American Football: “We fell into this thing totally backwards 25 years ago”

What is it about American Football’s debut album that gives it an undying resonance, 25 years on from its release? “It’s all common themes, and I imagine I was going through them pretty commonly,” frontman Mike Kinsella offers.

It’s an understatement that suits ‘American Football’ (usually referred to as ‘LP1’). They were young students in the college town of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, when they made it; their band was one of many in the group of friends they hung out with. They were a mix of jazz enthusiasts and DIY punk kids, so the music mixed intricate instrumentation with a scrappy, heart-on-sleeve dynamic. Once they’d recorded and released the record, college ended and they drifted apart.

Few could have predicted what happened in the years following. This is often said about bands, but for American Football it’s meant in the truest sense — they never even aimed to make a second album. A few years after its release, the DIY emo scene they came from exploded into the mainstream; a few years after that, when the trend had died, a new generation of kids started recreating the pure, underground energy of those early days, and American Football were one of the key pieces of the puzzle.

The album gained traction on the file-sharing platform Limewire, and eventually, the erstwhile members of American Football noticed. In 2014, American Football reunited, and played to crowds ten times bigger than they ever had before; in 2016 and 2019, they released new albums that excitingly expanded on their original sound.

In commemoration of the album’s 25th anniversary, the band are set to release both a reissue and a covers album on which nine different artists recreate the tracklist — ranging from folk icon Iron & Wine to math-rock shredder Yvette Young, via Ethel Cain, Manchester Orchestra, Blondshell and more. They’re also heading out on tours across the UK and North America on which they’ll play the album in full.

NME spoke to Kinsella about the record’s enduring and at times bewildering legacy, his complicated relationship with nostalgia, and how the house that adorns the record cover ended up on Airbnb.

“I don’t know if we’re like a nostalgia band. In my mind we’re not”

Tell us about the covers album. How did you pick the artists that appear on it, and are there any you were particularly excited about getting a yes from?

“We’re fans of all of them to some capacity. And getting Sam [Beam, Iron & Wine] and John McEntire [of Tortoise], these people that we’ve grown up admiring and listening to, and now we’re grown men and they’re grown men, that was one kinda cool thing. And then conversely, getting Yvette who we’re fans of – she’s younger and cooler than we’ll ever be – and getting Ethel Cain blew my mind. I’m just like: holy shit, that she would take the time to listen to us and put effort in making what is kinda my favourite song on the covers album.”

What were some of the moments on the covers album that you thought were the coolest interpretations?

“I really like that Ethel wrote a five-minute outro [to ‘For Sure’], like a total blissed-out dream sequence outro. Whatever she grabbed onto, this melody… it doesn’t exist on that song, but is like, if you do the same thing for four minutes, it sounds different four minutes later. When you first hear it it’s one thing, and then four minutes later you almost get lost in it. I just remember truly being blissed out and blown away by that.”

The fact that so many younger artists like Ethel, and even some megastars like Hayley Williams and Matty Healy, are such big fans — there’s a feeling that American Football has become a part of the fabric of a lot of alternative music that people are making today. How does it feel to witness that, when essentially these songs were made in obscurity?

“The original reunion is when we were first aware that anybody was listening. And then it came out people who had gone on to do way cooler shit were listening; they found it at some point. I mean, I don’t know if we’re like a nostalgia band. In my mind we’re not, ’cause I know how hard I’m working to write new stuff all the time and try new things. But I’m not sure if people are coming to the shows because they’re like, ‘oh, I used to love this band,’ or if we’re a contemporary band that people still enjoy.

“It’s all great, it’s all cool. We never expected it when we put the record out. But to my ego, it’s almost a challenge: how do I make it abundantly clear that if you like that, we’re even better now?”

How do you balance that feeling then, playing these anniversary shows and celebrating 25 years with the fans?

“There’s a fine balance of how much wine I should drink before I play. It’s a weird year for me, I’ve played a couple bad shows where it’s absolutely my fault and I’ve kind of mentally melted down. Not in a dramatic way but just in a way of, ‘what are we doing here? Am I just this, like, performing monkey?’ But when it’s taken away from me, when we haven’t done it in a month and a half, I can’t wait to do it again. I appreciate that anybody still cares about something that happened so long ago, and any chance I get to keep playing music and hang out with my friends — it’s like going to a high school reunion every show.”

“It’s just dumb luck that this band caught on”

You’ve gotten to tour the world in the years since you reunited, which I imagine is something you never dreamed of when you first made this record. You’ve sold out shows across Europe, Asia, Oceania. What’s your experience been of playing shows around the globe, especially the first few times you got to do that?

“No offence to, I don’t know, Cleveland, or all these cities and states that we can kinda go to whenever – it’s kinda why we’re a band. It’s so fun. It’s still so exciting. In places like, Jakarta, or places we’ve only been once and probably won’t get back to for a while, there’s a different energy or appreciation from them, or appreciation from us for being invited. The UK is sort of my favourite place to tour, this is my third time getting back there in some capacity this summer. Yeah, it’s a blast.

“If [someone said], ‘You can be a band, you can do exactly the same thing, but if every show’s in New York’, I’d be like, ‘Nah, I’ve had enough. I’m just gonna work at the grocery store or something.’ But the travel and seeing new places is still sort of the goal.”

What has it felt like to discover the impact your music had had so far from home?

“I can’t explain it. I don’t know how they even heard it. I don’t know how it translates with how, in my mind at the time, I was just writing what I knew, which was this tiny little world. Whatever thing was happening to me specifically, it was very just me, me, me. So the fact that people in different countries and at a different time still appreciate it, it’s amazing.

“I also don’t think I’m like cool for doing it, I think I just lucked into it. When I was 18 or 20, all of my friends were in bands and most of them were cooler than my band. We were aware of that at the time. So it’s just dumb luck that this band caught on.”

Recently, a group of the band and some friends bought the house that’s on the iconic LP1 album cover. Tell us more about that.

“[At first] it was, for real, like a joke. I think Chris [Strong, the band’s friend and photographer of the cover photo] — he’s from that town, Champaign. I think through the grapevine he heard the owner of the house was gonna move and sell it. And then we were like, holy shit, should we actually?

“This is after Chris’s wife who he had dated in college while he was living in that house had passed away, maybe two years ago now. So I think he had some sort of personal connection about owning that house and holding onto it. But I think it was more like a dare. There were drinks in us, and we all just kept daring each other, and eventually we all said we’d do it so we all bought the house.”

Was the intention to focus on keeping it an artistic, creative space? How important is that idea to you?

“That’s my role. I don’t know how to do anything else as a homeowner. Polyvinyl [Record Co, the band’s label] is on the ground and their office is probably 11 minutes away, so they’ve had a record pop-up shop. The band Anamanaguchi stayed there for about three weeks and recorded an album. And it recently went live on Airbnb so we can afford to keep having artists stay there and record albums for free.

“We were trying to come up with some sort of backyard American Football show but we couldn’t squeeze it in, so we’re kicking it down the line. In some way it’s sort of like a do-over. Like, oh my god, now we get to do it over as adults, and we’re in charge of which house shows are happening and we get to curate this art space. Only because we fell into this thing totally backwards 25 years ago.”

‘American Football (25th Anniversary Edition)’ and ‘American Football (Covers)’ are out October 18 via Polyvinyl Record Co. The band’s UK tour kicks off today and their US tour on September 27

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