Bandsplain - American Football with Rob Mahoney

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Yasi is joined by Ringer renaissance man Rob Mahoney to tell the unlikely story of American Football, whose widespread recognition grew in the decade following their debut (and immediate breakup). They talk through the band’s Midwestern roots, the alternate tunings and jazz-inspired drumming that influenced a generation, and how time and online canonization turned 'LP1' into a cultural touchstone and the American Football House into an Airbnb destination. Episode PlaylistListen to the American Football playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuest: Rob Mahoney @robmahoneyProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplain? Hello and welcome to Bansplane. I am your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about American football. This is the ringer.

So you might think we're talking sports, babe. We're not talking in sports. We're talking Midwestern emo. guest today, you guys, esteemed, celebrated Robert Mahoney the third. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I just threw that on. Are there other, I mean, surely there are other Robert Mahoney's in your family line? No, unfortunately not. But I'll take the third. It makes me feel more distinguished. It feels like you should have some sort of like title. Esquire. Yeah, exactly. I think we can brainstorm. You didn't go to law school. You're a podcast. Not yet. Not yet. You're not

dead yet, babe. That's my second or third act. Fourth act? I don't know. Who's counting? I'm going to haunt people that leave mean comments in the various channels of bands playing. They wouldn't dare. You'd be surprised. Rob, before we dive in to the band American football, can you tell me a little bit about your personal connection and journey with this band? I would love to. I'm a late adopter. I'm willing to admit that.

I came on, like, basically as the swell of their initial reunion tour was starting to crack. 2014. Exactly. Like early 2010s as like the rumors were starting to circulate. I had heard never meant. I had heard the album. It's like, all right, this is good. And then it was one of those bands for me where like, I don't know, I think about these like Venn diagram artists

where it's like all the people in my life who have similar tastes to me, we should overlap on this thing. And for some reason it just like hadn't clicked for me yet. Revisited at that point in my life. I'm like, oh my God, guess what? The album heralded is one of the great emo albums of all time is actually, in fact, quite good. It's to my heart. Because in 1999, what are you doing?

I am in fifth grade, listening to Smashmouth, I think. I'm trying to think of what else is... May he rest in peace. Honestly, it got very heavy into the Beatles in fifth grade. So, you know, we were interested in some different avenues. Precocious. I mean, it's just like a Beatles parent kind of thing. Sure.

You take what you're handed. So am I correct in understanding, and not to spoil the arc of American football? But this album that came out in 1999, too little to no fanfare, found its way to you after you had already come of age discovered Midwestern emo music. Yes. What was your gateway drug?

I want to say it was probably like comments on purevolume.com or something like that. Wow. I mean, just one of these things where it's like your favorite emo band's favorite emo record is either, I would say, Clarity by Jimmy Eat World or American Football's American Football. Sure. So it was one of those things

that just like mentioned over and over and eventually it's like, all right, I guess I need to take this seriously. But what was your gateway into emo music? Into emo specifically? Oh, definitely like the more pop punk early 2000s wave of emo. Right. Yeah. You're a fallout boy.

Yes, the fallout boys. I mean, the bleed Americans, my chem for sure. I mean, all sides of that spectrum, really. But yeah, I think, and then into Thursday and saves the day and that kind of avenue, too. Because now you're in high school, middle school. Yeah, getting there. Okay. You're a teen.

Your hair is swooped like this. It still is. And you'll never let it go. All right, great. I'm glad we placed you in time and space. Thank you. Let's get started. What was your introduction?

You know what? I am admittedly like, I don't want to misspeak on the waves of emo, but I suppose that would be like third wave emo that you just fall out boy. Yes, that's more third. That was a little after my time. Like, listen, I'll fuck up sure. I'm going down spinning at karaoke. That's a God-tier song. But past that, I like was not, none of this, I didn't know anything about it.

My friend in college dated the guy from the used. Let's look about as close as I got to like none of this registered on my radar. All right, I'm going to need a download on that lore. Well, I'll have to check in with her and see. Obviously it didn't work out. A man famous for vomiting on his audience. I'm just going to need information on his personal life. Bert.

Classic Bert behavior. Burt behavior, babe. No, but I, you know, I am on record on the Jimmy World. episode that, you know, Bleed American was my entry point into Jimmy mostly. I don't want to be like this guy, but like I loved Fugazi. Yeah. So I, you know, a little rights of spring, a little like, you know, embrace. Like, definitely in that world.

So this isn't hardcore enough for you? Well, not even that, but then I do, I did get really into the get-up kids. Okay, yeah. And I love the promise ring. So American football came to me a bit later also because it was after I got into. to like get up kids promise ring but then I was like but not that like I mean this was in college so

a couple years after that album had come out like I was mid 2001 2002 but it wasn't like one of my guys you know it wasn't get up kids that I should look to receive her to receive her isn't fair

to receive her that's fucking poetry it is poetry all right well let's not digress and this is not a get up kids episode yet. Let's start with our guy. Michael Kinsella. Born March 4th, 1977. No surprise to me that he's a Pisces. No. What's the tell? Pyses are very emotional people. So are cancers. I guess all water signs. Is that right? Not all. Well, yes. But like I think, I mean, Kurt Cobain was a Pisces. It's like a really good artist emotion placement, in my humble opinion. That carries a lot of weight in this particular space.

That's what I think. Born to be emo, if you will. Buffalo Grove, Illinois. That's where our story takes place. This is a suburb 30 miles from downtown Chicago. You spent a lot of time in Chicago, Rob Monagie. A couple of years. Did you? Well, I should say, I spent a couple years in Evanston.

For all the Chicagoans out there, I did not claim that I lived in Chicago. No, my wife went to grad school there. Oh, that's cool. So a couple of years in the greater northwestern area, lovely. You loved it? I loved it for that period of time. Okay. This is the thing.

I love Midwest emo. Sure. What I love to be of the Midwest, ongoing, and perpetuity, I'm not cut out for it. I've never felt a cold the way I did when I went to Chicago in February once. Rips through your body. I was on a wall. It's not good.

You can see where the music comes from. You can see, for one, the sadness, the angst, but also, like, the deep need to be indoors, noodling on a guitar. You're, like, up in the house for months on end because it's, like, medically unsafe to be outside. What else is one to do? Yeah. I was just listening to a podcast, friend of the pod, Jeremy Bollum, of Tush,

and Moray has a great podcast called The First Ever Podcast. And on my drive here, I was listening to the Mike Kinsella episode in which I learned that at two years old, he said there were Kiss Records being played around the house and he loved it. That's a very early memory. How did you know? Like, how do you know at two that you loved it? I don't know, babe.

He didn't elaborate. I mean, you don't have any memories from being two years old? Not with that level of clarity. Why are you Pisces? This is why I am not Mike Insala. Well, you have other strengths. Thank you. Yeah.

Kiss is very, we say it on the show all the time, but I find it amusing that it does pop up constantly, that for men of a certain age, Mike is a little bit younger, but not that much. Kiss is always, almost always the first patient zero of getting in. And it makes so much sense. And I want to harp on it because we talked about on other episodes. But to me, it makes so much sense because it's like so kid friendly. They're in costumes. Yeah. idea of like love gun being kid-friendly.

I mean, I do what you're saying? The first thing is like, ooh, what are these guys? Yes. And then the music is like transgressive light. So it's like you're like, yeah, I like to fucking rock. Oh, they're doing something bad, you know? The tween appeal is off the charts for sure. I could see it being a way to then get into like punk or whatever, you know.

There's like probably a very direct path from Kiss to the Misfits, you know? He also said he grew up going to the local record store, Hipcat Records, where he was allowed to walk with his older brother, Timothy, Timothy Kinsella, who will play a prominent part in the story. And in Midwestern emo proper. Yes, absolutely a forefather when they make the Mount Rushmore, which I'm sure they will soon do, Timothy Kinsella's visage will be. I would love to know where they place the Mount Rushmore.

Like what old abandoned coal mill they put the Mount Rushmore of Midwest emo in? And Evanston. Yeah. He said really early on he learned, well, A, he loved hair metal, again, who amongst us? But then he learned about cool music, like the Smith and the Cure. I don't know why this made me a little sad. Sitting outside Timothy's door, closed, locked, get out of here, fucking little brother. I'm paraphrasing, fan fictioning, that's not on record.

But it's implied. It's implied. Yeah. And just like, it's like Dickensian. You know what I mean? And that's how he learned about these gorgeous bands dismiss and the cure that he got really into. He had what I always wish I had, which is a cool older brother to put you on to stuff. Yeah.

Do you have a cool older brother? I do, in fact, and he put me onto a lot of these aforementioned bands, you know? It's a lot of pressure to be the cool older sibling. Do you think so? Yes. Because you're the pioneer. You're Columbus out in these streets, having to go find stuff and bring it home. That is true.

But because you are implied cool, whatever you hand down, it's like, what are they going to do, reject it? Your younger sibling doesn't know what's cool. You're shaping a generation. That is true. That is responsibility. It's a great responsibility. Tim was setting up shows in their basement in junior eye. He was already like, we're doing bands.

This is another Dickensian moment. Mike said he would sit at the top of the stairs. He was not allowed at Tim's band practice and play guitar. That's his like first guitar moments. We're playing guitar along to Tim's band that was playing in the basement or whatever. which he was no little brothers allowed. Yes. Very sad, very sweet.

Very sweet. But eventually the little brothers were allowed. Yes. Well, we'll get into that. So this man was called Tojam. Tim Kinsala met Sam Zurich in 1989 on their first day of high school. They bonded over a shared love of alternative music, such as Jane's Addiction and Dinosaur Jr. And they had another friend named Victor Villarreal, who they had met skateboarding at the local high school.

Also probably on the Mount Rush War of Midwest emo. We're going to get into it. I think he might be like... The guy. The guy. Yeah. Like, I think he's like patient zero. I mean, patient implies a sickness.

I said what I said. Wow. We'll get into... Well, I mean, I don't have actually the time or the wherewithal to put my feminism back into my body and to get into the larger implications of emo music and men. but just know. It's a flawless track record as far as feminism goes, you know?

It's right here. So they form a little band and I guess Mike with a little guitar on the stairs was like, I came up with some stuff for you which is so cool and precocious.

Like, I have some guitar lines for you. And, but that's not exactly how I got on the band. What happened was they had a drummer named Jim who was the star running back of the high school.

Crazy. So cool. Double threat, at least. Yeah. Like a wild, like it's like a wild overlap. to be like a star jock and then be into like playing weird pop punk music and a band called

Tojam that wrote songs about like coffee. But I will say running backs do have drummer energy. Is that true? I don't know. I mean, just the percussive elements alone, including the head trauma, unfortunately. Allowed to keep working at this company while knowing little to nothing about sports. I don't know. You're a sportswoman of a kind.

You're a woman of sports. I played basketball for six years. How did I not know this? What? What's the scouting report? What was your game? Well, I started as a center. because I was unusually tall.

Okay. And then as time went by, I stopped being unusually tall and progressively got worse because they kept moving me to different positions in which my ball handling required a bit more finesse than I was capable of. So by the time we hit small forward, it was over for me. So you couldn't keep up with like the positional flexibility of the modern game. I was very good at boxing out. An essential skill. I was an aggressive defensive player and I was very good at rebounding. Yeah.

But then again, this is not for me. Honestly, this checks out though. Yeah, right? I think so. It goes with my persona. So, yes, actually, I can understand basketball quite well, but past that, I don't know what you guys are all in about. Jim quit. Yeah.

Bad call by Jim. Well, I mean, actually, that is a fair point. Would the gym version of the band be anything? Yeah. Did he think To Jam was going anywhere? Apparently not. Counterpoint, did Toe Jam go anywhere? No.

Toad jam did not. Did Cabin Jazz go anywhere? Quite a few places, it turns out. Across the country in a van. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, maybe Jim is like a successful accountant. That's a great point. Actually, do you know who is an accountant? Who's that? Davy von Boland. He has a successful accounting practice.

That's tremendous. Did you know that? I did not know that. Don't bother Davey von Boland if you don't want accounting services. Yeah, if you want his business. Yeah, then you're allowed to contact him, but otherwise leave that mail alone. Okay, so as Jim quits, then young Michael, who I believe is like 12. Literally 12 years old. It's like, I'll play drums. Yes.

And they're like, okay, did not know how to play drums. Learned it. Somehow. I read a quote much later from one of the steves in American football, which this is a real – it's giving Anna Kranina for me because I've tried to read Anna Kranina every winter for like the past 10 years, and I am thwarted by the names. And you're going to get hung up on the steves here? That's what I'm saying. It's like let's differentiate. There's eight robs at this company. I just need a little – you know, I need to grab onto. Incredibly rude. Okay. I don't know what to tell you. I feel like it's just simply factual.

Should they be like one is Stevie? Or do they need to completely differentiate? I think they go by their last names. Lamos and... Lamos, yeah. Lamos and... Homes, yeah. So I don't remember which one said this,

but they basically were like gushing about Mike Kinsella's, like, incredible innate musical ability that he could just, like, do anything and pick up anything. And he's just, like, one of those people that's, like, gifted musically. I know I find those people kind of mystifying, but if you're a professional, high-level musician, I can't even imagine what you make of those sorts.

sorts of people who can just pick up any instrument, kind of find their place in it really quickly. It gets such a weird, like, ethereal savant skill set. I found it so, I find it so annoying. Because I'm jealous. Sure. I, like, you know, sat, like, slaving over, like, little chords on my acoustic guitar never was able to make any headway.

And then there's people who are just like, yeah, I heard that one. I could never. I am power chords or bust. That's me. Can't even do power chords. Those who can't do teach. To Jam is playing some shows And these shows are, I believe, mostly at like a middle school talent level It seems that way. Yeah. And then they start to morph into a new band that is called Cap and Jazz aforementioned

Where Zurich found this name, I guess he was eating Cap and Crunch And Blurred it that name out. Where did the jazz come from then? Not really sure. Yeah. Maybe just a desire to honor the great tradition of jazz music. I buy it. Captain Crunch is a really slept-on cereal.

