The house you love is gone. The artwork for American Football’s seminal debut album became the iconic emo equivalent to Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ or Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in the years they spent inactive following its 1999 release.
Their long-awaited return in 2016 saw the band finally inside the now iconic residence in Urbana, Illinois, with the accompanying album mirroring the sentiment by exploring the intricacies of the post-rock sound of their debut through the time-lapse of being away for over a decade.
Now, in 2019, for American Football’s third outing, the band have gone “post-house”. The rolling fields of Urbana feature on the cover of ‘LP3’ and the band’s sound is equally expansive with new soundscapes, instruments and guest vocals shining throughout the eight tracks.
The decision to set the new album apart from its predecessors is clear, and the band almost took it a step further by not continuing the tradition of eponymously naming the collection had it not been for frontman Mike Kinsella’s love of Peter Gabriel.
“Some names were tossed around, and nothing really stuck out to me,” he explains.”‘It kind of seems inappropriate to name it in a weird way. It’s cool that its all part of a series but also I’m a big Pete Gabriel fan and he didn’t name any of his albums… not that that was ever brought up, either. But, that would have distanced it from the other records.”
Drummer Steve Lamos adds: “It’s harder to name records than to keep calling them ‘American Football’, so I think you know what every American Football record from now is going to be called.”
Regardless of its title, ‘LP3’ is a fresh start for the band and the enthusiasm for it rings clear down the phone line. It’s apparent that the band were allowed more freedom on this album; freedom in every sense – to choose the direction, to work without time constraints and away from the shadow that their first album casts.
Mike explains: “I’m way more excited than I was last time. Even if we didn’t admit it, there were some weird sort of expectations last time.
“It’s more what we want to do and are capable of doing if we take our time to do it. Last time, the second record was like a new band trying to write a record and put it out with an already built-in audience, so it was intense in that way. This one was more, ‘okay, if we take away expectations and a timeline, what kind of music would you make?’”
The answer to that is an album which takes the bones of American Football – the spacious soundscapes and profound poetry – and pulls it wider in every direction.
Album opener and the first track shared from the new album, ‘Silhouettes’, is the perfect example of how American Football stretched themselves for this record. Bassist Nate Kinsella, Mike’s cousin, describes the track as both “mathy in a cool way” and “spectrally gigantic” but is also keen to point out why putting out that track first was an important statement of the band’s control on ‘LP3’.
He explains: “We were excited about putting one out first that was a bit more of a challenging listen rather than put out one of the ones that was easier to swallow; I remember that being a part of it. I remember with the last album, we were talked into putting something out there without being too sure about it and so this one we were all up for a more challenging one.”
Steve quickly backs up by the decision, adding: “We decided, ‘which song is longer than 7 minutes? Which song are we going to jam down people’s throats first?’
“I remember last time there were a lot of different people telling us how to put out the first song and this time we decided that we were going to tell us how to put out the first song and so far so good.”
There is an underlying hint of their apathy to how their return album was released but, in turn, it only seems to have made them more unified in making their third. The result is an album the whole band is proud to talk about as they list off their own favourite tracks, from Nate’s “straight forward pop song” that is ‘Heir Apparent’, Mike’s “very dark and heavy” album closer ‘Life Support’ and “the most traditionally ‘American Football’ track” in Steve Lamos’s pick of ‘Doom in Full Bloom’.
“We threw away a bunch of songs too,” Mike adds triumphantly. “We probably had twice as many going into it, and we really picked the ones we thought were strongest or have been drawn to for a long time.”
