American Football: Transcending Midwest emo

American Football’s legacy is well deserved, and honored. However, it’s something they themselves have a unique relationship with. The group spawned in the ’90s Illinois scene, where “Midwest emo” was germinating, after the debut album release and then swift dissolution of Cap’n Jazz, the band Mike Kinsella and his brother had started in ’89. And American Football followed that pattern. In 2000, after dropping their debut, eponymous album — known to fans as “LP1” — the band broke up. They wouldn’t reform until 2014, but the impact of what they’d done with one album — their recipe of math rock, slowcore, arpeggiated riffs, and open tuning — not only lived on but mushroomed into something far beyond anything they could have imagined.   

Over the last 27 years, the album they’d created, and then moved on from, as young artists, made the band’s name synonymous with an entire musical movement, something they’ve since been widely credited with pioneering: Midwest emo. Today, not unlike “Welcome to the Black Parade,” it only takes one second, at most, for any self-respecting alternative music fan to identify American Football’s seminal song, LP1’s “Never Meant.” In 2024, they celebrated that same album’s 25th anniversary with an extensive tour, and the year after, an LP1 Vans shoe was created, featuring the eerie, iconic album cover: a suburban house, now known as “The American Football House,” glowing, green-hued in the moonlight. In honor of the collaboration, twins Ako and Atiba Jefferson — Vans’ creative director and brand curator, respectively — threw a party at the band’s namesake house, alongside frontman Kinsella, drummer Steve Lamos, and guests like Hayley Williams, Yvette Young, pro skaters, and more.

Read more: What does emo really mean? The story of the genre in 11 songs

To have a trademark sound can be a gift and a curse. Fifteen years after releasing their “twinkle” guitar and allergy to traditional time signatures into the world, when the band reunited, their own cult following, and its expectations, preceded them. Amid the pressure, over the next few years, they put out two new full-lengths, 2016’s LP2 and 2019’s LP3 — each an effort in reconciling their past, and the reality of fatherhood, divorce, and their lives today. The former saw the band first stepping out as adults, wearing experience and time on their rough-hewn sleeves, while thumbing casually through their University of Illinois yearbook. In reflecting their lives with sharpened songwriting skills, rather than mimicking teenagerhood, LP2 draws from Kinsella’s intensely dark, self-deprecating solo project, Owen, more so than the band’s complex, mathy debut. With LP3, they drifted in another midtempo direction. Gone entirely are the math-rock tracks. Slower and more ambient than its predecessors, their deeply somber third album leans into cleaner, more meticulous production, and new forms of instrumentation. 

LP4, however, is something else. Arriving seven years after LP3, years which included a creatively suffocating pandemic, the band reemerged, ready to take risks. With each record after their reunion, the band have recontextualized themselves — sonically, interpersonally, romantically — though on their latest album, their effort is by far its most cohesive. Everything about LP4 is expansive, from Kinsella’s vocals — smoother, broader, more Ben Gibbard-like than ever before — to multi-generational features from Wisp, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, and Rainer Maria’s Caithlin De Marrais. It’s layered, ambitious, and intentional on all fronts: Lamos’ signature jazz-inspired syncopated work is sporadic and stronger than ever, spread across the album, in close embrace with Nate Kinsella’s formidable, compelling basslines. Where Kinsella and Steve Holmes were known for the interlocking sound on LP1, they’ve choreographed a new dance redesigned by creative restlessness and curiosity, though for fans still craning their necks in the rearview mirror, polyrhythmic twinkles make an appearance. Though they’ve allowed for a whiff of nostalgia, this project sees bountiful breadth in style: There’s a hooky pop song, a synth-heavy homage to the Cure, a track made of two demos stitched together as one, long, sonic dialectic. Under the watch of producer Sonny DiPerri, the band have truly toed and torn down lines. 

We also see Mike slip into a darker place on LP4. Suicide, grief, addiction, divorce, they’re all laid on the table with no accoutrements, save for his dry, sardonic sense of humor. However, enshrouded by the album’s monumental, reaching musical goals, these unsettling, uncomfortable confessions have found a home. Expect the noodling catharsis of ’99, and be disappointed. Acknowledge that brilliant artists grow up, too, and be awash in the glow of what they’ve built today, something boundless and sad, funny and avant-garde. But still intrinsically and honestly American Football.