Is it? Or maybe it's a equal, it's, maybe it's one of the most prominent cereals in America. I suppose what I meant is it's slept on in my household in which I have forgotten about it. You're not buying and eating enough Captain Crunch. Fair. Just keep the berries out of it. No, fuck out of here. Actually, the real move is the peanut butter.

That's what I'm saying. Peanut Butter or bust as far as I'm concerned. The regular one is quite good, too. I don't want those berries. You even keep that. What is that even flavored with? Ugh, awful. What are you using?

What chemical is making that purple? You don't want to know. I don't want to know. Cabin Jazz was sort of modeling themselves, I think, in that Discord Fugazi lineage, right? Did you get into Cap and Jazz before American football? I did not. No. I would say, like, generally speaking, in my life, that's sort of like, I mean, kind of like on the edge of post-hardcore, a little screamier, harder-edge vocal.

It's like it's not without its appeal to me. Yeah. But I tend to reset more vocal forward, softer focus. You're a sad boy. I mean, or. You're a cardigan. Or let's just full, I mean, definitely a cardigan. I would say I'm kind of like either or.

Either let's go softer or let's go full screamo, but like the middle zone is a little uncanny for me sometimes. Yeah, Calvin Jazz is a really unusual band. I actually didn't realize how much I liked them. I was like kind of back and listening and I was like, this goes. It was just working for you. It's actually goes. Yeah. Worked for a lot of people.

A lot of people? I mean, Of a certain milieu at a certain time. Right, right. Caught on like something. I don't know. Like a match. So Mike said,

every practice ended with our friends coming over and our mom making a big bowl of pasta for everybody. Our first shows were just basement shows in our basement. Mom loved it. Their mom sounds awesome, by the way. Genuinely. Selfishly, I think she liked knowing where we were and that we were safe. So they're like,

they jump right into Chicago's suburban underground scene, babe. They're playing with bands like gauge and friction. Friction. features future braid member Bob Nana. Tim and his friend Eric start booking shows. Like, they start putting a couple singles out here and there. I believe they did a Christmas song. Have you heard this?

I've not heard the Christmas song. It's the Kinsella's covering Winter Wonderland with their mother, I believe playing like some instrument for a very punk Christmas. Then in 1993, future accountant, future CPA, Davey von Boland joins the band. Let's fucking go. Pretty big moment.

I love promulence. There's some drama that precipitated this involving some drug and alcohol use, and I'm not going to get into that right here. But Victor said, I just went to practice one day, and there was just this guy there. That's really emblematic of how the band were. But on that first day, as the five of us, we were writing songs.

We were forging ahead. somebody is like, I need to put this record out for you guys. And this somebody is Mark Corley, a high school student who worked at a pizzeria. Who better? Who better? Who else, actually? I think it was not a lot of, not a bidding war, if you love. Genuine question, yeah.

So he convinces Tim to let him release Captain Jazz's debut full-length album. Would you like to tell the people what that album is called? I would, yeah. Burritos, inspiration point, fork balloon sports, cards in the spokes, automatic biographies, kites, food trophies, banana peels we've flipped on, and eggshells, we've tippy-toed over, a.k-a-a-a-shm-hm-smat. Incredible. Incredible.

I mean, it fills out a jacket, that's for sure. It's kind of cool. I've heard people refer to Shm-M-Schm-M-Schmazz, obviously. I've never heard somebody even bust out an attempt at the full-length title. It's kind of like that Fiona Apple album, when the pawn, like you just kind of, you got to go with it.

You got to abbreviate how you can. Yeah. This is great. They make Schmap and Shammaz. The deep sigh, you just. just let out. So basically, like, in a lot of ways, the birth of a certain kind of Midwest emo. You're right. We should put a little more little gravitas on this. I'm just saying, yeah. A little pomp and circumstances required. Midwestern emo is, depending on who you ask. It's true. Born as, thanks to this

pizzeria paycheck and. Well, depending on who you ask is important because if you ask any member of any emo band, they're not part of an emo band. They're like, I have nothing to do with that. Don't know or. None of my business. No. Davy von Boland said it didn't necessarily feel like we were making it. It's probably one of those things where we thought, hey, maybe people will start to accept us. It sold 3,000 copies from their merch table and some small record distros. They went on a 28 date tour.

One weekend, on the way to Little Rock, Arkansas, to get Davey von Volan's amp fixed, Victor Villarreal overdoses. He'd ingested a mixture of riddalin, lithium, and Vicodin. this is an insane level of access to pharmaceuticals for what I'm presuming as like a 20-year-old. Yeah. Anyways, he has to go to the emergency room. Thank God he's okay. They release him and the band is like, you know what? Well, I don't think we're going to keep going on this tour and they just turned around and went home.

They had a little band meeting at a rest stop between St. Louis and Lil Rock. Tim and Davy von Boland wanted to like soldier on, but Mike and Zurich. We're like, no, let's fucking go home. So they break up, and then they drive 17 hours home in silence. I don't know, I wasn't there, but we're telling a story. One can assume. Yeah. David von Boland said in 2010, looking back, I don't think the band would have lasted even if we kept it together for that day and moved on.

Mike was talking about leaving and go to college. We were going to convince him to stay in the band and still go to college, and he didn't want to do that. And then the events leading up to the breakup sort of convinced him. Staying together would have been interesting, obviously, for the band's sake, outside of the individuals. I think we were beginning to write way better music than we had written for the album. And I think had we been able to keep going and keep ourselves out of our own way, it would have probably been a really good thing. It's a real sliding doors moment for Midwestern even.

Yes, but a band assuming they can stay out of their own way is, I mean, just the biggest wildcard in music history. Like, every band hopes they can stay out of their own way. And they all mostly fail to do it. Selfishly, I'm glad this happened because of that I, David Von Bullen, joins the Promise Ring. I think it's best for almost everybody involved. I think everybody, yeah. Almost everybody goes on to even bigger, and in my opinion, even better musical projects. And so, yeah, it is like a cool primordial moment for all of them.

The primordial ooze of Midwestern emo. And I think Cap' Jazz's reputation is probably better for it being this thing crystallized in amber. We love a one-album wonder, legendary, like, oh, did you see them? Oh, you didn't see them. I saw them. Frankly, it's the reason why we're doing this podcast. Correct. Okay, so like we said, David von Boulin joins Promise Ring. Tim starts Joan of Arc.

And Michael Kinsella heads off to college, to uni, babe. I always thought it was called Champaign Urbana, but it's Urbana Champagne. Well, I think the metro area is sometimes flipped. Got it. But the university is Urbana Champaign. At least as far as I've ever seen it. It's confusing. Truly.

Steve Holmes, who was Besties with Mike Kinsala in high school, also goes to college at Urbana Champagne, and their roommates at UIUC, as the locals call it. Actually, I don't know. Is that what they call it? I hope. I have no idea. They'll let you know.

They'll certainly will let me know. Mike said about Steve, I was sort of best friends with Steve Holmes somewhere in the middle of high school. He was like running around with like some punks. And I guess I was sort of running around with some punks. And then our punks got friends or got to be friends with their punks. Yeah. So it was a real overlapping punks. punk's coming together. I'm like picturing West Side Story. So Steve said, I met my Kinsella

freshman year at Wheeling High School. I remember the first time I saw Cap and Jazz play was in the theater of our school during the lunch periods. I didn't play guitar yet, but I think seeing them definitely spurred me in that direction. I got my first guitar when I was 15, and I was in a band a week later. A friend and I played that first band after a screeching Weasel show. You really can't make it 15 minutes talking about anything in the world

adjacent to punk without getting to a screeching weasel invention. It's my favorite part of any punk band, emo band origin story. It's not just the screeching weasel. It's when Ben Weasel was mean to them. Well, that, but also just like the random listing of all the bands that brought you here. Some of which you've heard of many of which you, of course, have not. Sure. It's like the graveyards are littered with incredible bands and band names.

Didn't take much, babe. A guitar and an amp and a dream. So he also said that cap and jazz was the coolest band in their high school, and it was like a really big deal. that you can't overstate their influence. Steve Lamos was also at U-I-U-C. He was in a band already. What was it called, Rob? The One Up Downstairs?

That's a good band name. Do you think so? I think so. Do you think of American Football had kept going under that name, which could have kind of happened, given the way that it morphs, they would have been as successful? Do you think we'd be having this podcast right now?

Not for them. I think if they were a consistently active band, the one up downstairs, I actually like as a band name. But as a weird piece of ephemera that kind of existed but kind of didn't, American football is the sort of name you want. Yeah, that's a good point. Lamos, a little trumpet prodigy.

I know. Played trumpet with his dad's polka band. Love a polka band. It's really a Midwestern. He also saw Cap and Jazz perform in 1995 in Downstate Danville. Shout to larger Danville. He said, I never experienced that kind of energy in terms of watching music. I was like, I want to do this.

So you're right, cap and jazz It's a really important moment The sound you're hearing is the slow chiseling of that Mount Rushmore as we speak Exactly So Lamo said, I didn't play the drums until I was 20 I'd been in music lessons since I was four I played violin as a kid

And trumpet at age seven I was playing in polka and dance bands with my dad I got to Champaign as a sophomore And didn't want to do formal music anymore Because he had played in a jazz band at DePaul But watching some of these Chicago bands Like Cap and Jazz and Braid Got me wanting to be part of that social scene

started messing around with the bass, which didn't take, and the drums, which I enjoyed, I started practicing a lot and was teaching myself from these how to be a jazz drummer books. Fucking phenomenal. He had these 1960s instructional books that he borrowed from his dad, and that's how he learned to be one of the greater drummers. I mean, especially within the genre, like a fucking phenomenal drummer, a transformative drummer, for sure. Yeah. But, I mean, it's such like an of a time and place thing. Like when you're doing bandsplay in 2065, You know, it's going to be like, oh, I learned how to, you know, well, no one's going to be playing guitars anymore, but I learned to play whatever futuristic guitar instrument exists then.

I learned to input into AI. I did. And they churned out music. I'll be on my seventh facelift. It's going to be great. We're going to get into it, but would you agree that, like, Steve Lamos is, like, sort of winding path to music that is unconventional in terms of, like, being really? rooted in polka and dance, but also learning jazz drumming, not like what Mike Kinsella was doing Cabin Jazz, which is like, you know, like, and Mike Kinsell is a good drummer, but like that's a totally different kind of drumming.

Absolutely. This. More of a bangier, punkier drumming style. Exactly. But Lamos's style is one of the sort of like key parts of what makes American football interesting and special. I think it really leads into the sort of like math rock elements of what they do. And you just can't, like, set out the formula of American football without that.

Without that, you're right, they kind of are just another band with some really nice guitar parts and some evocative vocals. But the drums bring it together in a totally different way. And it's like it's one of those things where, you know, never meant like the guitar riff is the memeable, identifiable quality. But that song without the drums is not that song. Like, it would, the bottom would fall out on it. Totally. Mike said, I had seen Steve Lamos drum in some bands before. About a year later, I saw him play again as the song.

the one up downstairs, and he blew me away. There's a couple different stories of how this band comes together. In Noisy in 2016, Mike said he basically just walked up and said, do you want me to be the singer? Yes. That's not consistent. It's not consistent with, but. I would say every member of the trio has a slightly different version

about how the other two guys had a thing or they and another guy had a thing and somebody suggested something. Like, I have no idea what's actually true. Of course it's like my want to like pull out the red strings and really fucking solve this, but I don't think it's useful. I don't think it gives us anything to sink our teeth into that's important. Well, what's your best guess? I think they were all kind of friends hanging out, one up, one downstairs, dissolved as bands do, but they all kind of wanted to play music and it sort of reformed in a different shape.

Makes sense. One jam leads to another. As you said, two of them are already roommates. Exactly. It lends itself to that. And if that's not right, I don't care. I'm so sorry. Go tell it to a wall.

I don't know. Yes, write me a letter. The one-up downstairs had recorded a few songs, but they flamed out, like I said, 1996. They were a band for about six months. If only they didn't get out of their own way. If only they had gotten out of their own way. The three songs were meant to come out on polyvinyl, I believe. Quick polyvinyl sidebar.

Very important. I think so. 1994 high school students Matt Lunsford and Darcy Knight from Danville, Illinois. Shout out larger Danville, as you said. Founded Polyvinyl Press, a fanzines created to celebrate the Midwestern DIY scene. In the fifth and final issue, the Polyvinyl Press in 1996, they put out an accompanying 20-track compilation called Direction. Then in 1996, they started putting out their very first releases from Braid,

who are also from Champagne, of Flores. You may have heard of them. I love Raid and Rainer Maria from Madison, Wisconsin. Also a prominent figure, and I think the larger, Mike can sell a story, but also American football story. Yes. Although I have gone on record to say something really controversial, which I just like to say, and I just like to stir the pot sometimes. Like how the ringer likes to rank things. Do we?

Never heard of it. Are you making a joke? Are you joking with me? Are you pulling my life? What shit would you like to stir? I think emo music is fundamentally male, and I don't think women. can make it because it's depraved in a way that only men can be depraved.

And this is a compliment to women. All right. So it's depraved in a way that women can't access in order to create that kind of music or they are barred structurally from participating. It's a fundamental male kind of like depravity. I have no counterpoint.

I mean... It is definitely depraved. It is unquestionably male-oriented. I mean, I think there are some interesting counterpoints, right? It's not like there have been no way. women who have broken into the space of been successful, some of which we will talk about later. But I just think what they're doing is something beautiful and different and wonderful and less

depraved. And that's okay if you don't agree. I have no argument. Go ahead and at me. Please don't help me. So Matt Lunsford said, I sort of discovered Cap and Jazz when I was still in high school and living in Danville. For the size of the town, there was a really cool DIY scene of kids just putting on shows for other kids. I had heard the Cap and Jazz record and I was in love with it. They were one of the major bands we wanted to bring to Danville. They were friends with some of the guys from Braid. Those guys were really young, too, and playing these shows in central Illinois,

but they were all teenagers from the suburbs. Strictly through booking the cap and jazz shows, I got to know Mike and his brother Tim. And it wasn't long after that that Mike came to school here in Champaign. So that's the polyvinyl connection. Like we said, we've coalesced back into a sort of a new band.

