American Football: “We truly don’t want to be a nostalgia band. We’re trying to keep ourselves stimulated and challenged”

Mike Kinsella is getting his hair bleached. That’s nothing new for the American Football frontman, but here’s a first: he’s never done it mid-interview before. As he explains while walking there, though, his girlfriend is a stylist and she’s the one in charge of its new fate. His girlfriend. When you listen to American Football’s new album – self-titled like the three that preceded it, and referred to as LP4 – it’s almost a relief to find out he has one, because it’s very much centred around Mike’s recent divorce, and it doesn’t hold back from pouring forth the heavy emotions that such a profound life event evokes.

American Football are no strangers to heavy emotions, though ironically they’ve always conveyed them with a relatively light touch. If you know one song by them it’s very likely Never Meant, the iconic opening track from their debut album, and if you know anything else beyond that song, it’s probably that they’re considered one of the pioneers of midwest emo. Formed by Mike, guitarist Steve Holmes and drummer/trumpet player Steve Lamos in 1997 in Urbana, Illinois – a two or so hour drive south of Chicago – the band released a self-titled EP the following year and that first self-titled album (LP1) in 1999.

For a long time, it seemed like their legacy would begin and end with those two releases. In 2000, the trio called it a day to focus on their personal lives, and didn’t reconvene until 2014, this time with Mike’s cousin Nate in the fold. In those 14 years, however, something happened. American Football’s legacy grew exponentially – especially among bands who may not sound like them, but who consider them a huge influence. Sure, heartbreak and heartache are timeless, and absence makes the heart grow fonder, but this was growth of a staggering degree. And even the band aren’t entirely sure why or how it happened.

“I think it’s not in small part due to the fact that we were away so long,” ponders Mike, “so we didn’t have a chance to age or become lame in front of their eyes. Maybe…”

He chuckles and his voice rises as he says that last word to convey the true extent of his befuddlement.

“We existed in this little time bubble,” he continues. “It was very earnest, what we were doing originally. And it’s very earnest now, but it’s coming from a different space. But I think that it read as authentic, honestly and earnestly, longer than if we’d kept playing and trying to sell people stuff for another decade, or if we just gave them another record and kept doing it over and over. These are all working theories. I don’t know, but I feel totally lucky that we’re in the place to have this conversation and try to figure it out. But I don’t think we’re going to solve it.”

They don’t have to. All American Football need to do is ride this wave: keep doing what they’re doing and watch their profile continue to rise. Yet while they’re remaining true to their sound and their roots, they’re also not afraid to deviate from the path (or the pigeonhole) that Never Meant set them on way back when. You could, in fact, go so far as to argue that not only have they been shedding their cult-like status with each album since getting back together, they’ve also only gotten better, expanding on and experimenting with their distinctive, genre-defining sound each time.

The jump from 2016’s LP2 to 2019’s LP3 was significant, though, in terms of breaking the band out of the older emo fanbase. These are, after all, guys in their 40s, and at first their listeners were of a similar age. But LP3 featured Hayley Williams as a guest, and also included appearances from Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and Land Of Talk’s Elizabeth Powell. This one has Turnstile’s Brandan Yates, Wisp and Rainer Maria’s Caithlin De Marrais. There is, then, something for everyone, but American Football admit they’ve noticed their crowds getting younger. These guests aren’t the result of the band trying to be relevant to a younger crowd, however. They’re artists who deeply appreciate American Football’s music, and are helping it evolve.

“Musically, we’re trying to keep ourselves stimulated and challenged,” explains Mike. “I don’t know how that resonates – or if that resonates if we move further away from what people originally liked – but we truly do not want to be a nostalgia band.”

And while at first they did start again by just playing old songs, and they did embark on a 20th anniversary tour for that debut album – a celebration that included the release of a covers record that saw artists as disparate as Manchester Orchestra, Ethel Cain and Iron & Wine reinterpret its songs – it didn’t take long for them to lean towards writing new material.

“We didn’t have a vast back catalogue, we had one record,” says Steve Holmes. “So when we first got back together, after two years we were like ‘Let’s not play 12 songs over and over again. Can we write a new song, just for our own sanity’s sake?’ I’m a person who is a fan of an artist throughout their career. I love to see people evolve and continue to write songs over decades, so it was always obvious to me that, yeah, of course we’re going to keep making music.”

Both Mike and Steve – and presumably the other Steve, were he present for this interview – put a lot of the band’s inspiration to do that down to Nate. He’s played with Mike (and his other cousin, Tim) in influential bands like Joan Of Arc and Make Believe, currently has another project called Lies With Mike, and has also made music on his own as Birthmark, but he seems to have really found himself a home in American Football. It is, though, he admits, something he had to grow into.

“At the beginning I was trying to be as invisible as possible, just filling out the live sound, and I was happy with that assignment,” he explains. “And then when we decided to do some new material, we had to reconsider what it means to be a creative contributor. It was fun. I’m a big fan of LP1, and I’ve listened to those songs and I’ve pulled them apart in my brain and understand the attributes and characteristics and the mechanics of how things work together instrumentally.”

It meant he was able to seamlessly insert himself into the creative process.

“You made the LP1 tab book,” Steve says to Nate, “so you probably understand this band better than anyone alive. And he’s too humble to say it, but this record would not exist without Nate Kinsella. He’s the mastermind of this thing sonically, in every way.”

Nate is clearly taken aback by the compliment. Because it’s a huge one. LP4 is the zenith of the four-piece’s chemistry. It’s a harrowingly dark record that simultaneously presents the most fleshed-out American Football sound so far – even if that flesh is dripping with the blood, sweat and wasted years of things gone wrong in life.

Ahead of the interview, the band’s team asked not to delve too deeply into lyrical specifics, given how intensely personal they are. No Feeling deals with suicidal ideation (‘No feeling, no pain, no-one to blame,’ laments Mike over a gorgeous, soothing melody that echoes like oblivion. ‘Forever awaits, it’s just an eternal blank page…’), while Bad Moons references his ex-wife and ends in a musically blissful spiral of existential bleakness. But what he does address is that fact that, though it captures a dark time, that’s all firmly in the past.

“The record was finished maybe a year ago,” he says, his head back in the sink, hair wet, ready to be bleached, “which means we started recording it a year before that, and writing it the year before that. So whatever came out of me then and is on the record…”

He trails off for a second, not so much from emotion but just to change the syntax of his sentence.

“I’m excited to play the songs and I’m excited to see people’s reactions,” he continues, “but now I’m processing whatever I’m going through currently. And that’ll be on the next record, but you won’t know or ask about it until I’ve already moved onto the next thing.” If that sounds snarky on paper, it’s not intended as such. It’s just his way of explaining, which he does with a kind of goofy grin on his face, that the dark snapshots on LP4 have, thankfully, been overcome.

Who knows what that next record will sound like, or what it’ll be about, but it will undoubtedly further cement the legacy and expand the vision of American Football. Or, as Steve says: “Weirdly, in pop culture, music is considered a young person’s thing, but music is an art form like anything else – and like anything else you get better at it, the longer you do it.”

In other words, LP4 is just the band’s latest hair colour. They’ve been dyeing it and bleaching it and changing its appearance for a while now, but beneath the platinum blond, the ethos, the passion, the emotion remains the same. Now, though, more and more people are finally getting to witness and experience those layers of their history. Because everyone should know and understand just how important this band were, are and will continue to be.

LP4 is due out on May 1 via Polyvinyl. American Football return to the UK in June.

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