It’s clear, listening to this album, that in a lot of ways, you’re coming from a different place. How would you describe the difference between LP4 and the last project that American Football released?

MIKE KINSELLA: We took a nice, healthy break between the two, so the process was really different. Within the band, we just communicated better, tried to make everybody feel more heard and more relaxed about sharing ideas. We just implemented a healthier group setting, and the product ended up having more influence from everyone. I think everybody was excited to try new things, and then everybody was excited to hear new things that other people tried. It pushed everybody out of their comfort zone in a good way. Just more collaborative and a little more exciting.

Personally, what do you think made now feel like the right time to get back into it?

I guess with COVID having it taken away from us, we all appreciated being able to do it. And just selfishly, creatively, it’s a totally different outlet than anything else I have going on. So I was

down to try something new. I was like, “Well, I’d like to do it. I just don’t want to do it within the parameters we set before.” Everybody agreed it wasn’t worth doing if it wasn’t exciting. It seems selfish that we did it, but that’s the only way everybody exists with their own interests.

I mean, that is also what sets anything creative apart from anything else. 

Yeah, it definitely was less like we got to pay bills and do this. This takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and it’s a leap of faith. We don’t really know if anyone cares if we’re coming back and making more new music, or if people think of us as a nostalgic band. 

What’s your relationship to the idea of nostalgia bands and nostalgic music? I talk to so many artists, and they have varying reactions and opinions. Some are really averse to it, and others lean in.

I’m kind of averse to it, but I also totally understand that I can’t control how people perceive what we’re doing. I guess what I can’t control is the perception that we’re aiming for that or we’re trying to sell them this sort of “nostalgia” thing. We’re all aware of that. And I think we make decisions based on not doing that. It’s a real dialogue of, “Hey, we want to be a band currently.” We want to be a bunch of old dudes making music that interests us. I hope you like it, and if you don’t, that’s cool. Instead of begging people to hang on and listen, we’re still the band you fell in love with 30 years ago! Because we’re not.

Right. I was talking to somebody and they said, about their old hits, “Why would we make all of that music again? It already exists. Just go listen to our discography.”

Sure. I mean, we made the music. We made the mistakes. At the time, that was the honest thing that came out, and now a different honest thing comes out.

What do you feel are the biggest mistakes that you’ve learned from that you’re taking into your music now?

It’s just back to appreciating and valuing the things we’re allowed to do — spend time in a studio with people we like and respect. Maybe before we didn’t know, we were ignorant or rushed or aiming for different things. Now, the most satisfying part is that everybody left the studio, again, feeling creatively heard. It was cool.

I feel like, as a listener, with LP4, lyrically, it feels like you’re trying to represent what’s going on now. In terms of creative, when you get in the studio and you’re starting this new project, are there references that you brought in with you? Like, “This is the direction we want to go in sonically.” 

The lyrics that come out are more than ever influenced by the songs. I would say that literally every part of every song, we can get into the minutiae of, OK, I want this reverb pedal to sound like this Cure song, even though the drum part is a total math-rock song. Everything’s obviously drawn from something or inspired by something. I think it’s cool that everybody in the band comes from a similar past, but definitely, we’ve all grown up and gotten into different things. And that could be either interesting or clash within a song or part, but more often than not, it helps each thing be a little more interesting. Then with the lyrics, each song ends up different because of those different [sonic] influences. If I’m writing a solo song, I’m just like, “Oh, I’m going to say whatever I want.” But now I’m writing to music with everybody else’s influence in mind. It’s a little more storytelling than I’ve tried before, which is fun.

Yeah, it feels like that, for sure. In terms of storytelling, do you feel like when you write tracks for an album that you are writing song by song, or are you working within an overarching concept?

There is a point when we decide, day one, OK, everything going forward now is all the efforts toward a new album. There’s a tipping point where if we have 50 demos or ideas in a folder, like, “OK, these three live in this world, and they’re all the same world.” Let’s pick the best version of that world, and then we’ll pick the next three that sound like they’re in this other world. Then hopefully at the end, you get nine or 10 different worlds that all are cohesive because they all have my distinctively limited vocal range on top of them. 

