Image: This is a photo of guys standing in front of a restaurant.
"Thank you for sticking with us all this time," says American Football, who will be performing with opener Teethe.
Alexa Viscius
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American Football has cemented itself as a cornerstone of Midwest emo music thanks to the success of their LP1. This reserved yet impactful record carved a lasting influence in the genre and slowly built a cult following around the band, which broke up shortly after its release in 1999.
This year, they’re continuing their LP1 25th-anniversary tour in the U.S., including two shows at the Granada Theater on May 30 and May 31. That’s not bad for a project that was quietly recorded and released with no expectations of success, fame, or really anything at all.
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These guys weren’t using music to score chicks or make it big; for them, it was just a hobby. After all, they only named themselves as a band so they’d have something to put on fliers when playing at house parties. They recorded their first album for the same reason you’d take a picture at graduation: to be able to look back and say, “Hey, I did that.” The tracks were finished in a few days in a garage and the lyrics were pulled last minute from entries floating around lead singer Mike Kinsella’s journal.
“We were these sober punks,” Kinsella says over Zoom. “On Friday nights, we weren’t going to frat parties and raging; we were mostly going to shows.”
They played a few gigs together, taped some songs, then split up and went their separate ways. Their LP, however, quietly took on a life of its own and spread through music-sharing sites. No one in the band had the slightest idea of their music’s popularity until 10 years later when drummer Steve Lamos, now an English professor at the University of Colorado - Boulder, was approached by one of his students who’d found the project on Limewire.
By 2014, they were reunited (with the addition of Kinsella’s cousin Nate on bass) for a string of sold-out shows to celebrate the album’s 15-year anniversary. American Football decided to take their second wind and run with it, which resulted in LP2. The goal for their second record was to strike a balance between introducing new sonic concepts while keeping the key elements that made LP1 stand out.
“The conversation was like, ‘Okay, what do people like about LP1?’” Kinsella recalls. “We’ve grown after writing a couple of new albums and playing together for 10 years now, so I think we know what we do now, but it’s harder to figure out what we did then.”
Writing music was a bit different this time around – the band now had expectations for their album, and so did fans. Kinsella remembers being much more thoughtful with that record, which he acknowledges might’ve upset listeners who prefer the raw nature of LP1.
But all in all, that’s a fair bias because it’s hard not to fall in love with an album so authentically emotional and unabashedly itself. LP1 proceeds with a freedom that feels more like a friend’s shared mixtape than an attempt at any sort of image or genre because that’s essentially what it was.
“Never Meant” throws the listener in the deep end with interwoven noodling from Kinsella and Steve Holmes on guitar over crisp hi-hats and a snappy, shifting snare pattern from Lamos. The following track, “The Summer Ends,” is immediately more modest, opening with light drums, pensive guitar riffs and a crooning trumpet.
The eclectic guitar tunings and drumming style used are a big reason the album sounds so unique. Kinsella admits they made an effort to do something different from other bands in the scene but also attributes some decisions to experimenting with sounds and just making things work. Midway through praising his drummer, he jokes that Lamos “just doesn’t hit cymbals on 1 often” and tends to play more reserved, which helps land the band in a league of its own stylistically.
“I think even the mistakes subconsciously resonate and that’s why it sounds youthful and naive,” Kinsella says, reflecting on the album’s rough edges. “That’s also maybe why it’s hard to play these songs later, as adults. You can’t really replicate the naivety.”
There’s a refreshing variety from track to track and a lightness to the songs that contrasts with the heavier themes of change and moving on. The band doesn’t sulk or seeth at the moment; they let it pass by, knowing the world will keep on turning. The guitars dance playfully and the drums dig in while Kinsella sings about falling out of love on “Never Meant,” almost as if to say, “So what? It is what it is.”
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American Football is grateful for their awkward, disjointed timeline where they eventually reunited again.
As they move toward their fourth project, reflecting on how American Football’s first record came into existence makes its legacy even more impressive and inspiring. The guys recorded this with no real ambitions or goals other than documenting the moment and moving on. Realistically, with that mindset, they could’ve just as easily snapped a few polaroids at the end of a rehearsal and called it a day, and there would be no “Never Meant,” no LP1 house memes, and certainly no 25th-anniversary tour. The fact that any of this is happening at all is a small miracle, and that isn’t lost on any of the band members.
“I’ve been in other bands that did that; that just sort of dissolved,” Kinsella says. “And that’s cool too, but it’s crazy that this has afforded us a second career later.”
They’re grateful to be able to tour around playing to sold-out crowds, but being away from home to fly around the world for gigs is different now that they’re all dads.
“Everybody’s got multiple kids, and as the kids get older, it’s just less fun to be gone, to be honest,” Kinsella says. “At first, it was a great excuse to get away one weekend every month for a couple of years, but then it sort of snowballed.”
Ultimately, though, Kinsella is grateful for their awkward, disjointed timeline and the way things played out; it just gave the guys more time to prepare.
“I’m so glad this happened to us now,” he says. “If we’d just stayed a band out of college and had any success, I don't know if we would have appreciated it. I think it would’ve fizzled out because we were different people and we get along better now. I think being dads has made all of us chill the fuck out a little bit and appreciate it more, so we get along better than we ever have.”
American Football will perform on Friday, May 30, and Saturday, May 31, at 7:00 p.m. at Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave. Tickets are available starting at $53.00 here.