken notice, giving the band a full-page article, as well as several favorable mentions.

The Front just completed the mastering process and final artwork for Smiles and Handshakes, and are now shopping it around to various labels.

They also recently purchased a very nice van, christened "Betty White". It will see ten of thousands of miles of U.S./Canadian soil this year, as The Front embarks on their 2 week tour of the West Coast in May, and are planning a major U.S. tour for the summer of 2007.

On a personal note:

Michael enjoys running, major league baseball, dogs that do tricks, a solid gyro and giving backrubs.

Kelly enjoys giggling, driving Nico around town, doing all her friend's taxes and her new niece who will be rocking CMJ come 2027.

Nico enjoys wine, socks, poorly maintained facial hair, Harry Potter, and roller skating. Also: they love you, wish you the best of health and mind and hope you are okay.