American Football have spoken to NME about their enduring influence on new generations, and what went into their widescreen new album ‘LP4’.
The US-alt rock pioneers would become one of the seminal bands of the midwest emo scene in the years after their seminal 1999 self-titled debut (known retrospectively as ‘LP1’), and in the time between their split the following year and 2014 reunion. They’ve released three more albums since then, the last being ‘LP3’ in 2019 and a 25th anniversary reissue of their debut album with covers by the likes of Ethel Cain, Blondshell, Manchester Orchestra, Iron & Wine and more.
These names just scratch the surface of the countless artists they’ve inspired and how they broke down boundaries and genre to allow for a more emotional and cinematic approach to rock. Another such act would be Turnstile, with frontman Brendan Yates featuring on ‘No Feeling’ – their latest album released last week (Friday May 1).
“It was more just a happy accident of hanging out in the same room,” frontman Mike Kinsella said of how the collab came about. “We happened to be recording in LA and he was living there. I knew there was this part that had gang vocals so the more the merrier would make it cooler, but I didn’t know he was going to take the whole part.
“In the studio he was hearing all these harmonies, and then by the time he worked his way to the highest one it sounded like Turnstile, which sounded amazing! We’re all fans. We just turned around to each other and said, ‘OK, that’s his part now, nobody else gets to sing on it’.”
Asked if Turnstile felt like they followed in a sort of creative lineage from American Football given their adventurous approach to rock and atmosphere, Kinsella replied: “It’s a high compliment, we are truly fans. In the same way that they’re not just a hardcore band, there are always other elements that they keep expanding on. They’re also still expanding their sonic world. We’re kindredly also trying to keep ourselves interested.”
Drummer Steve Lamos recalled meeting Turnstile after a show in Denver in 2021. “I liked their music to a degree, but I didn’t fully grasp it until I saw it live,” he said. “There was an energy and positivity to what they were doing.
“They said that they would listen to our band when they were younger. I just remember sitting thinking, ‘These are decent humans’. It’s really quite flattering that Brendan did us that solid of being on this song because he really didn’t have to.”
Check out the rest of our interview with Kinsella along with guitarist Steve Holmes and drummer Steve Lamos below, where they tell us about exploring weird new sounds, what later generations of emo have taken from them, and how a band that once couldn’t imagine making a second record see the future.
NME: Hello American Football! How’s life been in the seven long years since ‘LP3’?
Mike Kinsella: “Busy! There was that global pandemic and what not. The band broke up again and then got back together again. We’ve got this guy Trump over here, this motherfucker. There’s a lot going on.”
What does it take to bring the band back together?
Steve Lamos: “We went through a lot of stuff. I asked to come back in 2023, so I’d maybe been gone in two and a half years. In the meantime, Mike and Nate made a really incredible Lies record. We talked first about whether we wanted to do the reunion stuff. We didn’t want to do the reunion stuff, but it ended up being pretty amazing. We’ve been pretty consistent in this band that if we want to keep playing then we want to keep making new things.
“The opening track of this record [‘Man Overboard’] is one that’s been floating around for a while and I’ve always hung on to that. It made me think that ‘LP4’ sounded like a good idea. We worked from there and I think it turned out real well. I’m real proud of this record myself.”
For a band who never intended to make it past your first album, how does it feel to be on your fourth?
Steve Holmes: “We sure do take our time doing things, but it seems natural. In the arc of the whole thing, maybe we rushed the second record. We weren’t as comfortable or confident with what we wanted to do, but we wanted to keep doing it.
“It was brand new to us somehow after not playing for 15 years. The third and the fourth one seemed totally natural to us. We were like, ‘It’s so fun to be on tour, so let’s keep writing songs and stay in this band and keep doing it’.”
It’s been over a decade since the first reunion album. How would you say the inner chemistry of American Football has changed?
Holmes: “It does seem like a long gap between ‘LP3’ and ‘LP4’ from the outside, but from our perspective we knew we were going to take a year off after that record because we toured a lot for a bunch of guys that have kids and jobs outside of the band. We planned to take a year’s hiatus and then the pandemic happened.
