This unexpected sudden rise to fame put the band under so much pressure that it was not until 2016 that they would put another project out as a group. Yet, their latest album, American Football (LP4), is – in my opinion – their most accomplished work in their 30-year-long run. Indeed, moving in currents like the sea, the 49 minutes of the record feel like a long drive in the backseat of a car headed to nowhere: melancholic, drifting into the ether.
Confusing at first hearing – as American Football albums tend to be – with non-linear songwriting, overlapping themes, and genres sticking to you well after the last note, inviting you to revisit it as many times as it takes to land. And land it inevitably does, with its masterful blend of Midwest emo, post-rock, jazzy instrumentals, ambient sounds – of the sea and kids playing – and haunting vocals that deliver even more heart-wrenching lyrics courtesy of Mike Kinsella.
Exploring his grief and exposing his mistakes with no nice
varnish, the band’s leader goes through the motions once more in this
new episode, touching on addiction, suicidal ideation, his divorce,
regrets, self-sabotage, drenched in metaphors of mythology (“Desdemona”,
“the Goddess Nyx” in “No Feeling”), and religion. Hope is barely
discernible through the fog, but the instrumentals and the production – textured and detailed – are the true standout of the record. It is what
guides the listener through the lethargy of the words; whether it
decides to heighten anguish through the frenetic drums and guitar in
“Patron Saint of Pale”, or create yearning for a better place with a
beautiful piano solo (“The One With The Piano”) and a choir (“No Soul to
Save”); it plays an eerie part.
Although we could count LP4 as part of the musical
repertoire for divorced middle-aged fathers, what with its
all-too-little-too-late admission of guilt and typically masculine
buried emotions (“No feelings/No pain” repeats the singer in “No
Feeling”), the album offers a plethora of magical musical moments and
never shies away from ugly truths (“Ask my ex-wife/She met Dr.Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde” in the titular “Bad Moons”). Limited in other times by the
“Midwest emo” label quickly stuck onto them, the four-men formation has
proven, definitively this time, that their sound is thoroughly unique,
as infinite and ever-shifting as the sea.
