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American Football — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Background and recording

Before playing for American Football, frontman Mike Kinsella previously played in Chicago-based bands Cap'n Jazz and Joan of Arc alongside his brother Tim, playing drums for both bands. In 1997, Kinsella started The One Up Downstairs, whose line-up consisted of Allen Johnson on bass, Steve Lamos on drums, David Johnson on guitar, and Kinsella himself on vocals. The One Up Downstairs recorded three songs planned for a 7-inch vinyl release by Polyvinyl. However, the band broke up before it was pressed, causing the record to be shelved. Shortly afterward, Lamos was jamming with Kinsella's college roommate Steve Holmes. Kinsella thought he "could add something", resulting in the trio forming American Football. The band's name comes from a poster that Lamos' girlfriend had spotted, stating "Come see American [f]ootball, the most overpaid athletes in the world."

The first time the group met it was considered to be casual, and the band's "[musical] ideas were noodly and meandering", according to Kinsella. The trio was based in Champaign, Illinois, while Kinsella was attending the University of Illinois. American Football was initially a side project, not intending to become a full-time commitment, as Holmes comments, due to the band "always half-assing things". The first song the group wrote together was the instrumental "Five Silent Miles". At the time they were listening to Steve Reich, attempting to work out the interplay between two guitars. The band released a 3-track self-titled EP in October 1998, which included "Five Silent Miles".

LP1 was made "literally in the last four days" before two out of the three members of the band had to move back home from college, according to Kinsella. The album was recorded in May 1999 at Private Studios in Urbana, Illinois. On the technical side, the album was recorded to ADAT tapes and mixed on a TASCAM digital tape deck. That mix was bounced to a DAT tape master, from which subsequent reissues have been struck. The LP was produced by Brendan Gamble; he previously produced the band's self-titled EP. According to Lamos, the song titles were made up a couple of hours "before we finished the artwork." Prior to creating the song titles, songs were referred vaguely as "the B song or the C-sharp song." Kinsella had a journal that he used lyrics from, though they were written "from years before that, so it was just like, 'Yeah, that'll work.'" After writing the lyrics and melodies, Kinsella would "just screech...them out." While practicing the material, they didn't have a PA system and thus Holmes and Lamos did not know the lyrics until the group did live performances. According to Kinsella, the songs' melancholic lyrics were due to influences from outside of emo and post-hardcore, which included such bands as the Cure, Red House Painters, and The Sundays.

Legacy

Despite its initial minor success, LP1, with the help of word of mouth, gained cult status since its release; as a result, it was frequently bootlegged, and became a major topic of discussion on Internet forums. The album is considered an important work of the emo genre that set up the foundations for later bands in the 2000s; following the decline of the genre, a new wave of artists aimed to reproduce its early sound, with American Football being an influence. Polyvinyl co-founder Matt Lundford described the album's subsequent sales figures and influence in the years following its release in a 2019 interview with Noisey as "a constant climb upwards." Lunford recalled LP1 "just kept organically being discovered by people, and then inspiring people and inspiring bands, and then being rediscovered."

AllMusic reviewer Fred Thomas gave the album four and a half stars and described it as "an anomalistic emo-jazz hybrid"; he noted the record's laid-back production compared to emo's more aggressive tone and hardcore origins. Joe Goggins of The Line of Best Fit gave the album a 9 out of 10, labeling the record as a "perfectly-pitched, emo mood piece"; he noted the typical themes of emo, citing anger, regret, disappointment and frustration. Goggins interprets the calm yet sad tone of LP1 as Kinsella experiencing these emotions but having to move on as a significant amount of time has passed since then. Philip Cosores of Paste gave the record a 9.0 out of 10, describing it as an "album that ultimately defies genre classification"; he states it "serves as what indie rock should be about, synthesizing the musical world around us, not dividing and separating."

The American Football House became a landmark for emo music fans, who often visit the house to take photos. Music journalist Sean Neumann, who documented the history of the house for Vice, noted that fans have carved markings into the sidewalk in front of the home where Strong took the original photograph. The house would later take a leading position in the band's reunion, and the interior of the house later used for the cover of their eponymous second album. Kinsella revealed that the repeated references to the house was due to the fact it was one of the few images related to the band. American Football revealed they, Polyvinyl, Chris Strong, Atiba Jefferson and Open House Contemporary had collectively purchased the house on May 5, 2023, "in an effort to preserve its place and legacy within the community that built it."

Stereogum listed "Never Meant" as one of "30 Essential Songs from the Golden Era of Emo" and "The Summer Ends" as one of "30 Essential Post-Rock Songs". NME listed the album as one of "20 Emo Albums That Have Resolutely Stood the Test of Time". Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 6 on their list of the "40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time"; it was ranked number 5 in a similar list by Kerrang!. "Never Meant" was named the greatest emo song of all time by Vulture.

Em Casalena of American Songwriter wrote, "American Football is one of the most heartwrenching breakup albums ever written and produced… and not only in the Midwest emo genre."

Ellise Shafer of Variety conferred the title of the "ultimate Midwest emo anthem" on the album's opening track, "Never Meant". In congruence, Kerrang! called the track "one of the defining songs of the genre," and stated that the album as a whole is the one that "everyone seems to have agreed is the pinnacle of emo, despite the fact that you’d probably have to be in the band to name more than four songs from it."

Reissues and touring

In April 2014, American Football announced they were reuniting for live performances. Holmes said the group realised that "the time was ripe for three middle aged dudes to play some old songs about teenage feelings, and stand around tuning guitars for a long time." Polyvinyl released a deluxe edition of two discs containing various demos and live tracks with expanded packaging on May 20. Demand for the re-release had crashed Polyvinyl's website. The reissue came about when Holmes found cassette tapes of demos and showed them to Polyvinyl. Polyvinyl, who first teased a possible release back in 2012, asked if the band wanted to do anything with the tapes. The group were initially unaware of the album's anniversary. One of the live recordings was "The 7's"; it was one of the first songs the band ever wrote and was used to close their live performances. The song was "one of the more interesting things" the band ever wrote, according to Holmes and showcases the band's interest in different time signatures.

On June 5, 2014, a music video was released for "Never Meant". Directed by Chris Strong, the video was filmed inside and around the house that features on the album cover artwork. The video was set in Urbana, Illinois, around 1999. Strong revealed that the storyline was "about a brief relationship occurring between two characters at the end of their college experience". Strong had other people portray the band. American Football, with the addition of Kinsella's cousin Nate playing bass, played a surprise show in August in Chicago. They then followed this up with playing a festival in September and three nights at New York's Webster Hall. Further dates running into December were also played. In December, a live video was released for "Never Meant", filmed in October at New York's Webster Hall. The band played their first ever UK shows in May 2015. The reissue charted at number 68 on the Billboard 200 chart, number 5 on the Catalog Albums chart and number 22 on the Tastemaker Albums chart; it was ranked at number 1 on Paste's "Five Recent Reissues Worth Owning" list in 2014.

A 25th anniversary edition reissue and covers album was released on October 18, 2024, including a separate music cover album. The cover album included bands and solo artists with singles covered by Iron & Wine, Manchester Orchestra, Blondshell, Novo Amor, Lowswimmer, Girl Ultra, John McEntire, M.A.G.S, Yvette Young and Ethel Cain.