Right. Maybe I’m overanalyzing, but there’s an emotional journey to the sequencing. It does feel like going through some sort of… 

This just came up, and drummer Steve Lamos said the same thing. If you think of it as all existing in the same world, he’s like, “There’s song one.” Then he referenced “Patron Saint of Pale,” which is in the middle-ish. Then the last one, this acceptance of where we began. I mean, again, it definitely wasn’t lyrically arranged. It wasn’t like, “Well, in the lyrics, this is what the character’s doing. We’ve got to put this song here!” But also, I guess if that’s true, it’s like a choose your own adventure if we resequence the album, and the character ends up in a different place. That’d be cool. I should do that. That’d be a fun alternate. 

I love that. It also feels like it’s a heavier album, but there’s a great, sardonic sense of humor. 

That’s intentional. It’s a little levity. Sometimes it’s got to counter the dark or make the dark scene more real. I mean, “Bad Moons” started, literally, with those children’s sample voices, and obviously it just sounds like a children’s song. So in my mind, I’m like, “Well, let’s get a little weird. Let’s make this dark and weird.” The juxtaposition is more interesting than making it feel exactly how it feels. I mean, that song sounds like it could be about construction trucks in a sandpit, like literal kids playing, so I had to make the grown-man version.

That’s something you have always done so well. I really appreciate when you can feel intentionality.

That’s all this band is, sort of. There’s very little that happens off the cuff. Literally, we just left some truly studio blunders in to make it… I mean, we didn’t do the blunders on purpose, but we left them in on purpose to make it seem more real and make it seem more like humans.

Regarding the features on the album — this may sound like an obvious question, but what is it that makes you think this song needs another voice on it or another outside influence?

At some point with the lyrics, it either turns into a dialogue or conversation, or I feel like, on this album, there’s a couple instances where it’s a little devil and angel on my shoulder — or the character’s shoulder. It’s like in Shakespearean theater. There are these characters that represent the community. It’s like they’re breaking down some wall, and they’re referencing what everybody else is watching happening, the drama. So, I guess that would be where the idea for Natalie [R. Lu, Wisp]’s part in “Wake Her Up.” It’s almost like while I’m wallowing or whatever I’m doing, someone’s tapping me on the shoulder, like, “Hey, pay attention to what’s really going on here. You’re just thinking this is all in your head.” Then they’re referencing it from the outside. Specifically on that, Amber, our manager, brought up Natalie as a person to sing the part. The parts exist on the demos with just my voice, just terrible fake falsetto. And it’s hard to imagine, “Oh man, if we get something ethereal, just wait, there’s going to be this lovely voice that takes you somewhere else.” And she’s great. It sounds great.

As a band with such an important legacy and alternative space, do you feel pressure at all around that when you’re putting out a new album or have you moved into a place where you’re able to… 

I think we were living maybe with that pressure when we reunited the first time and then between breaking up and then a global pandemic and then being able to do it again, I joke, “You can’t kill us. We’re already dead.” If it’s not received well or popular, it’s like, okay, we lived without it again as adults. I guess we lived without it the first time for 14 years and didn’t know we’d miss it. And then we got it back and then we missed it and grieved it. And then now to be able to do it again, it’s almost like freeing, I guess. Again, it sounds selfish, but we’re so lucky to be able to do it, but it’s not really like … Yeah.

It doesn’t sound selfish at all from where I’m sitting. It sounds actually very much the opposite.

I think there’s a lot of bands or celebrities or all these people I just encountered one that think what they’re doing, they sell it as it’s totally altruistic. “You’re welcome. I was inspired so greatly to make this art, and you get to appreciate it.” Literally, I just saw this band and there banter between songs, and he was talking about how lucky everybody was to be in this room, because there was a point when he didn’t know if he had it in him to go on and make this art and stuff. And he goes, “I don’t know what else I would’ve done.” I was in the back, and I yelled, “Get a real job.” Then my girlfriend’s like, “OK, we should probably leave before you get kicked out. ” Again, totally appreciative and lucky to be here and have the resources to fulfill the things we want to do, but I’d do it anyway.

Yeah, no, I just feel like fans and audience members, and there’s such a stark difference in listening to an album that comes out of those different motivations.

Yeah, I hope that subconsciously, people understand. We’re not trying to sell you a thing. I appreciate that as a listener. 

