American Football - American Football (LP2)

‘We’ve been here before,’ Mike Kinsella sings on Where Are We Now, the first track on American Football’s long-awaited second album – and it sounds as though they never left. After a seventeen year absence the influential emo band are finally back, the legacy of their 1999 self-titled LP only having grown in the interim. Thankfully American Football’s second LP is no nostalgic victory lap, rather a sign that they’re firmly back in the game.

Wisely Kinsella chooses not to revisit the teenage feelings he once wrote about, but the band's inherent synergy hasn't aged a jot. Kinsella and Steve Holmes’ empathetic guitar lines, Steve Lomas’ jazz percussion, and, of course, the trumpet are all as immersive and emotionally pulling as ever. With most songs named after their first lines, it’s clear that American Football are striking for immediacy and they succeed; Home Is Where The Haunt Is and Give Me The Gun’s xylophone notes twinkle like suburban stars, while the staggering I Need A Drink (Or Two, Or Three) makes break-up induced alcoholism sound positively irresistible.

Their control is immaculate, their romanticism timeless. ‘If killing time was a crime…’, Kinsella sighs in the loved-up closer Everyone Is Dressed Up. Like its predecessor, this is a record you’ll want to spend endless nights with. 

Listen to: Home Is Where The Haunt Is, I Need A Drink (Or Two, Or Three)