American Football (LP2) - REVIEW

From the observations I have made in recent time, I have come to the conclusion that most long-awaited albums that are highly-anticipated, especially coming from artists that have made a significant and often surprising mark on music history, tend to be new material that is just very disappointing. Where exactly does this phenomenon arise from? I’m almost certain that a lot of it has to do with the fact that people are very susceptible to comparing one work of art with another if they both come from the same artist. This comparison can be seen as fallacious as I always like to believe that an album deserves to be examined and judge based on its merits and by it existing in some sort of hypothetical vacuum. But I’m being a little naïve here if I honestly expect to judge the new American Football album in a vacuum and not in the context that it actually exists in. It is for this reason that I have to declare that the new album from American Football is a staggering disappointment, as I was afraid of it being so.

American Football, an emo rock band that was originally active for a brief moment in the late ‘90s, can best be described as a one-hit wonder. Instead being famous for one particular song, American Football became relatively famous throughout the years because of one particular album, their self-titled debut. For 17 years straight, it was their one and only album they ever released as the band quickly broke up a few days after the album was finished. This was because the members would no longer be living in the same city and they had other career aspirations. The band is a simple trio, with two of the members being childhood friends, and the singer/guitarist being someone they met in college. The band they started was only ever meant to be a side project and even they became surprised at the cult-like status that their debut holds among young people.

Their self-titled debut is held as one of the best emo rock albums ever made by quite a few publications and when the smallest of news of a possible follow up began to surface on the internet during the summer, it seemed like everyone was preparing for another instant classic. While some certainly believe that that is the case, I do not find this album to be anywhere near the level of earning the title of “classic”. The new American Football album, which of course, just had to be self-titled like its infamous predecessor, completely fails at trying to match the level of originality and emotion that the first album had.

Even from the first few moments of the opening track, the new American Football album holds almost no substantial ground as lead vocalist and guitarist Mike Kinsella sounds like an empty shell of a man. When he sung on the debut album as a young man in college, back in 1999, he sounded just like the typical angsty teenager that is very common in many emo rock bands, which further materialized the notion that the music being heard is meant for young people and the particular problems they face growing up. I have no way to fully tell whether or not Kinsella’s vocals on this new album is completely intentional with a “I’m grown up now and face different problems but I’m still very emotional” feel to them or if his vocals are simply not captivating like they used to be when he was 17 years younger.

The instrumentation itself, while still relatively true to what fans had experienced with the debut album, is also quite disappointing. The entire time while I listened to it, I rarely found any spectacular moments of instrumentation that’s worth noting. At some moments, I felt like I was listening to mid-2000s Lifehouse; other moments reminded me of the soft bits of the awful sub-genre known as post-grunge, which bands like Nickelback, Creed, and Stained are usually categorized under. Most of all, the instrumentation was just so incredibly boring that it brought no emotional response out of me; I was constantly waiting for something special to come, but it never happened.

And that’s the biggest problem about American Football’s second album: It feels incredibly forced. While I can think of numerous moments from their debut that easily trigger nostalgic feelings of highschool memories and teenage relationships for me, I just wasn’t getting those feelings at all with this new album. More or less, this album is pathetic for everything it was trying to do. And while I do give major props to the band for pulling this exceedingly bold move and releasing an album 17 years after their last and acclaimed album, I don’t believe that excuses them criticism for coming out with this disenchanting experience.

I don’t know who’s truly to blame for these types of albums. Is it the incessant hype culture that exists in our rapid and highly technological world? Probably. But I firmly believe that artists need to know that their golden age is over, or that their 15 minutes is up. This phenomena of hype and disappointment isn’t anything new as I can think of numerous of contemporary examples: Guns n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, Pink Floyd’s The Endless River, Dr. Dre’s Compton and so forth. I just think that we as a culture need to let things be released as they come and stop acting like an artists’ new album is going to be on an OK Computer type level.

Overall: 5.4 out of 10