Steve Holmes said, it's really kind of luck that American football happened at all. It could have easily have been the one, One Up Downstairs that people remember today if they had stayed together. That was a really cool band with tons of potential. But luckily for me, it didn't work out. Steve Holmes was not part of. One up downstairs.

Thank you. They recorded those three songs and broke up before the single could even come out. So Lamos and I started playing together, and after a few weeks, I can't remember how it happened. It was a mutual decision from all three of us that Mike should join the band on guitar and vocals. Mike was insanely good on guitar, but for whatever reason he had never played guitar in a band, even though he wrote some of the cap and jazz songs. Mike became the singer by default because I couldn't play. those fast-picky parts and play at the same time.

It does seem immensely difficult. Totally. Playing guitar and singing in the same time in general, seems immensely difficult. Much less when you're playing in the styles and just constantly shape-shifting melodies and structures that they are, I just, I don't know how anyone would do it.

I don't know how they do it. And we should say, like, yes, he was nominated to do vocals, but they were basically an instrumental band at first. Yes. It was not intended to really have much of a vocal part. And it was like, how do we, okay, maybe a third of our set list, could have some words to it.

Yeah. And even then, it's like when they put it into practice, they didn't own a microphone. They didn't have a PA. I like how you say setless when they played like maybe 20 shows total before their dissolution. Not really a live band.

But as guys playing in their living room slash Edna Garage are trying to put some things together, can't even hear what the vocals would be if they exist. So like no one even really knows this like what has become a hyper, like, focus, literal, lyrical band.

It's like an afterthought of the entire. project out of the gate. Totally. I thank God, though, because I'm, again, controversial. I think if there was no lyrics, nobody would fucking care about this band. Respectfully. It's one of those you really need all three. Maybe not nobody, but you know, you got to grab people with some lyrics. I think they are one of those true, like, if you remove any of the legs of the stool, it just doesn't work. Collapse. You need the guitar synergy between Kinsella and Holmes, which is like, I think, really unique for really any rock music, but especially emo music. We talked about the drums already.

Mike and Sell is like the front man of the band and thus the most visible in a lot of ways. And, yeah, he is carrying the vocals and the writing to give them kind of a signature sound. But I really think it's equally load-bearing all around. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Well, in 1987, the birth of American football. That's the day. They're born.

You alluded to this, but they, like, didn't really have adequate equipment. They didn't basically any equipment. Mike never had anything. He was borrowing Steve's. guitar. I think Steve also had a bass. They would borrow amps. Steve Holmes said our practices would be in part dictated by whether or not we could get the gear to practice with. And like you said, no mic or PA. So this is not a serious band. They're not really taking this. What is serious? Well, I mean, I don't think they were like, okay, put us in maximum rock and roll. We're going to book a bunch of shows.

We're going on tour. We're putting out music. It sounds like it was just sort of this like beautiful fun male bonding, you know, dudes rock. And you say that's depraved. Well, I think it's beautiful. You're right. You're right. I think it's two dudes who are roommates sitting on their couch, noodling guitars back and forth, trying to see how it all fits together. And what's better than that, honestly?

Well, I mean, the irony of all this of not owning the equipment is that when this first album eventually takes off, I would say it launches an entire generation of like, how do I get my guitar to sound like that? And the answer is you don't own it and you have no idea what the equipment is and the setup is kind of a mystery to everyone involved. Everyone's like, we don't know either, babe, sorry. Who cares?

Sorry. Steve Lemos said, when we started playing together, we definitely had a desire to sound a bit different from what was going on around us. Those guys were into the hardcore stuff coming out of Discord, but we didn't want to sound like that.

We didn't want to sound like Braid and all the other Emo bands that were around either. He said Emo. Not that I didn't love that sound. I did and I still do. But we were determined to be quieter than that, more post-rocky and jazzy than loud and aggressive.

I thought this was interesting. So about the guitar playing that we were talking about. So Steve Holmes said, Mike didn't even own a guitar. So we had one guitar between the two of us, and I would say, hey, Mike, show me how to play, ooh, do I love you, or whatever, some cap and jazz song.

And he would teach me that. And then I would show him some riffs that I'd been writing. So I knew he could play guitar. And I knew that Mike had written half the cap and jazz song. He said, I think the first time I saw him playing guitar, maybe our sophomore year, he was playing a dinosaur junior song and singing. So I was like, oh, this guy can sing too, sort of. It sounds like J. Mascus, you know, that kind of warbly singing.

Mike's just a natural. He's one of those annoying musicians who, like, intuitively is good at everything. Like, he picked up the drums, probably started guitar in seventh grade or something learning Metallica. So he had that heavy metal roots that grounded him and the technical ability, but he just picked up everything incredibly quickly. He's just a naturally musical person. the alternate tunings.

Okay, this is where we're really going to get in. Here's the thing, are they alternate tunings if all you play is alternate tunings? Well, Rob, this is what I'm going to talk about. I want to talk about the birth of Midwestern emo. Please. These alternative tunings came from Victor via Real of Captain Jazz. Because Victor took classical guitar lessons as a kid, Steve Holmes said, whoever his teacher was, that person should get credit for inventing Midwest emo.

Because technically they taught him fingerpicking and the open-seed tuning that I eventually stole. And when he had it, it was like E-A-C-G-C-E. And then I added the F-A-C-G-C-E. That's right. And that's what we made famous was never meant. I mean, so that formula is like— I don't know what the fuck that means. It's above our pay grade.

Yeah. But what I am hearing is classical guitar plus jazz drumming. Plus jazz drumming. Plus kind of post-hardcore punk background. Plus alternative tunings. Yeah. Oh, of course. Yeah. Open tunings.

Again, when I say this stuff, I'm doing theater, babe. It's jazz hands because I don't know what I'm talking about. I think importantly is probably their influences, right? Like, obviously they are coming from this scene, birthed, you know, from the head of Zeus, Captain Jazz, but around braid, around what's going on. But, you know, they were really. to Nick Drake and the Red House painters, the sea and cake,

tortoise. The Sundays. The Sundays. Obviously, Mike had that Cure and Smith's kind of like goth goth sensibility. Like Depeche Mode comes up a lot. Depeche Mode comes up a lot. In the lyric writing.

For sure. But I thought those musical influence was really interesting because I can really hear that, you know? And they also loved that Yank Crime album by Drex. I have, like, Jayhu, one of the greater albums. And like it to a degree where it informs them going softer because they hear that album, and they're like, that's as good as you can do that. So we need to do something else.

I mean, quite a compliment. I think it's very cool. We are rooted in this one thing, but we want to kind of stretch it in this other direction, which is towards post-rock, math-rock. I mean, pinback. And they don't mention pinback, but I hear a lot of pinback. Low. And then also, we said this already, but I'll say it again,

Steve Lamos loved Jazz Fusion, 70s Jazz Fusion. So the weather report in Miles Davis is also coming into the picture here. Should we talk quickly about the looping? I would love to. Because now they're writing the American football song, so we're just signing this up. Mike and Sellas said, I do remember writing a couple songs, like specifically sitting on a couch with Steve on a Saturday morning,

and he's like practicing looping his part. Again, here's me doing theater, which is in like 13 or something. And I'm trying to ignore him and also play my part. which is in seven. And then, you know, they only catch every six cycles around or something when the one lands. So then we're like both learning how to create these patterns. This is like physics to me, what they're talking about.

I mean, why go to therapy when you can fuck with time signatures, you know? Men will fuck with time signatures before they'll ever go to therapy. But it's proven effective. Did it? TBD. Based on the later songwriting, maybe not as effective as it needed to be. It gave us some beautiful music. That is for sure.

Yeah. And then the last tidbit, the last leg of the chairstool. It's becoming an elaborate piece of furniture. I know. It's beautiful. It's much like an American football song. It's more complicated than meets the eye. It really is. Trumpet. I love the trumpet. Do you? In general? Well, no, in this context, yes. In general, I find it a little ostentatious.

A little like, look at me, I'm a trumpet. Got it. I would say... It calls too much attention to the sound. You know, it's not as subtle as a saxophone. It's not as understated as even like a friend. The trumpet insists upon itself. You know what? It really does. But here it does not.

Within this band, it does not like, I think it's a testament to the trumpet playing. And Steve Lamos is the one playing the trumpet. A rare double-threat drummer, trumpeter. I don't think it's trumpeter. I think trumpeter makes sense. Yeah. I think trumpet player might be the most. But they never became the trumpet band, you know, in the same way that, like, yellow card

has a violinist, and they're like, oh, it's that band of the violin. They're the band of the violinist, yeah. Damn, I thought we could have made a whole day going through and not mentioning yellow card, but there you go. Not on my watch. We got to bring in the yellow card violinist. They played a couple of shows. They did. Steve Holmes says it often gets written that we played only 10 shows, never to more than 20 or 30 people.

That's not entirely accurate, but we played probably 25 to 30 shows. And I'm talking, this is four years of college. Yeah. So they're averaging seven shows a year, six shows year? I can't do math. If that, I mean, you know, give or take... 5.5 shows a year, 5.2 shows year. They're not touring. Well, they're gone for summer, you know?

They're gone for the holidays. Spring break. You know, the time disappears. Mike is also participating in Joan of Arc. So he would write, record, and tour with Joan of Arc during the summer. Yeah. So, again, this is what I mean that American Football wasn't serious. Like, that's what I mean.

It's like, they weren't, like, this is our ticket to ride. Yeah. You know, like, we're getting out of Urbana, Illinois, thanks to American football. We're going to make it. It was just like an art project. It is 100% an art project. I would venture to guess it's really the only reason it worked. Right.

Because if you put, if you pressurize this, it's going to implode. Like, there's no reason this should have been as big as it was. It needed to have the ease of like no one actually taking it that seriously. Yes. And it also needed to have a good 12 years of a time for the world to catch up to it. Very true. Okay. So we've written stuff.

What do we do now? We need to record. We don't really need to. Like I said, it's not serious. But let's do it. Polyvinyl's offering. They are. In 1998, they record their EP.

Everything is called American Football. Everyone is named Steve and everybody is called American Football. American Football EP. What are you going to say about American Football EP, babe? Not super notable, to be honest with you. Interesting. Look, I think it's very good for what it is. Yeah.

And it's incredible that, especially the guitar sound, is already there. The twinkling, definitive nature of the guitars. Twinkle daddies. They are true twinkle daddies already, even in their early 20s. So, like, the fact that they have their finger on that particular pulse, I guess it's not really a pulse at this point.

They're creating that pulse. Yeah. I can't say it really returned to these songs that often. I don't think I'd ever listen to them. I liked them more than I thought I would. I was blown away by the lyric, if only she were older, which does not age well. In fairness, they were referenced.

sing a J.D. Salinger short story for Esme with Love and Squalor. But it's just, you know, given the long arc of time. Yeah. We just, maybe lyrics if only she were older, are just saying, maybe you don't want to have that on your CV.

You know, it's tough, but it's a reasonable objection. First of all, letters and packages is the name of the song. It's a really good song. You know what? Maybe everything is tragic and temporary. It's the first line. There's really no doubt about it. You can't be like, we're not an emo band. and then you start a song with

everything is tragic and temporary. Yes. The thing about denying them being an email band in the first place, this is as confessional, a lyrical band as you're going to find. I mean, I do think in all of the research I did, I didn't, they're one band that I never saw, be like, they were mostly were just like,

that wasn't a thing. Yes. They were like, we're not part of this, but they were just like, that wasn't really a thing, you know? Like, in retrospect, you've sort of like shoehorned. this thing together, but like while we were

existing, like that wasn't like, we were like, we were going to be an emo man. True. Yes. In that sense, absolutely not. It wasn't a thing you could aspire to being. The ways I've seen them address it are one, aren't all forms of music, emo music? Correct. Which I guess is like a galaxy brained way to think about it. Not untrue.

Is that Ella MFAO song, emo music? Which, party rock anthem? Party rock anthem? Party rock anthem. I'm trying to think of a single lyric other than party rock it in the house tonight. Who let the dogs out emotional? music. Of course it is. As a fellow dog owner, don't you understand that?

Like, who did let the dogs out? They don't sound melancholy about it, though. That seems stoked that the dogs got let out. That's a celebratory song about the dogs being let out. You're right. You're right. I guess it is a celebration of a kind. But I think you can tap into that with emo as well. It doesn't have to all be sad boys all the time.

What is the who let the dogs out of emo music? I think it might be sugar. I love it. I'll take it. This is a total sidebar, but this letters and packages, which, again, I like very much, made me really sad that I was like, I do feel we used to see a lot more songs that referenced literature, and actually specifically, J.D. Salinger, are we just, like, really illiterate now? There's no question. Was that up on the table? I thought we had asked an answer that we are all illiterate. It's really heartbreaking. I mean, the kids can barely read books to get through school. They have to have, like, consolidated assignments. It's a whole. thing. They're certainly not writing beautiful tomes to Holden Caulfield. No. Like Green Day. And to be fair, a lot of people who are citing literary works in songs are just like, oh, that line sounded like a bar. Not Robert Smith. No, look, I'm not here to besmirch Robert Smith. So you're

here to besmirch the Jonas brothers, who in their song Six Minutes have the lyric, sometimes I feel like the catcher in the wry, sometimes a witch that I could catch her eye. That's who you're talking about. That is what I'm talking about, yes. You don't think that Joe Jonas has read. J.D. Saldinger's classic Catcher in the Rye. Book on tape? Maybe. Wow. Maybe. I think Joe Jonas has a book club.

