American Football (LP1)
American Football / American Football (LP1) / 1999 / PRC-276-1
(If unfamiliar with American Football, check out the intro to Record Review 15)
It’s been almost 10 years since I received American Football’s LP1 reissue as a birthday gift - a beautiful, deluxe edition gatefold full of photographs and live bonus tracks pressed on red marble vinyl. It’s something I was really looking forward to. In 2014, I was half way through my college career and LP1 was a common top to bottom playthrough as I walked to and from class. This was the during the time of “fourth wave emo” (2007-2015), and people were discovering (or re-discovering) American Football for the first time alongside bands like empire! empire! (I was a lonely estate) and Dads. This long lost band of 1999 was now in the light and the reissue made it clear they were receiving a lot of traction. During spring semester of that year I was at a friends house party and I randomly bumped into one of my dorm mates who had shown up there. In his drunken stupor he came up me and told me that “American Football isn’t a real emo band - Pity Sex is true emo!” (Mind you, we connected on some music tastes and he introduced me to bands like Pity Sex, Glocca Morra and Ovlov). I didn’t have much to say besides shake my head and smile. Emo is a broad genre that puts a lot of bands under a blanket that widely differs from “wave to wave” - some of it resonates more with listeners than others, and that’s just the natural course of music. He connected more with the shoegaze side of emo, while I was getting lost in the math rock side of it.
American Football opens with the ever iconic Never Meant - a track in 6/4 centered around the justification and acceptance of dealing with a failed relationship, the overall theme of the record. Steve Holmes’s repeated FACGCE tuned guitar riff is infinitely catchy alongside Lamos’s lively drums. The tambourine shakes leading into Kinsella’s outro fit perfectly. Mike’s lyrics are nostalgic and relatable - “So let’s just pretend, everything and anything between you and me, was never meant”. If you’re looking for modulation and effects on this record, look elsewhere - Kinsella and Holmes are playing Fender Telecasters set to the bridge pickup and plugged directly into Fender Twin Reverb amplifiers on the clean channel. It’s simple, yet effective as they layer their guitar parts on top of each other. Following track The Summer Ends is in 7/4 and introduces one of my favorite trumpet parts to play from Steve Lamos. Third song Honestly? rides a dynamic wave of progression with an intro riff that is almost a homage to David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel. For Sure contains my other favorite trumpet line on the album that eventually breaks way to instrumental You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon. Lamos turns the snare wires off on this one which works great here with his jazz technique. But the Regrets Are Killing Me continues the tale with Kinsella showing off the beginnings of his great songwriting - “These four years, and how we say goodbye to these four years. A long goodbye, with mixed emotions. Just fragments of another life. Not dead - yet” It hits hard, especially with the guitar duet that succeeds. Stay Home is another progressive track with historic lines “But that’s life, it’s so social”. Closer The One With The Wurlitzer is an instrumental that speaks for itself with the biggest jazz feel, especially with the trumpet. Holmes's Wurlitzer part is a refreshing as Mike plucks harmonics and the song fades out.
American Football was recorded by Brendan Gamble at private studios in Urbana, IL. Photography and design was done by Chris Strong. As promotion for the reissue in 2014, Polyvinyl / American Football released an official music video for Never Meant that you can check out here:
