Good old Little Rock. The Moving Front is three guys that played music for a long time, then this other guy came in for like a second to sing and went to do other stuff no one knows what and no one can really speculate, then this other guy came in and started singing if you could call it that and bossing every one around and kind of took shit over like some kind of a-hole tyrant. Then some people got girlfriends and stopped getting into trouble and some got married and had kids while other people got out of really long term relationships and debated whether getting into trouble was worth it in the long run and took the safe route by being generally abrasive. Like anything, it all gets messy but it's still good 'cause this music isn't about  that mess anyways. 'Cause it isn't about us. I mean, this paragraph is, because it is about us. It's supposed to be, but the music isn't.

 

The Moving Front is an unusual band if even for the fact that they exist at all. Treading heavily on a currently overdone cliche The Moving Front have the usual ingredients: the analog keyboard, the choppy Nile Rodgers style guitar, the disco derived beats, the po-faced yelled political posturing that made name-dropping Gang of Four as an influence suddenly relevant again the past few years. But to their credit, you get a sense that maybe TMF may... actually... mean it. Like your cool older brother who got you into punk in the first place, you get the impression that TMF has the vinyl, the stories, and the maddening condescension: "you should check out this band, they kind of remind me of the bands you listen to," that made you want to start your own band in the first place, if only to prove to them that they were irrelevant.

 

To their credit, The Moving Front provide some solid tunes and a welcome departure from the angst ridden world of personal troubles and relationship difficulties that form the foundation for so much independent rock, attempting quite genuinely to bring informed danceable pop back to a troubled political climate in a manner that is reminiscent of early New Model Army or the Jam. They may not be the next big  thing, but they could be the next thing.