Okay. But is it a real book club or is it a social club where they pretend to read the book? And they have wine and cheese. I can see that too. Again, while no one, as far as I know,

experience isn't real time except for like 12 to 15 people. Yeah. I think this is a very promising first piece of released music. Yes. As EPs go, If this EP came out in a slightly different time in context,

there probably would have been actual label interest in a band like this. But we've kind of crested past that point where bands like them are getting real chances in that vein. Oh, yeah, because this is 98, Dave. The boom is kind of 90s boom of let's sign every guitar rock band on Earth is like fully over. And we talked about it a bit in the Jimmy World Story. We saw what happened with them with their first major label deal and how it's sort of like they got it, but then it was like,

Like, just kidding. So that would have been their junior year. So now their senior year, a couple weeks after graduation, May 1999, Steve Lamos was already in grad school. They're like, all right, let's record our debut album. Are we breaking up? The answer is yes. Definitively, yes. Definitively, yes, because we're graduating.

My man is going to grad school. We're all going to seek our fortunes. Get real-ass jobs. Yes. But polyvinyl was like, no, we should capture this for posterity, basically, which is really fucking cool of a label to do. Very cool and crazy. Well, this is DIY, babe.

It's true. We do things for the love of it. I say we work at the ringer. We work at a tech corporation. I mean, you're DIY. In a sense. Yeah. Spiritually.

I do do the Google Doc myself. You do. No one else could do it like you. You're in the Google Doc Hall of Fame. I'm on the. Steve Holmes said, the band had no following at the time, and we were just documenting a thing. And that was it. We had zero expectations that anyone beyond the 1,000 people in our scene would hear it. Steve Lamos said, it shouldn't have even existed. They knew the band was in a band anymore.

And he said, I'd always assume that Mike, they knew you were going to do solo work with them. And that's why they're like, oh, we'll break even. Because we'll have Mike's project, which was called Owen. But I think PolyMattle just thought they were really good. They were right. I have some quotes about that. We'll get into it. Okay, so now it's 1999.

It's not really relevant, but I think it's interesting to talk about the musical landscape of 1999. Please. For us to understand why perhaps this didn't break ground. What broke ground? Did anyone feel the breaking of the ground in the moment? Right. No. It was released physically in a way that it was hearable music.

Right. Correct. But also, like, I would argue 1999 is probably... Probably like the single most important year in emo music history. Okay, clarity, obviously. Clarity, obviously. Clarity had stand up. Those are like the two definitive, like inspirational, generational

albums to come out around this time. You also have a promissoring album. You have very emergency. It's like a little on the pop of your side for them, but very good. You've got the Get Up Kids album, something to write home about. Let's fucking go.

Huge landmark album. Thursday has their first album this year, saves the day as through being cool. And you also have Rainer Maria. You have Juliana Theory. You have Orchid. And it's like, this is the formation of what ultimately becomes an entire wave. Do you know what those bands were doing?

What's that? Touring. They certainly were. They were playing live without having to stop for eight minutes to tune in between songs. They were traversing the country in a van with a box full of CDs or vinyl and T-shirts and hawking their wares and spreading awareness about their band. They certainly were. And American football was like, I sat out on the couch and played in 13 time while my bro played in seven time for six hours today.

and then I went to Polly Scyclass, and now we're going to go record this album and break up. Well, this is why all that kind of third wave of stuff we were talking about, the very pop-punk radio version of emo, the fallout boy version of emo, takes no influence from these bands. But the slow gestation...

You don't think Fall Out Boy sounds like American football. Is that what you're saying? I know it's a bold stance to take. Actually, famously, took a lot of inspiration from American nightmare. But we'll have to get into that right now. Different episode. Yeah.

But, like, because it just dates for so long, because this sound that's coming out of this American football, that's coming out of clarity, that's like what defines fourth wave emo, right? It's like those records are bought and kept on a shelf somewhere and kids a little later along find them and are inspired by them. So it's just like there's a weird delay in terms of the groundbreaking quality, I think. Fourth wave. So old. I'm tired. It's okay. Confusingly, I think the first fourth wave band I think of is modern baseball.

so we're just we're fully in the sports zone. Okay, I literally had to Google this because I'm so old. Do you understand? I think you can do it. I think you can hang with the kids. Algernon Codwell, Lodder, good band.

My beloved Joyce Manor. Love Joyce Manor. Not sure I would consider them an emo band. How would you identify them? I'm just kind of a punk band. I guess they were imbombo. There's a lot of great area for being honest about it. I fucking love Joyce Manor.

Hometown Heroes. We're both in Torrance. Look at that. Tiger's Dog, great band. I don't know any of these other bands. And they're, oh my God, I'm not well. I'm not well. Subgenres and trends.

Who is even, people just are saying things. Twinkle Daddies. We just said that on this podcast. I know, but I thought I was just like saying stuff. No, it turns out you are not. unique. You're saying the same things that all of the other twinkle daddiers out there are saying. Sparkle punk. Weedmo.

Do you know what these things are? I mean, aren't all genres this way? This is like grandma get you to bed hours for me. Okay, well, fourth wave, Ebo, you learn something new every single day, embrace, found dead in a ditch. That's in the zone, though. Do you think the kids listen to embrace? I do not

Unfortunately Time has flattened for all music Except unfortunately embrace Saddle Do the kid listen to Rights of Spring? I hope so Yeah I mean it genuinely does feel like those

Whether you're talking about The Rights of Spring era If you even want to call that emo And the American football Clarity era stuff Like those are the touchstones Right If you look at modern contemporary

Quote unquote emo revival music a lot of it sounds like that or sounds like people who grew up listening to that. Got it. Okay, so you're saying it's skipped a generation, like a recessive gene or something. Yes. I think there's like...

Twinkle daddyism. There's a couple of highways kind of going alongside each other and one of them just like veered into like Blink 182 territory so hard that it blended it all together into a weird mix that became a slightly different kind of emo for a while.

Got it. And I don't say that with any judgment. I love that music too, but it is clearly different than anything that a band like a very Eric and Football is going for. Yes. Okay, well.

Welcome to my TED Talk. Thank you. I thought it was beautiful. I'm going to tell you what else is going on in music, though. This is the year of Backstreet Boys Millennium and also Britney Spears Day one more time. Blink 182's Enema of the State comes out this year and is pretty popular. Yes. Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Heard of it. Ricky Martin. Live in Lovita Loco. It's the only way to live. You know it, Bibb? Is that an emo song? Incident Emo's song. I would say you could retitle many of the tracks on American Football LP3.

Live in LaVita Loca. And it would kind of work. Live in LaVita, sad. Certainly. Sad boy. All right, let's fucking go. American Football LP1. Ian Cohen, our great Ken Burns of Emo, if you will, the scholar, the great scholar of Emo,

said American football's greatest innovation was successfully removing any trace of punk rock while still functioning within the genre. I thought that was actually a really astute. point, right? There's not much recognizably punk about this music. The drumming is jazz. Punk guys don't know how to play the guitar. That's kind of a hallmark. It's one of the deals. Or, you know, it's power cordy or, you know,

I mean, respect. Joe Strummer was a phenomenal guitar player. He said, whatever you think punk rock means, they got rid of an American football. There's no confrontation, almost no distortion, no power chords, and none of the verse chorus structure that was maintained even when emo became virtually synonymous with alt rock. That's really interesting. Definitely. I think there's something too there where those bands that are punkier that are coming

with a harder sound, the musicianship, I think you're right, is kind of the differentiating point where it's like if you are, even in your primitive 20, 22-year-old way, a really inventive guitarist, you don't have to overcompensate with energy. You know, regardless of what you're going for, of what your artistic aims for, it's like there's a certain kind of musician where, like, if you don't come with 150% energy all the time, it's just going to be power courts, right? Like, it's just going to feel flat. And I think part of the reason that a band like American football can afford to be understated,

that can afford to trail out a one and a half minute song into a five-minute instrumental is because, like, they have the musicianship to back it up even this early. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. And it's just interesting when we get what we talk about, when we talk about emo is so interesting because what a fucking, like, area traverses with how different every aspect of it.

It's a big tent. It's a big tent. And the way you can have this album that is just so fundamentally far away from any of those bands that you just mentioned. Fall Out Boy Thursday, even Thursday. I mean, Thursday's maybe a little bit closer. You could see, like, again, a long,

rail leading to Thursday, but it's not a straight line. It's not a straight line. Okay. This album is produced by Brendan Gamble. Brendan Gamble was in a new wave band called Akak. That's right. They had a 1985 single called Another Face.

And then he was the second drummer in the band poster children. And he was just like a local, cool musician guy. Yeah. Who was really not that much older than them, but they felt he was like this sort of elder in the music space. Yet another older brother figure.

Yeah. They recorded in like a garage. A literal garage. Yeah. So we've already, we've established American football LP1 is a founding father of this wave of emo.

Yes. You would agree with that. I would agree. Again, on delay. But yes. Yeah, on delay. On delay. But what if it's actually

wistful ska. Because of the trumpet. That's right. Are you inventing wistful scah? Yes. In the vein of the genres you were just listing. I think it's better than Twinkle Daddy. I think they might be one of the same.

What is Twinkled Daddy if not Wistful Skaw? If not Wistful Skaw. Okay, that's all I just wanted to pop. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I appreciate it. For a new genre for American football. Well, did anybody, what is the form of dancing you do when you play ska? Skinking?

Yeah. Did anybody in American football ever at any time skank? Well, I don't feel like with wistful scat you could skink. You skunk. Yeah, sure. Okay. I need a workshop this more. Okay, well, to the emo question besides the fact that maybe they're not,

they're not wistful scoff. Mike Insala said, if we were, you know, whatever, I guess if emo's the word, and I don't know, I think we were just sort of like a quiet, understated emotive band. Yeah. That is true. That's true. And then Steve Holmes said, why is one genre emo and every other one is not?

I just think it's so dumb. Aren't the Smith's most emo band that ever was? Which is an excellent question. They are. Isn't all good music emotional? If so, Tori... Well, we just talked about who let the dogs out. Which may or may not be.

The Baja men. That's the question I want bands band listeners to answer more than any others. It's like, what is the deep-seated emotion within who let the dogs out? Who? Why is this not post-rock? Or is it? It's definitely partly post-rock. Right.

And it doesn't work without that element, as we've already described. Like, that being a differentiating quality, I think, is really important. And it sort of factors into, like, the looping nature of their music, where this album, especially, is such a, like, put the record on piece of art. Right. I am usually a, like, put on music while I do stuff kind of person. What's your activity that you do to American football? Lay on the couch and think about life? I messaged you the other day and I said, I've been listening to American football for one week straight.

Yeah. And I need to go to hospital. It's really the only follow-up activity. I think they have to put a medical advisory, like the parental advisory, but a medical advisory sticker on all subsequent releases that says, do not do this. Do not listen to this only for a week. You got to space it out. You got to mix things up.

I had to put on Groove Armada super styling. That makes sense. Palet cleanser. Like a defibrillator. Yeah, like an adrenaline shot. Like bring me back to that. Because I was truly like, I was drowning. Yes.

It will slow you down and then, again, just put your ass on the couch and make you lay out and just kind of immobilize you. Yeah. It's like Xanax. It is like Xanax. It is like Zanax. It's like musical Xanax.

Except that it doesn't make me not feel anxious, unfortunately. The album was recorded to ADAT tapes. This is for my heads. You know how I'm talking about? My gear heads? Yeah. My tape-op subscribers. I mixed on a TASCAM digital tape deck.

That mix was bounced to a DAT tape master from which subsequent reissues have been struck. Steve Holmes said, we recorded the album the week after graduation. I remember being particularly pleased with how Never Met came out. We knew that we nailed that one. The whole thing was pretty easy, though. Most songs were done in a couple takes,

and then we'd go back and double guitars to be up the sound a bit. There was no bass, except for the two tracks Mike played bass live on. It's very interesting, right? Very unusual to have no bass in a mate. Completely. I think this is where the post-rock elements of that pay off, right? Because it's like they don't have a bass, but they have two guitars and a drum and sometimes a trumpet.

And they're double looping both guitars. So there's like four guitars basically how. Like to me, so much of the part of listening to American football is like the first time you listen to it. It's like, oh, this is pretty rad. Like this is cool to listen to. The second time you're like, oh, this is devastatingly sad. And the third time you're like, is that a fifth guitar? that I hear. And then the fourth time you're like, oh, wait, this is really rad. And the six

time you're like, oh, no, I need hospital. I need hospital. Yeah. Six times is probably the time where you're like, jea telephone ambulance, jea telephone police and jeetlephone ambulance. This is American football. You need to speak English, please. Mike said, this is the vibes of them recording. I remember those days recording not being very fun. I think there was some tension by the end. I remember on a song, Lamos wasn't happy with my bass playing, so he re-recorded it. And that's what you hear on the album. Stuff like that was just like, well, we're breaking up anyway.

Who cares? The song that he re-records the bass on, it was, I'll see you and we're both, not so emotional. Great song. And he felt he played the drums badly. So he wanted more bass on top of it to hide his messy, his shoddy work. Yes. And Mike was like, I'm not doing that.

Presumably because he was like, this band is fake. We've already broken up. Yeah. Who fucking cares? Slap that shit on the record. when Steve was like, no, it's, I will not be humiliated. I will play more bass. I will play more base myself.

To camouflage my own flaws. Yes. And what could be more American football than that? And I would simply have never noticed, but now you know the lore behind that. Steve Fum said, it's weird and wretched weather breaking up with such a non-event. The distance from Chicago to Champaign just felt insurmountable, I guess. Or maybe unnecessary. We didn't think anyone would care.

We only played a couple of shows. I needed a job because I had loans. It was fun, and we documented it for posterity, but now we're moving on. It's more of an art project than anything for us. Indie bands weren't a thing, or it was at a level that we felt was unattainable for us. Well, I think that's a reasonable way to feel, given the lack of live experience, given how, like, they have said themselves, like, they thought they played awfully in those live performances. Like, they just weren't ready to be a band other than guys noodling around in the garage. Also, you have to want it.

