Emo has been a huge part of my life since my early 20s, and I just turned 50, so you better believe I am the target demographic for the new American Football release. Truth be told, they are a band I’ve always liked, but only came to love years later. At the time of their now-classic debut’s release, I was more heavily invested in the other Cap’n Jazz branches, the Promise Ring and Joan of Arc, the former beginning to wind down and the latter just beginning a run of phenomenal, idiosyncratic releases.
I found the sugar rush of the Promise Ring and the provocations of Joan of Arc to be the polar ends I craved, and I viewed American Football as not much different from a lot of the other emo I’d heard from countless bands. Beyond that, I found Mike Kinsella’s project Owen too depressing, and for a guy who loves dark music, that is saying something.
Sometimes it takes a little life experience to connect with songs, and “Home is Where the Haunt Is” frankly flattened me. I was in the middle of a very unhappy time and feeling very much like a shadow of myself, so “The ghost in the corner of the room / Knows how you’re feeling / ‘Cause you’re dead to him, too” lived rent-free in my head.
Then, when LP3 arrived in 2019, I was getting divorced, and the final lines of the last song on that record, “Disappointment and grief come easy / Forgiveness is a mystery”, were the ones that rang out. So while I wasn’t licking the wounds of a failed romance when LP1 dropped, I’ve been walking hand in hand with Kinsella and his bandmates in their second act.
Those first three LPs hang together musically and thematically, so it’s great to see American Football stretching on LP4. Their biggest swings are front-loaded on LP4, and they are also the biggest wins. The first two tracks channel the grand melancholy of the Cure, and Kinsella’s hollowed-out vocal “Man Overboard” at the end of the song gets things off to a haunting start and “No Feeling” continues in that same vein just as successfully and features a guest vocal from Brendan Yates of Turnstile. Lead single “Bad Moons” is a pitch-black track that builds to a harrowing finale over its eight minutes. It’s a big swing as a welcome to the record, and while this is not a wild reinvention, it is the biggest risk they’ve taken to date.
Kinsella still knows how to twist the knife, and that knife is most often lodged in his gut. It can be a lot if you are a lyrics person, but there is so much pretty melancholy in each of the four American Football records that you could also just get lost in the feelings that way.
He is always good for several new indelible lines that are equal parts clever and gut-wrenching in their matter-of-factness. LP4 is no exception. The first half of the record’s highlights are “The story of my life is a murder mystery / Too many bodies to hide”, one of the final lines of “Blood of My Blood”. That track features a memorable guest vocal from Cathlin De Marrias of Rainer Maria. “Bad Moons” leads with “Surprise, I’m just two little boys in a trenchcoat / Plastic knives / I’m scared, and I don’t want to grow up.”
Fortunately, there is an instrumental break after those first four heavy tracks. As for the second half, it is a little lighter by comparison, but mostly in terms of music. Kinsella’s lyrics rarely take a break. There’s even a little gallows humor on “The Patron Saint of Pale”, with him recognizing he’s the new pope of mope for a group of listeners his age. “Wake Her Up” reminded me a little of a more subdued track from the Promise Ring’s at-first maligned Wood/Water, and it features an ethereal-sounding Wisp vocal.
“Desdemona” is a return to that Disintegration-era Cure sound and another highlight on the record. “Lullaby” is a brief, pretty instrumental that sets up the closer “No Soul to Save”. Thematically, this reminds me a little of an Afghan Whigs-style closer that ties together themes and blends a fourth wall break with wry observations, callbacks to songs from previous albums, and an interrogation of the listener. It’s an effective and affecting send-off.
At this point, American Football seem committed to sticking around. The albums are coming more quickly, and the venues continue to fill up. It’s natural for them to want to do something more than replay a record from 25 years ago, and so far, the music has been close enough to that vaunted debut to keep fans happy. I found much to connect with lyrically, and the music is even more haunting than usual, with traces of Disintegration throughout the most memorable tracks.
While this is not a radical departure, it is an expansion of American Football’s signature sound, and it works magnificently. I hadn’t predicted I’d get reflective emo for my midlife crises, but it’s been the unexpected gift I didn’t know I’d need.