On their 4th LP in nearly 30 years, American Football mark the biggest shift in their sound applying their math rock and emo roots into lush art rock.
Release date: May 1, 2026 | Polyvinyl | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Website
From childhood until sometime in my 30s I have been told that my elders held more knowledge in some arena or another. ‘Trust your elders!‘ my parents would tell me as a child. ‘You’ll understand when you’re older,‘ I was told as a teenager. ‘You’ll get more conservative as you get older,‘ I was told in college. ‘Well, you’re still young,‘ I was told as an adult. I was precocious, for sure, but it always felt like a mistrust of my intelligence, a kind of belling shrug off of any points I was making or ideas I was testing. Now that I am greying in the beard and the distances between each year recede faster than my hairline did, I am beginning to understand that there grows a wisdom with age, as nebulous as that sounds. Some of it is generational difference. Some of it is exhaustion. Some of it is reflection. Collectively, it is the realization that your elders are fumbling through life as much as anyone else; they just have more practice stumbling around.
American Football formed when in 1997 about three hours southeast of my hometown. I wouldn’t go on to hear them for another 15 years or so, when I listened to their classic debut full-length. The interlocking clean guitars and rhythms and heartfelt lyrics are immediately recognizable with math rock’s bending time-signatures and intricacy. This was emo that took more inspiration from jazz than hardcore and remains a staple in the Midwest emo canon. The band called it quits within three years, leaving an underground treasure for future internet music fans to discover in forums. American Football returned in 2014 and have since released three more albums, all self-titled and each one showing growth. LP2 (2016) is a loving sequel with all of the charm of their debut keeping the occasional trumpet and piano, but with better production. LP3 (2019) saw the band expanding their sonic palette with xylophones, more effects, and synthesizers while maintaining their customary pace and vibe on an album nearly as much loved as LP1.
Each successive release has felt more mature and nuanced than the previous. You can hear American Football aging with grace and talent in their lyrics and increasingly expansive and complex sound. Seven years have passed, their longest silent gap since their hiatus, and LP4 has made the most of that time, emerging as the most sonically dense and ambitious record of American Football‘s career. The slow synthesizer build and ethereal chorus that welcomes you in on “Man Overboard” are soon joined with drums that seem to stumble with practiced age drawing you into a slow-burn post-rock song that builds into a heavy conclusion with distorted synths and guitars drowning your senses like the song’s character (‘God never taught me how to swim/just how to sink‘). American Football have never felt so thick and textured. This density manifests itself in gorgeous ways throughout the album, though never as heavy as this.
“No Feeling” features bright synths and bells, twinkling guitars and lush vocal layers with assistance from Turnstile‘s Brandon Yates. Mike Kinsella‘s vocals on this song and much of the album are delivered with an earnest sadness that reminds me of Mark Hollis of Talk Talk fame. Though there are bright moments of sound and an ear for vocal hooks that unfold with all of the majestic colors and satisfied roots of a flower opening to the warmth of a new day, Kinsella’s lyrics still contain the eternal sadness and melodrama of the best emo bands. Despite that, his lyrics are more heartfelt and refined than ever. ‘The story of my life is in disarray/It’s written in ink that never dries,’ he sings on “Blood On My Blood”, a song that is as sharply critical of himself as it is somber in his remorseful break-up lyrics.
On “Patron Saint Of Pale” he weaves the stumbling sensation of being ‘born with two left feet,’ into a song about a separation with a long-time partner, the titular patron saint of pale whose ‘frailty‘ and ‘dumb doldrums‘ have begrudgingly sucked the life out of him, despite his partner’s mental health efforts. He feels the guilt, but acknowledges that the situation isn’t right. Despite the conflicting feeling of separating with someone over their mental health struggles, this song is the most upbeat and playful on the album. The drums are snappy. There are handclaps and a marimba. The chorus offers the problem up with a game of Rochambeau, another name for Rock Paper Scissors but also hilariously misrepresented by Eric Cartman in South Park, adding a sense of humor and verisimilitude to the track.
With so many references to past mistakes and ponderings on how to move forward (or not), LP4 distinctly feels like it is told from a man aging. It feels confessional, and whether these confessions and characters are from Kinsella’s life or are fabrications or embellishments is irrelevant, because you connect with the lyrics and moods so easily, even if a hypnotic swirl of instruments and complex rhythms tug at your sleeves the whole time. “No Soul To Save”, however, does feel authentically autobiographical as he sings, ‘I wasn’t meant for the stage,’ in what could be a swan song of sorts. Lyrically, like other songs on the album, this song suggests death by suicide, but it could equally be ending his musical career with such pointed lyrics. American Football is touring this summer. So, hopefully this isn’t the end, either way you interpret it.
At nearly three decades from their debut, American Football have found and absorbed the wisdom of age with gorgeous arrangements and songwriting. Each track feels like a vignette of a broader story of knowing one’s faults and using them to provide cautionary tales to listeners. LP4 is full of yearning, resigned failures, and detached, but brutally honest confessions that feel as profound and well-crafted as a classic work of literature. Musically, while still functioning within a rock band lineup, a band room full of instruments are employed with breathtaking effect, adding flourishes, punctuation marks, and a modern jazz record’s worth of interweaving complexity to their songs. This is a long way from their debut album, but in its own wizened way, it is every bit as impactful and legacy boosting. I know it will stick with me for years to come.