You do have to want it. I think badly. Being in a band at this level is really fucking hard, and it's a lot. lot of schlepping and it's a lot of misery and it's a lot of sleeping on people's couches and punk houses and floors and making no money and like if you don't want it you're never going to make it you're never going to make it past st louis or whatever no this this part that you're describing is in a lot of ways the fun part right like the early stages of DIY where you have all the energy and all the momentum and like again the creativity is flowing and you're not bogged down

by logistics yet that's the easy part yeah they bailed before it got truly hard and where so many other bands just kind of completely peter out. Yeah. Okay, you alluded to this earlier, but I think it is really interesting that Mike Kinsella did not do the vocals until the last session at the studio. Yeah. 90% of them he finished in the studio. They did not exist.

He said he just had these notebooks with like vague high school diary stuff in them. And he was, he said, I'm trying to write songs that sound like Depeche Mode or the secure, the bands that I liked, that's sort of like overtly dramatic. And they seemed at the time super youthful to me still. But they weren't even like, that wasn't necessarily themed. It was just sort of these lines. And then maybe I would flush them out a bit and give this line a bit of a story. But nothing was that specific.

No. Basically what he's saying in a lot of words there is like, oh, it was just vibing. Just viving. Not real in the strictest, the most literal sense. Yeah. I think it's also part of the reason it works. Like the vagueness. Totally.

You fill in the gaps. It has this like really dreamy, fragmentary nature that I do think really like lends itself to the dreamy music that's happening. But it still feels really intimate. Yeah. Especially with this first record, the feeling it always gives me is like that very uncanny vibe of am I allowed to be here? It's like I'm reading. It's like I've gone. Like it's too intimate.

Like you shouldn't be privy to this. I've gone into some like my friend's house and I opened the wrong door and I'm like I shouldn't be seeing this. And I think it's like how, again, like, raw and confessional the lyrics are, even being that vague and sparse. And then also, like, the production of the record is, like, very intentionally unfinished. Right. Like, it's, like, stylistically, that's the choice that they chose in to make where there's the outtake at the start have never met. And there's all these, like, rough around the edges moments. And it gives it that, like, lived in in this moment inescapable quality.

But it does feel like, like, am I allowed to be a part of this or not? I do wonder now, like, knowing all of this information, how much of the knowing that American football is breaking up and that likely thinking that nobody would really hear this, like they said outside of a thousand people, created the environment in which Mike Kinsella could feel free enough to be kind of so vulnerable with those lyrics that he kind of put in the 11th hour. And also to your point, that they could feel so free as musicians

to maybe not overthink it or stress it too much. I mean, obviously they gave it a really, you know, strong effort. But like there's unfinished bits and there's rough around that, just like you're saying. And all of that created this beautiful storm that made this album that many people consider perfect as exactly as it is. And an album that's about the endings of things. In a very like I'm 22 kind of way, right?

It's like when the summer ends kind of the endings of things. But it's really impossible how it all came together. And you're right. Like there is a certain release in the fact that if you know it's doomed, why not do the thing you want to do? And to your point about like redubbing the base or taking parts over, it's like you don't have to be so precious about every single thing if you know this is already over. Yeah. I mean, I find, I don't know if you would agree, but I find often with creativity in my own life, like the best things come out when I don't feel

this pressure or, or I don't think about the outcome of other people experiencing it. because then I'll get to in my own head. If it's just for you, and there's no chance that will ever mean anything. If it's just for you and the members of Braid, then it's fine. I make everything in my life for the members of Braid. For the members of Braid.

Yeah, every podcast you do, you're like, this goes out. Dedication. To Braid. Before we get into all the songs, let's talk about the cover, because obviously, what is more iconic in the emo genre visually than the cover of the American?

American football. It's very important. For better or worse, depending on who you ask, but it's very important. Once again, imagine you and your bros are making an album of your college art project that you are certain no one will ever care about that is over. And it's time to pick some artwork. And you're like, that house picture is good. Yeah.

The one that's like slightly askew, looking up, catching some sky in the background. Sure, man. That's fine. Thanks, Chris Strong, who took that photo for us. We don't even live there. It has literally basically nothing to do with our band. I think he lived there. Somebody lived there.

Chris Strong lived there. Yeah, the photographer himself. And he was their unofficial band photographer. And now it's iconic. Now you can rent it on Airbnb when you do your Midwestern emo tourism. You can. And that is really funny. How do I feel about the fact that you can rent the American football house as an Airbnb?

I think, like, honestly, this is kind of... I feel bad about it. I feel bad. I feel not well. But it's like this is the reckoning you have to do with this band. Yeah. Is they wouldn't exist in their current form. You and I would not be talking about them on this podcast if they were not a weird online memeable phenomenon that caught so many other people up on their music.

In some ways, myself included on delay. Yeah. And that's the thing that makes this available. And that is beautiful. But then the commodification of that into, you can now rent this house as an Airbnb. And there's like an X out on the sidewalk where you can take the exact photo from the... It's all kind of gross and weird and also awesome, and I don't know what to do with all that.

Would you rather take a photo in front of American football house or Discord House? It's got to be the American Football House. Okay. I would rent this. This is the thing. I say all this. You would rent it. I would rent it.

If I ever found the occasion to be in Urbana, Champaign or Champaign-Irbana, I would do it. Perhaps you can renew your vows with your wife at the American Football House. That seems like a cursed idea. I'm going to be honest with you. These are not the songs to renew your vows to. Mike and Zell said about the cover. It's just a joke to us now. It's not like we set out to extrapolate

or communicate any sort of greater feeling or message with that cover. All the associations kind of happen themselves. I guess I like the cover. Chris is an amazing photographer. We just thought it was a cool picture. And we should say, I believe they and the label

in some combination now own the house. Is that true? They at some point purchased it. I think it was at risk of being demolished. They bought it to save it, even though they kind of hated it. That's where we put the Mount Rushmore. of Emo.

Just right on the front. On the property of the American football house. You're absolutely right. Don't you agree? It was right there in front of us all along. Yeah. Unless does the house need to be one of the four faces on the Mount Rushmore? That might be the only problem.

We need to call in a real artist to tackle this. Truly. Okay. The song titles are all title after the last night line of the song. Correct. Yeah. It's an interesting method. Never meant.

I've heard of it. You've heard of it. Not to be overly dramatic. No? But this is obviously, this is the song. It's the one. This is the one. It is played in six four time.

Again, I'm doing theater. That's just what I read. Yeah. I would believe any combination. 13, 12, 72, 6. Yes. But I believe that not just because in this moment, you and I don't know what we're talking about,

but also if you said they shifted eight times over the course of the song, I would believe that because it feels in character for them. That's so true. Okay, so this is what Lamo said about never meant. We decided before the album was even recorded that we were going to, to quit. I've really remember finishing the NeverMent take. I just thought, wow, we'll never play that song that well again. It's funny. Now I'm not even that crazy about that song. I don't dislike it, but it's not my favorite. There are others like stay home and honestly that I like

playing more in a live setting, but that recorded version of NeverMent feels pretty special. And Mike Kinsella said, I'm surprised it's sort of popular. No, I'm like it's a great little fucking pop song. But am I surprised the whole out of that? album is popular? Yes. What is, you said NeverMet was the first American football song you heard? For sure. What did you feel about it when you heard it? I've never heard anything like this. You know, I think a lot of that is the lead in the guitar specifically, right? The riff is famous for a reason. There's nothing else like it in the genre or anything that's come since has been basically an imitation of it in a lot of ways. And so it's just like reaching for something out of the gate,

track one. It's like, oh, this, this is, this. Maybe this is an album worth digging into in its entirety. Maybe this is more than just like a silly pop song out of the gate. And I think all of their music, but especially this song, it's just like activating all the parts of your brain. Yeah. And I think the best songs often do. But the simplest ones, you know, like a really great, really simple pop song

doesn't like stimulate something in the way that like weirdly enough math rock does, where you're just like listening to these weird rhythms and your brain's trying to put them all together. And at the same time, you're listening to these like achingly sincere lyrics. and it's just emotional and evocative and it's just like stacking over and over and over and looping over and over where it grabs you and never lets you go. I feel like there's something about this type of music

that American football makes this that is like binaural beats. Do you know what I mean? It does put you into like a weird trance, like a meditative state. It's hypnotic and you are sort of like against your will thrust into this like accessing emotions of the past, you know, at a hospital.

Completely. Which is a telephone ambulance. I think that they allow themselves to be that hypnotic is a talent in itself to get out of the way of thinking, especially if you're as technical as these guys clearly are, of like, oh, we need more of this or more of that or more of that. They are a band that, and maybe this is what I love about them, if you don't like American football, maybe what you hate about them. they know a good idea when they have it

and if it's a riff they're just going to play that shit on loop the whole song and if it's a line they might just repeat it for half the song. And it's like that lends itself to that sort of hypnosis but I think it gives a lot of their music a really unique feel as a result. I don't want to harp on this but I just can't

I'm continuously struck by the fact that like this album probably would never have happened in the incredible way it did had they not been a band that played live you can't fucking play these songs You can't tour and know that you're going to play all these songs live every night and write songs like this. No.

You wouldn't do it. You would never do that to yourself. Yes, or to the audience. Shit, telephone, Pilly's Hospital. Yeah, it never meant to bangor. Sorry about it. It's very good. Bangor is maybe the incorrect term.

Yeah. It is banging on my heart. Yes. On something inside of you. On my tender and raw heart. Yeah. The summer ends is the next song. Steve Lamos said,

Because I'm not a singer. I'm afraid to sing. I think this was sort of my attempt to contribute something melodically. The trumpet. Trumpet. I listen to almost nothing but jazz, especially to that point of my life.

But I love it so much. And I think it's bubbled up into whatever this is in ways that I hope are at least true to the spirit. You know, jazz is sort of like this amazing cultural expression in this country of love and joy

and African-American struggle and freedom and all these things. And here's me as a white kid from the suburbs. Just that music was so incredibly meaningful and important to me, and I think of nothing else, it's just sort of given me a frame of reference for trying to understand what music is about. That was nice.

I think that's very sweet. Yeah. They are very sensitive boys, you know? He did go ahead and put it into the whitest music genre of all time, which is the emo music, Midwestern emo music. Midwestern emo music is for white men. Can't argue it again. You're making very fair points.

It's available to everyone, but it is seemed to be embraced the most by sad white men. And with hooded sweatshirts who just constantly are breaking up with people, I guess. I guess so. Yeah, I've heard in terms of the reunion tours, like the audiences that these tours have been described as like, I mean, frankly, a bunch of guys who look like me basically doing the Charlie Brown dance. It's rough. It is just kind of what it is, you know? It's rough. You either lean into it or you don't.

This is the closest thing you guys have to, like, a support group, I guess. I think so. Yeah. Mike Insullis, if I remember, what we were trying to capture revoke back then was the ending of things. I think we were conscious. Like, we didn't want to be, like, a rock band. I think it's got a nice pace to it. I'm not sure at what point I put the vocals in.

I think it was kind of last minute. But the vocals are beautiful. I know. And the trumpet is beautiful. Like, this is another one where the trumpet, of course, is very melancholy, because these are very melancholy songs. Wistful ska, would you say? I would dare say it's wistful scah.

But it's, like, it's wistful and melancholy in a way that, like, feels like I'm being wrapped up by a warm blanket. something. You know, like there is a weird... Yeah, wrapped up over and over again, over my mouth, and my nose until I can't breathe anymore, and then I'm lulled away. Barry me so long as it's listening to this song as you do it. I'm going to be honest. Honestly, is my favorite song. It's a great song. I know that's kind of a basic opinion, because it is the most standard song. But it rips. It's a rockin song, babe, as Steve Holmes called it.

Do you remember your teenage feelings? every day, but they've never left, unfortunately. And that's why I'm the way I am. It is the way you are. It's also why, look, you resist it. You're holding it at arm's length, but you are a Midwest emo at heart. Well, in many ways, yes.

As I've sat on the podcast, in many ways, I'm a middle-aged white man at heart. So that makes a lot of sense that it would resonate with me. God, that's a really good line. Honestly, I can't remember teen dreams, all my teenage feelings and the meanings. It's really good.

The guitar on this one is also super fun, or guitar zh, because it's that weird, one is chasing the other kind of like just out of time feeling. It's awesome. It's so cool. Yeah, basically Steve Holmes said, Mike wrote the opening riff, and we're basically playing the same part.

So he's literally the same part. Yeah, he's playing like the melody, and we're both playing the same thing, but he's on the upbeat, and I'm on the downbeat. And I feel like it has a stutter start. It's almost like a mess up, But what people don't realize is that's on purpose because what you're hearing is the upbeat

and then we come in on the down. So it feels abrupt when the drums come in. But it's basically the two guitar parts chasing each other the whole time. That's awesome. That's so cool. There is a lot on this album that is like college kids who think they are quite clever.

A little wink. Yeah. Or like we talked about like, I'm trying to write a Robert Smith lyric. Or I am trying to make a My Bloody Valentine outro to this song. This is what they said about. this one. They were trying to make a My Bloody Valentine outro.

It feels like it. A big swirling thing. This song has synth on it, which is one of the few songs that has synced in that outro. And then we have for sure. Blow that horn, honey. Let's go. Whistful scoff. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're going like full shoegaze on this one. Because of the vocals. I think it's as shoegazy as his vocals ever gotten.

I mean, when the whispered imagine us together, goodbye. J-telephone. J-telephone ambulance. You are deceased. That's where I'm in the hospital. in Le Hospital. Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree with you.

It is the shoegesiest. This is one of the two songs that has bass on it. Mike plays it. Steve Holmes said this is the first song they wrote. Is that true? Yeah.

First song the band ever had. He said, I wrote it probably like in winter break right before we started the band. I've just gotten my first acoustic guitar. It kind of makes sense in a way. It's a little disconnected. Yeah, because like you're saying

it has that like really shoe gazeeasy thing that none of the other songs have. I don't want to say it's more simple No But a little bit Yeah Maybe a little bit Yeah

That is intricate maybe June seems too late A lot of summer happening Well they're in college This is the thing They orient themselves around summer It's so it's so obviously A album written by college students

You know Nobody else in adulthood Orients themselves around the summer anymore Unless you're a school teacher I guess That's true Maybe you do When does basketball start? I mean, it ends in the summer.