There are albums that, for the artist, at the time, it was their own personal compulsion to create, or was in service to whatever they were going through. And it’s palpable, whether you know the artist or the story, or not. I think about Hayley Williams’ recent solo album, as an example. I know she did that because she neededto, for herself. You can really hear it, and connect to it.

Absolutely. It’s so cool that she’s able to do that. It’s therapy for her. 

The closer you connect to your own, whatever you call them, human needs or creative needs, the easier it is for others to connect to it as well. Regarding LP4, how are you feeling about it now that you’re getting closer to the release date? Do you feel the same as you did when you wrapped? 

I think because we finished it a while ago and sat on it for so long, now I’m excited again. I want people to hear this. Now we’ve released a couple of the songs, and I know that there’s a couple on the album where I feel like, “I can’t wait for people to hear this part.” I’m pretty proud of it.

I really look forward to that. In terms of since what, pre-pandemic to now, band aside, what do you think your own personal growth has been like, and how has that led to this moment?

I hope in all kinds of ways. Everybody went through a lot during the pandemic. I happened to be going through a divorce right before the pandemic anyway, so I don’t know. I judge my own growth on my kids because they were obviously younger, and they’re such different humans. I feel like I’m trying to figure out my role as a father in a different way than I was seven years ago, or definitely 10 years ago or 12 when the band first got back together. [I’m] living a totally different life. So I hope I’ve changed in a lot of ways. I hope I’ve made better choices. Even this year, this touring schedule is different than anything we’ve done. So there’s a lot of news, a lot of firsts for us. I think we’re all in a good place and communicating well, and we all keep each other positive. We’re doing good.

I can imagine being a parent will definitely help your communication skills.

It really helps the band all get along, that we all have these other very draining, actually important things to do. So we don’t really get too stressed if somebody is pissing us off. It’s like, “Whatever, I got to go home and deal with real life. We’ll deal with that later.”

And that’s also interesting to me, because it’s further eliminating the theory of “being selfish.”

I agree. I think it’s very non-selfish to be yourself, as long as you’re open about it. I think we all have gotten to that point. Maybe if we were a band that found success early on, even if we then went on to have kids, we would always be like, “Well, the band defines us, and now we have kids.” Instead, we all came back, and we’re all dads just doing what we do. Literally, it’s kind of a joke, but Steve is such an incredible drummer. He’s also a genius. He’s a professor. He’s a writer. He’s all these things that he was able to exist as before he got recognition as a drummer. And I think that’s great. That’s a cool way to wake up in the morning, to think of himself as all these things and not just be consumed by, “Oh, people are going to hear my songs.” It doesn’t really matter.

Why did you choose “Man Overboard” for the opener?

I mean, full disclosure, I didn’t, but everybody else did.

Well, why did you agree to it?

I agreed to it because I love everybody, and I assume that everybody’s correct that I’m wrong with most decisions. I think everybody’s really excited because it’s so obviously a different direction. It’s cool, we all agree. I mean, I agree with all of these things. [The album is] the furthest away from what you think of when you think of American Football. Maybe you think of it as twinkly guitars — and this song was written around an insane drum beat. It’s a very swimmy drumbeat. There’s not really a rhythm. It’s very tight, but then there’s an ugly sort of pad drone, and the first voice you hear is humming. And it’s not even me! So I think everybody is like, “Oh, this is cool. This establishes we’re doing something different, or trying something different.” Then everything after that… It’s sort of set up. It changed the spectrum or the parameters of what an American Football album could be. And I agree with all that, and I think and hope it works.

Back to the features, and having Wisp on the album. I love her so much.

Yeah, literally somehow I’d never met her, but she was already friends and working with our producer and engineer, Sonny. It was immediately like, “Yep, that’s the voice.” 

It’s crazy. I was on set with her a while back, years, and I remember her mentioning being a fan of yours. 

Oh, cool. That’s hilarious. I mean, it wasn’t even like, “Oh, our camps are talking.” It was, “Oh, that’s the perfect voice.” It was just supposed to be this one time, again, of her tapping me on the shoulder. But it ended up where we’re like, “Well, let’s just load it. Let’s do more. Let’s use that more.” So we put it at the end — what was going to be an outro or almost a separate instrumental song now is the outro to this song, because it’s all in the same world.

And you also had Brendan on this album.