“We started to write the fourth record virtually and then Lamos decided to step away from the band about 2021. Mike says we broke up but I think we waited Lamos out. We hadn’t officially broken up, but we started focussing on other things like this covers record for the anniversary. That was a placeholder while we waited Lamos out. The gap went even longer because we’d been sitting on ‘LP4’, then the covers record span into a 25th anniversary reissue and remaster which we didn’t think was possible.”
What did you get out of celebrating ‘LP1’ like that?
Holmes: “We toured for the anniversary and it felt good to re-envision ‘LP1’ again because in 2014 when we played it, we didn’t really know what we were doing. It was warts-and-all and a lot of them weren’t great performances. I’d not been in the band in a decade and we were learning how to be a band in front of thousands of people, which is awkward. You know, a decade later we actually know what we’re doing now.
“In that 2023-2024 gap, we became the best live band we’d ever been and we were simultaneously working on the most exciting music that we’d ever written. To me, from ‘LP2’ to ‘LP3’ and ‘LP4’, every record is a natural progression and pushing the boundaries of what the band is sonically and where we can go live and on record. That’s what a band should be. If you’re not challenging yourself and trying to do new and cool things, then what’s the point?”
How did that progress of re-working the first album and becoming the band that you never were shape ‘LP4?
Lamos: “I didn’t really want to do it, but it was magic! It was such a cool thing to travel around and connect with people. It was pretty humbling. The state of affairs these days is maybe of gratitude, humility or something. It feels like a real band now but we’re middle-aged people, family members get ill and stuff happens. It’s incredible that we get to pull this off, so I hope that bled into ‘LP4’.
“It feels like ‘LP4’ is everybody trying to give as much as they can give to the larger thing.”
You’ve said before that the writing and recording of this one was drastically different to before?
Holmes: “Somehow, right after ‘LP3’, we tried to work more remotely, maybe because it was logistically impossible to get together more often. It was stressful in all these ways, and maybe people weren’t feeling as heard. Somehow between that, COVID and coming back to it, I think we ironed out how to do it in a way where it was just productive and valuable instead of frustrating.”
It feels like there’s a balance between a real weight to the record and a lot of space. Sonically, how would you describe the weight of ‘LP4’ and where it takes things?
Lamos: “There’s definitely space. A lot of these songs started from a-melodic drones, and just by having that element often buried under the songs often puts you in a different space. It doesn’t sound like guys in a room anymore, it sounds like we’re on a different planet maybe, which is kind of the goal.”
Kinsella: “There’s more dissonance on this record than on maybe any of our previous records. That’s on purpose I think.”
Lamos: “I’ve been playing with ‘Patron Saint [Of Pale]’, and it’s so open. It’s the anti-American Football song. There are no notes! We’ve been about notes for 30 years, and I love it, but this feels like a different thing.”
Holmes: “Shredding on a big chord is a thing I’ve not done often in this band.”
Kinsella: “We’re considered a guitar-oriented band, but a lot of these songs were not written on guitar. Where the songs came from is so different to American Football songs from before.”
Will ‘LP5’ just be unlistenable noise rock then?
Kinsella: “I hope so!”
Lamos: “The guys just found a bunch of pictures of themselves from high school, so we’ve already found the cover art. It’ll be about having dyed blonde hair and being 16. You just got the scoop!”
Lyrically, where would you say you’re coming from this time, being at this stage of your life?
Kinsella: “I try to just keep up with the songs. The songs really informed the direction I was going. The first song ‘Man Overboard’, the drum beat sounds like I’m drunk, on a boat and/or seasick so the lyrics are around that. There was something haunting about ‘Desdemona’ and I already had the melody and 150 different iterations of words that fit into it until when I stumbled on the word and the cadence of it; now I can sing about that story. It’s not necessarily a personal story but it’s relatable I guess.