The NBA finals are in the summer. So in a way, it's true. You're free. Yes, until late summer, early fall. I mean, you're right. I, in many ways, am trapped in eternal adolescence, you know? Never have escaped it. I don't know why I didn't write any notes for, you know, I should be leaving soon.

It's a good song. It is a good song. I mean, it's fully instrumental, if I'm not mistaken. That's why, because I think that's part of it. No lyrics for me to quote. Interesting that it's fully instrumental, but that's the title. Because I put all of the meaning right there on the title. But the regrets are killing me.

Also has some great riffs. I mean, again, never meant is the very splashy one. Yeah. That if you know American football in any capacity you have heard. When they were like, we made a pop song. Yes. But a lot of these songs have riffs that other bands would be very jealous of. And I think But The Regrets Are Killing Me is one of them.

If you guys want to know, it's a song that Steve Holmes wrote in a tuning that he made up called C-sharp G-sharp. It's basically standard, but the D has dropped half a step and the G has raised half step. This was really challenging for me. This was like, I am reading Russian over and over and over again. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I would love, I would pay good money for a subscription to Yassi Salik doing explainer videos on music theory. Just you researching and riffing. That's all I want.

Maybe like, okay, so G is what's being played here, I think. Steve Holmes was actually going to sing this song. He wrote the lyrics. Really? But then when it got to the 11th hour, he was like, I can't do it. Too much guitar, too much singing. Don't want to do it. He just didn't want to sing.

So Mike is singing Steve Holmes' lyrics on this one. So I think this is one of the ones that he actually didn't write the lyrics to. Makes sense because the lyrics are a little bit different than the ones usually. That's a great shout. I hadn't put that together. Yeah. Well, you didn't read 400 articles. That was a mistake.

I don't know if it was. Okay, the next song is I'll see you when we're both not so emotional. This might be my favorite song. Interesting. I love this one. I do love honestly, never meant it's kind of, never meant it's kind of its own, like... Yeah, that can't be your favorite song. You can't.

Yeah, that's just qualified. Yeah. This is definitely neck and neck with me with, honestly. And it's no surprise to me that Steve Lamo said we used to call this one the Promise Ring song? Yes. This is why I like it. Let's fucking go.

David von Bullen. They wanted to write a normal song, is what he said. It is very normal. Maybe that in itself is a reason why it can't be my favorite song. Is it very normal? Or is it just very normal within the context of this album? It's all relative, yeah. It's not top 40 material yet.

I did see a quote from Mike Kinsella where it's like, we almost don't have choruses because I don't know how to write a fucking hit. Like, all these songs feel that way. Like, they don't have traditional structure. They don't have choruses. Even their attempt to be like, this is the poppiest thing we can do. I'm going to tell you what. This is what turns out.

This is what turns out. This is what it turns out. And that's fine. They don't. They don't need to. That's what the guitars are for. That's what the guitars are for. And even though Steve Lamos played drums poorly in his own estimation on here, I think it worked anyways.

I see nothing to hide. I literally can't hear it. But maybe that's because he hit it. Because he played so much bass over it. He just layered it up. What do you think they do live? He didn't say, do you think now that they're like reunited and touring, he made Nate Kinsella, the cousin, the cousin of Mike and Tim, to play the fancy bass

over his, or do you think he corrected his drumming? I think he corrected it. He seems like the kind of technical perfectionist who'd be like, I would never let that happen again. But then it won't sound the same as it does on the record if there's not the extra bass on it. It never would. We are decades into the future. You're so right, babe. None of these songs will ever sound the same at any given show probably.

That was lightning in a bottle. Yeah. Can't find that again. She's all right. Stay Home is Steve Holmes' favorite song. See, I'm tempted by that, too. Now you're here. Wow, you're a real fair weather favorite song guy. You're just listing songs.

Okay, I actually do have a favorite. I am just listing songs. That's what band's fan is. Well, I know, but I'm swayed by the listing. My actual favorite American football song, we haven't talked about. We're going to talk about later. This one, though. Your actual favorite song is not on LP1.

It's not. Incredible. I can't wait to talk about it, too. Stay Home, though, I think has an, argument as like their best most complete song on this album. It feels like the most fully actualized, most mature effort. And frankly, like, look, this is your show. I don't know what authority I have here. I would love to hear. What would you like to illustrate? The transition's like 20 to 25 seconds into this song where we go from one very charming guitar to all of a sudden

just pounding layers of instruments that are piling up as the song intensifies. And I feel even more sunken into my couch in the process. That's when you're like, Shatel telephone. That's your moment. That's your moment. That's your telephone police moment for you. Yeah, this song is incredible. There's no really getting around it. This is a phenomenal song.

Steve Holmes called it the quintessential American football song. I love that. Mike Kinsal's head is the one he's the most proud of. So I think you'd be in good company. Steve Lamo said, my kids will come down and be like, this song doesn't go anywhere. And he said, you're right, except that, you know, it's so deliberate and it takes its time.

And you have to be willing to be in the headspace and mindset to want to go on that trip. And I can understand how folks, maybe they don't want to, but man, that's a trip I've never gotten tired of. This could be extrapolated to all of this album, but yeah, like, you kind of have to, like, be willing to go for the ride. For sure. You're not just going to, like, toss on a song. No. You're not putting stay home on a playlist. I'm trying to think of what the most playlistable song on this album is.

Again, we'll put NeverMent aside. Honestly, I think would be good. I'll see you when we're both not so emotional. I think could also fit. But even honestly, it has like a four-minute instrumental outro, like we were saying. It's like that doesn't transition well into whatever else you got next. No. Maybe you could put an end of the playlist.

Love that. Yeah. No shuffle. St. Lane was also said, God, I don't remember a damn thing about how we wrote it or what it meant to record it. I'm a big fan of Miles Davis, and there's this track called, peaceful off of a record called in a silent way.

And it has that same sort of organic thing, like it's just watching life happen or something. And I feel like this was my chance to shoot for that feeling that I get from listening to that Miles record. But like, it's my band, you know? But I think my love of that song has erased any memory of how it came together. That was cool.

I appreciate that all of them are just kind of like, yeah, I sort of remember that, but really, to them it was just five days in a garage in college. Totally. And the way that any of us were like, Yeah, you can remember that one party you went to kind of sort of. Yeah. But that's about it.

Yeah. I remember one that I went to where we did like nine shots of like tequila before we left the house. Okay. How did that go? Okay. Well, I'll tell you. We walked over to the party, the house party. And I was with my cousin and I, she was peeing.

And I hopped up to sit on the sink. And the whole thing crumbled and shattered onto the ground. And then we laughed hysteria. hysterically and ran out of the party because we were like, oh my God, we broke their sink and bathroom. And then we like went off throughout the rest of our evening. And then when I woke up in the morning, I was like,

my butt hurts. And I looked and there was literally had cut through my jeans and I had a huge cut on my ass and I had no knowledge of it until the next morning. Dad, please put your, you should not listen to that part, Dad. You know what?

That's not even your fault. That's shoddy craftsmanship. That's what I'm saying. You know, all you did was Sit on the sink. Frankly, if I was a... Honestly? If I was a litigious person at 21 years old, that's right, I was 21. I could have sued. I think you could have and should have. Did I know whose home? It was? No.

But... Either whoever built the sink or have her owned the sink. Either way, not your problem. And RIP, those diesel jeans. I love them dearly. Big gash in the butt. Stay Home is the last song ostensibly. Kind of. Until there's the one with the World War II, which is just sort of like... an extension. Also, it's like a sick trumpet solo, basically. Not mad at it? Whistful Scott. Stop trying to make wistful scah happen.

This is my show, and I'm going to mint Wistful Skaw. If we have to have Twinkle Daddy as a thing, we can have wistful stuff. I gotta tell you, we don't have any power over that. It exists in the world and we cannot take it out. It upsets me. Sorry. Steve Holmes said the worldster was just because the studio had one, and I was like, this is cool. Yeah, why not? And I wrote that little part and that's it. And now this we have described an album that to some people is their entire identity. It is. It has shaped who they are. They will die for this band and album. Yep. But not right now. No. Not in 1999. No. No. Well, no one has heard it yet. No one has heard it yet.

Let's talk about what happens. I would love to hear an account of what happens. In the 14 years. Yeah. Subsequent. So, you know, the lads graduate, split, go off on their own ways. Mike Kinsella begins his solo project, Owen. Yeah. In which he performs everything.

It's a one-man show. And still does. And still does. You fuck with Owen. I like Owen. Yeah. Not as much as American football. Right.

It's a lot of great stuff. It's quite different. Quite different. Well, you can't really do what you're doing with American Ball when you're just the one guy. I mean, very clearly. Yeah. But also, you don't get where. American football is about to go without Mike Kinsella playing as Owen for all of these intervening years.

For sure. And honestly, there were a lot, I had not listened to Owen, I'll be honest. There were a lot of songs I really liked. It's really more in the vein of like, singer-songwriter. Yeah, like, it was given like Hirstpace Holiday, which I love. Like, even like Dashboard Confessional, it's really more in that vein. Definitely. Beautiful.

But it's so different than, I didn't listen to all 12 albums. or whatever I only have one brain and ears in life. I would say... But I jumped around them. I liked it. If you are going to venture into Owen and you're unfamiliar, I would say the avalanche is probably the place I would recommend to go. Oh, the 2020 album.

The 20th album. The 10th album. But I mean, look, you can start anywhere you like. I think that album's pretty great. Shocking to hear, very sad. Breakup album. You know, carries a lot to it. Sure.

Divorce album, I believe. Divorce album. I really liked no good for no one now. But I like that 2002, you know, a girl with bangs broke my heart core music. Who among us? Who among us? Steve Lamos and Steve Holmes also played in a band together after American football. They were called The Geese.

Not to be confused. Not to be confused with Cameron Winter at all Emily. Do they have a case? Do you think Cameron Winter has ever heard? American football? Probably. I would guess. I mean, Emily from Giss is an incredible guitar player. Honestly, it does sound like, as kind of tours go,

throw it on the tour bus and vibe out down the highway kind of music. Totally. That was short-lived. I believe it was sort of old country-ish. Steve Holmes then started working in the IT field because he has a computer science degree. Steve Lamos moved to Boulder, Colorado to be a professor at the University of Colorado. a scholarly chap.

A scholarly chap. Meanwhile, the American football record was percolating. It was. As Matt Lunsford said, it was a frog in boiling water. I don't know if that's the right usage of that phrase. Yeah. Because I don't think there's like a specific point of demarcation where the frog is cooked. No.

It's more just that it was slow burning all the time for years and years and years and years. Mike Kinsella said that he would play shows, and I don't know how early on this is, but he said people started coming and and asking him to play never meant. Yeah. So again, I don't know at what point in these 14 years that starts happening, but he was like, I think it might have been a little later because he did say, I didn't realize that American football was more popular than the thing I was doing for 15 years.

If I had to guess, it was a little bit difficult to triangulate, but just anecdotally and based on what you told me, I think it was blogs. I think blogs were huge. I think the internet is what unearthed this album. Even before that, I think it was like lime wire. Sure. Like, kind of file sharing music online.

Yeah. And then it feeds into blogs and forums. But to be, you had to be put on to something, right? So, like, I get, like, pre-internet. Yeah. How are you even going to get from clarity to American football? Like... You would have to have someone in your life who knew.

Exactly. Yeah. Like, short of, like, you know, scouring, like, what we did was magazines and stuff. But, like, American football's not really being named checked in magazines. Maybe, maybe Braide thanked them in a line or not. You know what I mean? And, like, maybe there was like, but that's very few paths in. But I think, to your point, like, earlier of the pure volume of it all, I think once people started having message boards, forums, the, you know, lovers of these bands throughout the country start being able to come together in a little chat room on AOL or whatever.

Yes. But it starts to pick up and swell. And I'm guessing that must have been what spread the word, the good word of American football LP1. Completely. If you know, if you're one of the people, please bang our line, but I did not, I wasn't able to really find that information. I don't think there's a clear answer. Yeah, I don't think there is either. I think some of it is like, so zenith types thing.

Not to be like overly romantic about that particular era of human life or like overly emotional, I suppose. But like, that like 2003 to 2005, as you're saying, felt so different on the internet in terms of when you do go from your existence where it's like, I like this kind of music and no one else in my school does or no one else in my town does or no one that I know, listening. to what I do in finding those pockets of community online. Like, that was a powerful drug in a way that an algorithm attempts to grab at and hit that same, like, dopamine center, but can't really imitate. It was such a pureer time. It reminds me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which was like, Amazon in 1998, hey, we sell books, but online.

It's like, Amazon in 2030, hello prime citizens. Please return to your prime homes for prime dinner time. We are alarmingly close. We are pretty close to prime dinner time. Yes. This is what's happening right now. But at least you'll be able to order the American Football LP with two-day shipping. I honestly was going to do it, but I didn't realize it in time, which is why we have charmingly and winkingly.

You know to see what we did here. Okay, so yes, percolation has happened. Online forums are buzzing. Royalties are weirdly streaming in. Y'all heard American Football LP one. Yeah. The checks are coming to the members of American Football. and increasing amounts, and they're like, what the, what the hey?

I'm sure Matt Lunsford is noticing, as he is the one consolidating the money. Of course. Now, Steve Holmes finds this live recording of one of their shows, one of the first ones, with the song The Sevens on it. And he was like, oh, when I found this, my big ambition was to send it to Mike and Matt from Polyvinyl and maybe get it on the website for a free download. Matt was blown away, and he wanted me to send him the whole show. So we took the 15 best tracks, which worked out because it was about to be the 15th anniversary of LP1.

So I started writing these liner notes for the reissue. They were supposed to be from all of us, but Steve and Mike read them and thought, okay, that's good enough. I sent them some old pictures I took from that era too. So this, like, they decide to re-release. Yeah, the reissue. Again, even at this time, I think they knew there was enough interest to release a reissue. And obviously, polyvinyl has a lot of love for this band in album. Clearly.

