American Football (band)
American Football is an American indie rock band from Urbana, Illinois, originally active from 1997 to 2000. They reformed in 2014.
Song lyrics
[edit]American Football (1999)
[edit]Quotes about American Football
[edit]- American Football still stands as one of the most important bands for the genre and it’s [Mike Kinsella's] twinkling, technical guitar work that forms the foundation for the group. His chemistry with guitarist Steve Holmes, and the ways they weave in and out of each other on “Never Meant” and “I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional” are remarkable.
- By the fall of 1999, the members of American Football were done with college, with emo, and with American Football itself. The trio had decided to break up even before the release of their first full-length; thus, the album turned out to be a farewell from a band that had scarcely introduced itself. American Football was also a rebuke of the Midwestern scene that had been shaped by the incalculable long-tail influence of Mike Kinsella’s previous one-album supernova Cap’n Jazz, rerouting emo’s bloodline from hardcore toward minimalist jazz and meditiative math-rock. [...] After the bursting of the Myspace bubble, hundreds of bands took Kinsella’s elliptical expressions of hope and heartbreak as unfinished business, rebuilding the genre on a foundation of open-tuned Telecasters, capos, and red and black flannels. Yet, while the sound of American Football is remarkably easy to replicate, its spirit of wistful carpe diem remains forever elusive.
- American Football made an EP and a self-titled album in the late '90s that didn't garner tons of attention at the time of their releases, but in the years that followed, the sparse and emotional sound the trio created became an influential emo touchstone. Their stature grew, and when they reunited in 2014 for a handful of shows, the outpouring of love and support they received spurred them to make the reunion a more permanent venture.