“‘Patron Saint [Of Pale]’ is so playful that it’s almost silly. Somehow I worked ‘roshambo’ into it just because the song told me to. It’s like Cards Against The Humanity, you work backwards from the topic. Then the work is, ‘How do we make this poignant, funny, sad or something?’”
Do you often have people overanalysing the lyrics and not realising they’re just a freak accident?
Kinsella: “None of my lyrics are about anyone, so yeah!”
Lamos: “Mike’s lyrics sound famously personal, and while there’s inspiration there I don’t think he gets enough credit for what he’s describing there. Mike also writes in character. Who is the narrator? As dark as a record this is, it’s not necessarily Mike. Some of these are imagined.”
After Turnstile, are there any other artists you’ve had that connection with that you want to see on ‘LP5’?
Lamos: “I had this magical experience with A.G. Cook back in December. I met him and I can’t tell you how exciting it was. I got the chance to play a couple of songs live with him and I won’t forget that. It was life and attitude-changing. I love all that he does and I honestly didn’t know all the things that he had done until I got that opportunity. He was really modest and interesting. That was really special to me.”
Holmes: “I just saw Dirty Three last week and it was mind-blowing. Jim White might be the greatest drummer alive, and Warren Ellis is a wizard. I would love to play with any of those guys. I’ve been a fan of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco forever. I’ll save it for my solo or side project but I would love to play with that guy some day.”
The word ‘influential’ gets applied to American Football more than any other. How often do you sense your influence on music – not just in terms of sound but approach and aesthetic?
Kinsella: “In the 15 years we weren’t playing, I was noticing bands noodling around on their guitars and it felt in our world and American Football-esque. I also noticed that they all surpassed us in that world! All these midwest emo bands shred in a way that we never did. We’re a bit more reserved and it’s a bit more interlocking. Everyone is doing with one guitar player what me and Holmes were doing together on the first album. I don’t really think about that.
“Aesthetically, I don’t know if we’re a joke and people are making fun of us. Are we so old and not cool that it’s fun to make fun of us, or are people into it? I’m so old and not cool I’ll never know the answer.”
Lamos: “I was at an academic musicology conference recently for emo music called Emo Con. They asked me to speak and I got to act as a professor. The bands I really wanted to speak about were Hayley Williams, Paramore and My Chemical Romance. I feel like they were the driving forces behind so many folks there. Hayley is amazing. I honestly don’t know much about My Chemical Romance, but the stuff I’ve heard – I totally get it.
“I don’t think it’s our place to worry about this necessarily, but I felt so flattered to be part of this conversation and that these were my people. There was an interesting energy around these people who were not afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves and be a bit cringe. I don’t care if they’re laughing with me, it’s just cool to be part of the conversation. To see how impactful Hayley Williams or My Chemical Romance have been on a kajillion people, that’s the driving energy behind a lot of us. I’m just glad to be on the bus, but it’s all gravy. It’s all come back around to us in a cool way.”
There were a lot of excited fans of The 1975 when you were announced for to support them at Finsbury Park in 2023. What is it about what you do that continues to inspire new generations of fans? Not all bands from the time you emerged are afforded that luxury…
Holmes: “Maybe earnestness and trying to be sincere? Maybe that sounds stupid to say out loud.”
Kinsella: “We’re so content to not be cool. Our first album is so small, that forever and ever kids are going to discover that and relate to it. It’s not aggressive or in your face.”
Holmes: “It feels attainable in its modesty: kids writing songs in their bedroom. It’s three people writing and playing in a room, mostly one or two takes, it’s wobbly as fuck, there’s no fix-up or autotune, it’s just people playing music. Since we got back in 2023, the audience does feel rejuvenated with younger kids – even younger than the previous decade. It’s really cool to feel like the old guys, like how we’d go to see Fugazi when we were teenagers. To be in a band that is inspiring others to pick up an instrument and start their own band is the coolest thing you could ask for.”
‘LP4’ is out now. American Football will be hitting the road again in 2026, with shows kicking off in the US this mont before heading over to the UK and Europe later in the summer. You can find UK tickets here, and here for international dates.