But I still don't think anyone was prepared for what happens when they do. How could you be? Yeah. So they do this, like, deluxe reissue. And Matt Lunsford said, so we put the reissue together. And when it finally went up on the polyvinyl site, our website crashed from all the traffic. Imploded. Too much.

Imploded like a sink at a frat house, you know? All of the men in American Apparel zip up hoodies across the land pushed their bings aside and we're like, I'm ordering this fucking bitch got to do it. Crash the website. Crash the website went up to number 68 on the Billboard 200.

Insane. American Football won. Insane. Fucking nuts. 15 years later. Now at this point the band still was not, had zero intention of reuniting.

They were still already like, that's weird. That's weird that people like the album. It did seem like polyvinyl or somebody with some management team or whatever would check in periodically and be like, do you guys have any interest? I read something and I didn't write it down, but I did read something that Mike Kinsella had a manager for Owen who behind his back offered American football up just to gauge interest and got like a pretty good offer and came back and was like, sorry I didn't ask you about this. Yes, would you do it? Would you do it?

And they were like, that offer? and so they book a couple shows. I think it was only like two. I think it was like Chicago and Webster Hall maybe. Yes. And they sell out like immediately. So this is where I'm entering the picture basically, is in the lead up to those shows. Welcome Rob Mahoney into the story.

Your zip up hoodie is on. I'm zipped. I'm zipped. Your bangs are swooped. I'm ready to not purchase the album on vinyl just yet, but I'm like, okay, what is everyone freaking out about? Like the level of specifically online explosion, if you always, are in those corners of the internet. The Brooklyn vegan comments are popping the fuck off, bitch,

okay? The volume cannot be measured. The magnitude cannot be comprehended. And this is one of those things where it's like a scene grasping moment when a band like this gets together, a band that you might have heard of, that you might have heard their album that you might have some vague attachment to. But if you weren't following along with every step of that weird frog boiling percolating journey, it feels like the planet has got, like, been struck by a comet. And I'm trying to figure out like, okay, so what have I missed here that everyone is this excited about a band? I kind of know, but don't really. Yeah.

And what did you do about that? I downloaded their music. Great. I'm not going to... You illegally downloaded. Just go ahead and say the Statue of Limitations is up. You logged on to Limewire. You gave your computer a virus,

and you got LP one. I think we're more in the torrenting era at this point. Yeah, sorry. I was absolutely not participating in this kind of behavior. Nor would I ever. Because I'm... No, I did... Let me tell you about fucking Napster bitch. You don't even know.

You don't even know that the year I entered college into the dorm, which had high-speed. Quote-unquote high-speed. The highest speed we had experienced. Sure. It wasn't like the squawk dial-up. It was the slowest thing you couldn't even imagine. But it coincided with the same year that Napster came out, which Napster was only really kind of functional for one year, if I'm correct. Maybe two.

Maybe two. So imagine my July. I'm in the dorm with my fucking... I know. PC. The world at your finger chips. My desktop PC, and I could just leave it on all day. Downloading song after song.

What a dream. A mere three hours per album. A mere three hours per song. Burning that bitch onto a CD. Crucial. Little mixed CDs. Disc men. Biking around town.

Those were the fucking days, babe. They genuinely were. You had to work for it. We're such a frictionless society now. We need more friction. Now Grandma Yasey has entered the chat. That's right. I'm mad and you can put it in the newspaper,

but I believe we need more friction to experience more joy. Things are too easy. You're not wrong, though. Hello Prime Citizens. Honestly, look, the friction is part of this story. Exactly. If LP2 would come out three years after LP1, American football is just a band.

They're just a band people like that probably would have receded from memory, but having that layover builds all of the underground reputation we talked about, builds the anticipation for this album. It transforms them into something else entirely. What if, like, this whole time, they've been doing an elaborate, like, con. Like, what if they're, like, absolute Spengalis? Like, the emo Spengalis. Wow.

And they're like, oh, my God. People rediscovered the bands, but what they were really doing was hiring Russian chatbots. Yeah. To infiltrate the Midwestern emo rooms on the Internet. Yep. And start bolstering an interest. And they knew that it would coincide. perfectly. I'm just saying 15 years, that's a little convenient. Why wasn't it 14 or 16?

Mike Kinsella, you dirty dog. I mean, you're the journalist. You should be getting to the bottom of that. Four-dimensional chess over here. See, if you told me Gerard Wade did that, I'd be like, I kind of believe it. You'd believe it. But these guys, I genuinely buy it. They're college educated. It's not that they're not smart enough to pull it off. It's do they give a shit enough to pull it off. Fair enough. Yeah. It seems like all of them, part of the magic of American footballs, they're like, yeah, this is cool, I guess, and we'll participate in it, and we'll do it, and we'll do these shows, and this seems fun, but like... I like my story better. I do like, I mean, yours is a lot more intrigued. I like my story where they were like, okay, 12 Owen albums, this is going to happen, Brooklyn

Vegan. Anyways, regardless of what the real story is, what does happen is the live dates in Champaign and New York sell out. Yeah. And then they start adding more to Webster Hall. They do. And they keep selling out, too. and they're like, okay, what in the what?

They do add Nate Kinsella, a aforementioned cousin. Basically, Mike demanded it. Well, I mean, how are they going to play live? He can't play bass and guitar. Yeah. I know there's only two songs, but so. Yes. You need a basis for the sound.

Yeah. Because you can't do the four looping guitar tracks in a live performance. Yeah. Musically talented family. It must be generic. Clearly. Steve Lamos said, when we started putting this reissue together,

and we're crashing the polyvinyl website, we just thought, what does that mean? Up until that point, we had been strictly opposed to reuniting. That was the first time we thought, okay, this could be bigger than we thought. A sold-out Webster Hall show happened, and after that it was mind-boggling.

Then another show sold out in 30 seconds. We thought, okay, this is definitely bigger than we thought it was. In 2014, though, before these shows, Mike was like, yeah, we're just going to do these shows, but we're not going to tour. Like, this is not. We can't do that. This is normal lives.

Like, you know, people have kids. kids. Like, wait, we're not touring. Spoiler. But again, maybe he was once again as part of his nefarious master plan working to drum up further demand. The long con continues. Exactly. They did tour, I'm just a spoiler. U.S., Canada, Spain, the UK, Japan, and Australia. Mike Kintella has a theory about why this happened. Okay. Might it be a red herring? We don't know. To distract us away from his master plan?

unclear. But he said, I have a theory. My theory is that the album speaks to younger people. I think for teenagers or those in transition years, that's the target for that album. I had a lot of friends

in bands at that time, and they're much more confused about how this is going than we are. They're like, you guys opened for us and you sucked. I think what happened

was initially some people heard the record and liked it. In the past 10 years, those people grew up and now they write for blogs. Now they have these influential positions.

And I think when these people hear it now at 30, they don't connect with it as much, but it has some importance. Personally, I think that record sucks compared to the Sundays. It's incomparable, but now people accept

it was an important record. I'm telling you right now, though, it was not an important record, at least initially. We liked it, but no one else really cared. Like, OK Computer came out and people were like, holy fuck, this changes music.

Immediately. The record was not like that, nor is it anywhere as good as OK Computer. Our record came out and no one gave a fuck, but the few kids that did are influential. From there, it has sustained its momentum, is cool. I think that's an interesting angle.

Sure. Like, the idea that eight people cared about this, and they all went on to work at pitchfork. They're all tastemakers somehow. They all are online bloggers or whatever. I mean, we should say this is an extremely pitchfork kind of band. Totally. And so there's like a

grasp at like a cool that is just sort of out of reach, I think, is accentuated by the fact that the band was dead. Honestly, the factors... You make a great point. It is so fucking prime. You don't know about this. You weren't their core. Yeah.

And so, of course they're going to, I mean, I don't think it's undeserved. This album is incredible. No, no, no. So it works on every level. But like, you need both. You need both. You need that like, oh, you know about this fucking gym? Of course you don't bet you weren't in fucking Champaign-Urbana in 1998 at the one show with 12 people.

I was. And now I write for pitchfork. And within that time, like, there's so little material about this band. There aren't live shows. There aren't like bootlegs passing around. There just is this one album. I think this is a huge part of the reason the house became the house too because it's like there's just no photos of these guys.

They had one thing, I know. There was a funny thing with Mike and sell saying. Once they started redoing merch around the reunion, he was like, this fucking house had to be on everything? And they were like, people like the house. They're now on like Vans' shoes, you know? So insane. Wow.

Shout out Vans. Mike also said, this is a noisy in 2016. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said I thought Cap and Jazz was bigger or more culty. I really had no idea. My thing is I have a thousand Owen songs. So it's weird to think those 12 songs define me just because more people have heard of them.

It's hard to quantify. I think now with the tour and the reissue, at least sales-wise, it's my biggest record. I think my Owen records are better than the American football record, though. The American football record has so many flaws. I can pick 12 Owen songs that are great compared to the American football output. I'm a much more thoughtful songwriter now.

For me, it's another spot in the discography, but more of a bookend. It is really interesting, psychologically, to think about you've dedicated your life at this point. I'm guessing, and I don't have the discovery from me, but at this point, again, he's probably made like seven or eight Owen albums by 2014, right?

Seven, six. It's not even just Owen albums, too. Oh, yeah, owls. There's all these other projects. And he played in Joan of Arc for a little bit, like there, there, there. He's been part of so many projects. If you want to zoom out, like 30 years of a musical career,

I have like 39 full-length releases that he's been a part of in some way to varying degrees. And it's like, all of that is growth, right? All of that is, and you can see it by the time this second LP comes around. Like, he's a dramatically different

musician and songwriter and vocalist especially. But everyone's like, we like that other thing you did in the beginning. I think that's kind of in a scapeval, right? I know. But that's what they last on to. And I think it speaks to his greater point about the targeted age of that first album, too,

where if you are in a certain bracket, you were going to imprint on American Football LP1. And nothing else they do is ever going to quite measure up to that feeling because it was like, what did it feel like to be 17 and have this album put in your hands? Well, it's also like it's a shooting star like in a way where it's like, it's a very unique combination of a thing we talk about on this show a lot, which is that you could never bottle or capture youth as an ingredient for what makes music great. Yes.

You don't know about the world. You feel things more deep. You don't have perspective. That all lends itself to incredible emotional music making. But then also with American football, you have this unique layer of musicianship, which usually young people don't have, right? They're still sort of learning and growing, but they were just such incredible musicians. So it, like, kind of intersects to make this, like, phenomenal thing that you can never replicate.

Well, especially if they had been five years older, maybe they buy a microphone. And then the vocals are different because there's a self-consciousness about hearing them in practice. It's like the butterfly effects of all of the weird happy accidents that led to the first American football. Youth is an inescapable part of it. Their circumstances, the fact that at least two of these guys are living together just like constantly ideating in the way that during college you can just be like idly working on an idea all day every day. Right. Like you don't get to do that once you have your normal nine to five. You go to work. Yeah.

Gotta make a living. Yeah. Got to be a professor. It's incredible, incredible intersection of like, nine. naivete and skill. Yes. So, yeah, they're like, cool. We'll play some shows.

People like this album. That's great. It's helping putting tile in our bathroom. I believe Mike Kinsella said. Helpful. And then they didn't decide to make another album, which I, of course you are. Yeah.

Right? 2016. It seemed like part of it was just their want to play more than the first album. The 12 songs. If we're going to play shows, we need something to play that's not just this. Right.

American Football LP 2, 2016. So you were fully up on this. Fully up on this. Ready on launch day. Eager and excited and waiting for it. And I mean, it's so hard to capture how it landed because you're right. There is the inescapable. This is not the thing that I thought it was going to be, that I wanted it to be.

And you could get a sense of that as they were teasing the album. Did I say that? I didn't say that. Well, you were saying that like the feeling of this was not like the exact sound, the warbling vocals, right? For example. And it's like, I think for a lot of people, people, that's always going to be the way you receive an album like this. And so the response was positive, but I would say like a little muted, a little like, what, is this what I want?

Well, I imagine if you've put so much stock into that first album and you're obsessed within it and it hung the moon. And then these people are 18 years older. Yes. And they sound different. It would be weird if they didn't. It would be weird if they didn't. Mike Kinsella said to Rolling Stone, people seem to like it and that's cool. But like the minute you, you try to make something new, people get mad that we're going to tarnish however they felt about our first record, which is weird. The first record was like a high school diary. People also critique how my voices changed. I mean, yeah, I got older. His voice has changed, though, pretty dramatically. But he's changed how he sings, right? It's not just like it's gotten gruffer. He's frankly gotten a lot

better. Yeah. A better performer, a different vocal style. It's so much more melodic than it is on LP one. They asked him in GQ that year, was there a conscious effort to connect the two personalities of those two albums? And he was like, yeah, I was aware of it. I would sift through notes on my phone

and think, oh, this could be American football. This is sincere. There's some Owen stuff that can get sloppier, a little crude, that doesn't sound like American football. I would sort of edit it towards American football, but I didn't write to it.

Then he talks about reading the comments. Don't do that. And the guy was like, don't do that. He said, I know, but the ones that bummed me out where people, when people held the first record so high, that they were like, why even bother? Because it's like, we're just guys, and we like doing it.

We're not trying to conquer the world. If you don't like it, that's cool. But it's weird to hate a thing just because it's been 17 years. Yes. Give it a chance. I don't know. Don't be a hater. He's right to feel that.

Obviously, as an artist, he's right to feel that way. This is something that musicians of all kinds, actors of all kinds, directors of all kinds, writers of all kinds deal with if you have a huge success. This is a record, though. if you get out of its way and let it do its thing and put your expectations at the door. If you try to hear it as its own thing.

If you meet this album where it is, it is fucking beautiful. I think it's really great. And it's grown on me immensely over time. Yeah. I liked it. It's definitely my third favorite. I think that's fair.