That was more the part was written, but total happenstance. He came to a show, and we’re friends of friends. After some years, I had the nerve to be like, “Hey man, you should come to the studio tomorrow. We’re tracking, and you should sing this part.” Then he came. That totally just fell into that one, but that was going to be the whole band yelling the part, but he did it, and I just thought his voice would be in there, but then he sang it, and then it sounded too good, and so we just left it at his part.

What was it like working with Sonny on this? 

He is great. He was totally instrumental in allowing us to seek out different ideas — a ton of wasted time trying out different pedals that didn’t work. Instead of just picking the safe choice or the one that would be obvious, we’re like, “What if we fucking try this?” Then instead of rolling his eyes at the end of a 12-hour day, he’s like, “Yeah.” And he goes and plugs everything in, and we try it, and we’re like, “Nope, that’s not it. OK, cool.” Then we all high-five and make coffee. He’s just great energy, great vibe, super cool hang. 

That definitely feels like the kind of person you want for an album like this, where you’re really trying to make new moves.

Yeah, Nate and I had worked with him on a previous project, and when the band came back together, and we decided we wanted to do new stuff, we totally knew everybody would hit it off. They all did, and it was great. It was important because it felt like, “Well, can we do this? Can we make a new record? Should we?” And it was like, “We should use this guy.” It’s going to be great, and we are correct.

I’m impressed by how all of this communication and these relationships seem to have worked out so smoothly. You can definitely hear that as well. It feels like such a cohesive album. And it also feels very honest, which is, again, a word that I feel like can be very corny coming from my side, but I really mean and hear that. How much of LP4 do you feel is truly diaristic for you?

It is storytelling in a way, where I was finding themes, or found myself returning to themes that I knew I wanted to write about. But instead of just writing it about me, I was almost doing research into other art that’s been made, or references to. Desdemona is a Shakespearean character, and that theme is something I want to talk about, but it’s not me. It’s something else. It frees me up a little bit, makes me a little more comfortable to say whatever because well, it’s not me. It is, tangibly, maybe less diaristic.

When you listen to your first album or any earlier projects, do you still feel as connected?

I feel like it’s me, or it’s us, but it’s a different version and a different timeline of us. When I hear old shit, it’s literally like, “Oh, fuck. I remember being in the studio and hating that snare sound,” or whatever specific detail. But I guess, big picture, getting back together originally, learning LP1 — and I’m singing “Never Meant” now for 30 years almost — it still feels like me. You know what I mean? Like, “Oh, I remember that guy.” I might not be that guy now, but I remember that guy.

What is next? Are you thinking about another project after this? 

I mean, we still have to learn how to play these songs. It’s true. But I have a folder on my phone and already have LP5 demos. And I’m 90% done with a new Owen record, but probably won’t actually finish it till the end of the year, although I was hoping this month. We’ll see after this whole… I think it’s fun. I’m always looking forward to the next thing, but there’s so much cool shit to be done this summer that I’m looking forward to in my current life.

What was the most difficult song to make on this album?

“Bad Moons.” I’m most proud of solving that. It was like an equation because it was two different demos in two different keys, and two different tempos and two different sentiments. Out of maybe necessity, I was like, “What if we tried combining? Do you have to change keys and change everything?” Then thematically, once the music part worked, I had to figure out what the story was. “Patron Saint of Pale” was the last one that I finished vocals on, and I knew what I was talking about. That one took the longest to get there was “Man Overboard,” and I’m still not very confident in counting it, so that one I still haven’t learned, I guess. Actually, the arrangement of “Wake Her Up,” which is subtly the coolest because there’s no chorus, but it’s also a pop song. I think that’s a cool fine line of songwriting. The self-challenge of, could we just not go back to the thing and call it a chorus? 

Yeah, this album has a lot of complexity, so that’s why I was curious.

A lot of these are actually very easy for me because they started on drums and in sync. There’s so many other elements that this is the first time we’re learning “Patron Saint,” and I think I’m going to actually push it. I want to have a choreographed little dance part because I don’t know what to do with myself, because I have nothing to do for a while. And I’m like, “Oh, should we all just do a little dance?” Because it’s just rare that I’m not looking at my guitar and counting. You know what I mean? I don’t know what to do with myself.

Wow. I really look forward to seeing the dance.

I’m going to push it. Everybody wants to see 50-year-old guys dancing.

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