And it's not one that I throw on. But I liked it. I could see it felt a little to me, and I'm not a hater. I am one of the biggest proponent. of bands should continue to make music till the fucking bitter end. Sure. Even if people don't want it anymore or don't like it or it sounds different or whatever, you know?

And I'm not saying that's what's happening here. But it does sound to me, given like the arc, like, if we didn't have the third album, I wouldn't be able to say this. But it feels like this is like shaky, kind of like cultish, like getting our legs again as a band. It's been 18, you know? It's like, who are we even? We've been touring, but like we're not. the same guys.

We don't have an identity anymore as a band. And I think it's good, but then when you hear the third one, you're like, oh shit. Like, they fully coalesced back into like a real band that has a real sound and identity

that is both different from the first album, but more solid and defined than the second album. That's my opinion. I think it's totally fair. And you can see it in the process of making this, that when they get back to those reunion shows,

they have to re-learn how to play those songs. And then they basically have to rewrite the re-learning so that they can actually play them live. And then they have to learn how to be a band again. And now they're dealing with the massive expectations that come with an album like this. So this is not a normal creative environment. No.

Which I think is part of why. And I find this criticism to be fair, but I'm going to maybe put a spin on it. Like, it does feel like an Owen album with different instrumentation. Sure. I mean, again, we've at this point made like eight... Tons.

Seven or eight Owen albums. or really in Owen mode. Absolutely. That is defining creative mode for a long time. And it turns out to me an Owen album with different instrumentations, pretty rad. Pretty rad. Yeah, yeah. I really like this album. Totally.

What tracks jump out to you? If you feel like people want to like really, maybe they're not ready to put on the one album or they just want to get like a real sense of. Well, how sad do they want to be, I think is the question? Give me the gun. Do you think is how sad do you want to be? Is that? Sometimes give me the gun, like, isn't even the saddest.

I think, like, I Need a Drink is a great American football song. Look, this is a band that talks about, thinks about, sings about, writes about alcoholism a lot. It's in the DNA of this band and the people who are participating. Yes, because he only Mike Kinsella is responsible for the lyrics. Right. And it is such, like, a pained and hopeless song. And part of what I love about American football is, like, there's no, like, we're going to do the sad song, but at the very end, there's going to be like the little silver lining that's going to, you know,

here's the PSA or here's the upturn. of hope. It's just like a twist of the knife at the end of their saddest songs. And I think I need a drink is again like an achingly beautiful composition. An incredible piece of music and just really bums me the fuck out every single time.

It's also incredibly direct in its lyricism and vulnerable. Yeah. Again, which is a departure from LP1, right? Which is a little more opaque. Definitely. And vague but beautiful and easy to connect with. You know, but there is something, I mean, there's still really incredible. He's such an incredible lyricist.

Yeah. This I love about American football. But I like that on this album, there's so many more examples of, like, a different kind of vulnerability. Yeah. I mean, I think that comes with, you're not writing about teenage feelings anymore. Comes with not being 21. Not being 21. This is a more adult album in the way it's constructed, but also in what it deals with, right?

We're talking about substance abuse. We're talking about dissociation, marriage, like, self-loyal. in a different kind of way. Totally. It just feels like a more adult album. Yeah. Listen, don't mistake me. I think it's a good album.

It's just in the arc of American football. I just find it interesting, especially if you're very, if you're into American football, it is cool to look at it through the maturing of a band that, like, made one incredible shooting Star Perfect record,

dissolved for 18 years, tried to come back together, and then solid. It's just such an interesting, an unusual path and trajectory for a band. It's a miracle to me that this album, under those circumstances, could even be this good. They're set up to fail in every conceivable way. And, yeah, I think definitively, if you ask almost any fan of American football, they're canonical rankings.

It will be at the bottom of almost everyone's list. But you catch me on the right day and I'll make the argument that maybe it should be at the top, or maybe it should at least be number two. It's still better than a lot of what else is out there. I mean, there's no doubt. Might not be as good as. their best, but doesn't mean that it's not better than a lot of the other sloth that's living out in the world.

Unquestionably so. I also want to say the lyric, everyone knows the best way to describe the ocean to a blind man is to push him in. Any allegation that you're not an emo band just went out the door. Beautiful lyric. Also could be a panic at the disco song title. So we're in the zone. I feel like you're tormenting me.

Am I? Yeah, because, again, why are you invoking panic, exclamation point at the disco here? Specifically, exclamation point. This is pre-dropping the exclamation point. We've already yellow card violinist to me, and now you're like... I'm trying to bring you my culture, you know? This is a meeting of the minds. I was an editor at buzznet.com.

I'm extremely aware of this culture against my will. Seen music. Yes, incredibly seen. What a time to be alive. Speaking of y'all weren't there. And you know what? Thank you, fucking lucky stars. Shout out to also, I've been so lost for so long.

I do love that track as well. I mean, it's, listen, it's a good album. Yeah. The lyric about your, like, wet paper. Yes. Okay. And then lots of touring, 2019.

Mm-hmm. Third full length. LP3. It almost feels like the myth-making of American football did not stop. Yeah. would you agree

in some ways against all odds and logic right it should have by now like you would think that like okay

the reunion happened we played all those shows we put out an album would have like kind of been like okay great we got what we wanted you know

but it seems to have just grown and grown around the first album still like just just snowballing over the years because then you get

to LP3 and you have these like incredible cameos oh my God people still talking about American football daily you know this album is really good

I think it might be their best album like front to back I think it might be like I'm not trying to make the contrarian take I understand the first one that was such a rob-ma honey I don't even like the sound of that whatever that implication is I don't like it that's such a twinkle daddy take of you

I just think for one everything you said about the first album is what it is the product of kids at the right place at the right time. The second album is a band in flux, trying to figure out if they can even be a band again. And this one is like a perfect synthesis to me of a lot of the best parts of one and two.

And it takes them to places that, say like, if you love LP1 version of American football, that band could not put Haley Williams in a featuring vocal. That kind of vocal with frankly, like one of the most impeccable voices in emo history, All time. I will go ahead and remove emo. Oh, just history, period.

One of the greatest singers of all time. Yes. If you've never delighted yourself to the YouTube clip of her in the booth singing an isolated vocal of, I think it's I'm into you, the Paramour song I'm Into You, it's like... I just didn't know someone could do this. She's phenomenal. She's so great.

She's so great on that song. And it's like, you can't get there without all of the expansive growth in the songwriting and the composition that you see all over this album. Like this just feels like a vision realized. And LP1 feels like something awesome, lightning in a bottle, a happy accident. Like something that could never be... Something that birth fully formed from the ocean. Completely.

Like primordial. Yeah. Versus this is like if you turn over any corner of LP3, it's like that feels like a deliberate choice and I trust the thought process that went there. Totally. Yeah. And also like I think something that really jumps out for me on LP3 is it almost seems like an LP2.

was like a real concerted effort to not revisit any of the sounds of LP1, which makes total sense. We're like, get the fucking house. Although we didn't say, isn't the artwork of LP2? It is the inside of the house. The interior of the house. But like spiritually, get that house out of my face. You know, like, I don't, we don't aren't doing this anymore. But here, it's like almost like the Twain have met where like we can be this completely kind of new band.

But we're not afraid to revisit the best parts of what made LP1 good. Like, a great example is how silhouette starts. I'm warming up to twinkle daddies. All that twinkling, babe. That glock and schmiel? Yeah, glock and schmiel. And that is such, to me, a direct through line back to L.P.1. You know, it's setting that same kind of tone and feel.

It's indulgent in the way that, like, a 20-year-old can be indulgent when they're writing a song. It's a great song. And then, every wave to ever rise. I'm very impressed by the choice of the collaborators. and I think it's no accident. They're all women. No. Because it's about time.

We brought some feminine energy to this space. Do you think we fixed it? Did we solve the problem? Yeah. That's right. It's over. Thank God. We don't have to litigate this anymore.

No, I just feel like this music benefits so much from having a female voice in it. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like it adds this sort of like layer to it that I didn't even know that I wanted there. For sure. The song with Haley Lume is called Uncomfortably Numb, Sort of a hat tip to Pink Floyd.

Of course. Real sad and vulnerable lyrics there as well. If we're going to put up a champion in the bracket of American football songs, I was like, who would we want meeting never meant at the end of the bracket? This would be my pick. So ring repelled. I want people to consider the possibility. Is this your favorite song that you were alluding to earlier?

This is my favorite song. Are you a huge paramour head? I'm a decent-sized peremort head. A reasonably involved peremort. But here, honestly, even if I had no association, I am a sucker for a duet in conversation, for sure. Love it. When done well.

Yes. And this is hitting all the right notes. Like, I think, to me, it's like the biggest holy shit moment on one of their albums since Never Met, right? That riff comes in, you're like, oh, this is like grabbing me in a way that I can't deny. This song comes on, and it's more of like a lyrical chokehold for me, honestly. Like, the music is lovely. Like, again, the vocal stylings are so nice out of the gate. but there's just something like I feel in my bones about,

like there's this line about like the lessons are so much less obvious the further you get from home. That's like that is a on the nose, as you said, very straightforward sentiment, and yet it is a god tear lyric to me. It's like hitting at something so precise and so identifiable. And I think speaks to a lot of the album more broadly,

which is like we are just getting into these adult concerns, right? We are moving from like, I mean, it's still, and I hate my dad album in some ways, but it's also a dad rock album. All albums by men are I hate my dad all. Only men? Yeah, I feel like women. I mean, I'm not saying women don't hate their dads, but it's a very, yeah,

it's a particular way. Yeah, it's just kind of specifically music is. Yes. But it's like, what if the predominant, like, if you thought divorce was sad, breakups were sad, even hating your dad was sad, I think what LP3 confronts you with is what about fucking up your kids for life? Right. May I introduce you to the idea.

of being a terrible father? Yeah. What about the pain of things you can never take back? You know, like, this album really, really works for me. And maybe I'm just like the right age and it's when it hit me.

Would you say it's dad rock on every level? I think it kind of is. And certainly, the fan base has aged into the point where, like, American football fans are of dad. Totally. I do feel the last line of uncomfortably numb is about me listening to help you one.

I'll make new friends in the ambulance. That's the twist of the knife I'm talking about, though. Like, what a line. Police. I also really love the song with Rachel Gosswell from Slow Dive. And that's just like, let's put a neon sign at the influences on this one. Totally, yeah. Oh, Slow Dive, you ever heard of them?

Yeah, well, we got Rachel Gosswell on the album. I mean, Araparent is really good. I love Air Parenthood. Yeah, it's a really beautiful album about, as a counterpoint to LPN, this is about being an adult. As much as LP1 is about being a teen, young person, this one is really about being an adult and reckoning with. what that means. What does it mean to be a full-ass-grown person?

And I think it drums up interest in the band. And we should say, supposedly, polyvinyl has said LP4 is coming this year, 2026. There's supposedly one on the books. There's no date attached. Again, who knows with this stuff? Right. That's where we currently sit. The anticipation coming out of the layover after LP1 was like, oh, I get more of this thing I like. I think the anticipation coming out of LP3 is like, I don't know what they could do anymore. Like, this feels like it opens up so much any possibilities. Do you think they'll make like a jag and like

sonically going kind of a slightly different direction? Like a Wistful Skada direction or which one? I'm just saying. But this already is a different direction. No, I don't know. That's my point. It's like if we're kind of furthering our way down the road, this feels like the kind of album that all of a sudden there are so many forks and there's so many different directions you could take

versus if you're just trying to make more LP1 that's cool and I would have liked that in its way, but I'm kind of more entertained and eager by this. I agree. And I think just from reading interviews with them. Like, it occurs to me that musicians like this could never be satisfied remaking the same album over and over again.

Like, they're talented and creative and like it's not, and now I'm saying, not, you know what I mean? Like, there's a musicianship that is not going to be satisfied by like redoing reruns of a thing you've already done. Well, we should talk about, before we wrap out, the fade into you cover. Sure. Which is pretty fucking good. Love it.

Assy star with Mia Follick. And that came out in 2021. Then there's an entire album of American Football Covers. How did you feel about this album? You know, I didn't know it existed. Yeah. And I tried to listen to it. And I think it has some real bright spots.

It does. It also, like many a cover album has many, like, I don't know what was going on there. Some real question marks. Yeah. But I like the blonde chel. It's really good. Really good. It's really good.

The summer ends. Everyone knows I'm a blonde shell stand. I actually really like Ethel Canes for sure. I do too. I think it's super, I mean, if she somehow made it more to the telephone hospital than the original, which is absolutely insane. Well, that one's like Ethel Cane as slow dive. Yeah. It's like she's like tripled the runtime.

Yeah. That's a nice like cover as redefinition kind of exercise. And I like Manchester Orchestra. I do too. I always love Manchester Orchestra. Yeah, great band. And then they put out a live album in 2025 from the El Ray. were you at that show?

I was not. I wish. Seems like Ethel Cain joined them for sure. What the fuck? Man, you missed it. Really missed opportunity. And that, for now, is the end of the incredible American football story. Yeah. They went from college kids making sad music to dad's making sad music.

With a 14-year break. That's true. Minding their own business. Until the internet came calling and said, we'd love you to reform. And they were like, oh. This was really wonderful, Rob Mahoney. I know, I'm sorry, I promised you earlier that it would be a shorter one. And as usual, I lied.

I would have been disappointed if it were. Thanks so much for coming on. You guys, check out Rob Mahoney on the Prestige TV podcast. Several ones about basketball. Yes, the Ringer NBA show. I mean, honestly just around. Around town. I work here.

I'm on some shows. You know, come find me. And come back next week for a new episode of Bansplaine. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bansplaine. Our guest today was Rob Mahoney. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Corbett and Sarah Reddy. Executive producers for Banspland are Gina Delvac and me, Yossi Selleck.

Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino, and Jennifer Claven and graciously recorded by Carlos Dillegarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan,

aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessey and the television program The Pit. Noah Wiley come on Bansplain. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Banspland on Spotify

or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts. Why did I put so many so many notes? Sorry, Rob. It's okay. Bear with me here. You're good.