There’s no song on LP4 that doesn’t startle with its emotional openness. In the decade-plus since American Football’s reunion, Mike Kinsella has reserved some harrowing lyrical specificity for his other project Owen, aware that it’s much less subject to scrutiny. Reeling from a divorce he’s already addressed on the last couple of Owen records, however, he leans into the vulnerability on the band’s first album in seven years, pointing fingers while claiming responsibility for the mess he’s created. “I can’t bathe in your malaise anymore/ I’d rather be profane than chaste and bored,” he sings deep into the storm of the record, which is dramatic and ambitious, yes, but will probably prove less divisive than some of us early listeners assumed. It’s exploratory, unmoored, and self-aware, though never to the point of rupturing the mythos of American Football, which has always been about surrendering to the feeling.
1. Man Overboard
The first minute of the album is spent watching a tidal wave swelling upward, Nate Kinsella’s scene-setting vocal drone stirring a knotty, portentous drum beat from the first person to leave the band during the making of LP4. When Mike Kinsella’s instantly recognizable voice sings “If I ever set sail/ Promise you won’t wait for me,” it’s as if the brooding one heard seconds earlier was a false memory, the last sentence in a journal entry before the spoken confession. The way he pronounces the word “eschewed” is unbearably tender. But the first truly quotable line is this: “God never taught me how to swim,” the haunting drone prepares him for the punchline, “Just how to sink.” The expected release of twinkly guitars is too brief to offer catharsis; instead, it’s subsumed by Cory Bracken’s vibraphone, which earns a moment in the spotlight before Steve Lamos swarms back in, sounding far more distant this time. Atop a voluminous outro, an electric guitar seems to travel great lengths to trace notes across a familiar scale: a solo straining to detach itself from the epic whole.
2. No Feeling [feat. Brendan Yates]
A slow dance with the goddess of the night, a wispy single embracing bottomless anhedonia – of course this is a promotional single standing out from the rest, almost comforting by American Football’s standards. Mike Kinsella apparently had plans to incorporate the voice of Turnstile’s Brendan Yates as part of a gang vocal, but staying in the bleary range of Never Enough’s similarly oceanic atmosphere feels natural. Yet fans are still likely to scream along to it, not least the line that appears in parentheses on the lyric sheet: “I honestly never planned on getting old…” It happens to the worst of us.
3. Blood on My Blood [feat. Caithlin De Marrais]
It’s time for Nate Kinsella’s bass to groove over floating electronics, taking slight precedence over Lamos’ drums. But it doesn’t take long for the guitars to stumble upon a beatific melody, carving such lovely interplay with the vibraphone they almost undercut the line “I fucked with lonely” – a sinewy arrangement sounding more like a full-fledged organism. Rather than an extension of Kinsella’s regret, Caithlin De Marrais of Rainer Maria comes in sounding more like another character in the story, the she in, “I believed she could save me but my passions betrayed me again.” Boldly, Kinsella spills the words “murder” and “blood” all over the mystery that has attracted fans to American Football.
4. Bad Moons
The album’s lead single confirmed that Kinsella isn’t mincing words; even at its most depressive American Football has been a relatably modest band, but ‘Bad Moons’ finds the singer unafraid to tip over the line of respectability. Phrases like “wilted wife” and “new kinks” stand out, adding a sting to the spectre of divorce that hangs over LP4. The devil’s in the details, he reminds us earlier, and, refusing to spare them, sacrifices everything to the darkness. Goddess Nyx presides over the towering instrumental, surging for a moment of catharsis that feels too brief in the context of an eight-minute epic. But it’s natural that the band’s exit is sedated, the reverb turned up, the bass counteracting its own low end, like a migraine quelled with pink noise.
5. The One With the Piano
‘A Conversation Between the Piano and Trumpet’ would be a more accurate title; if anything, the trumpet leads, and the piano responds, tearful and slightly atonal. A stretch of silence accentuates the live nature of the recording; drumsticks clicking, chatter, and someone tripping over wire to inadvertently end Side A with the most fitting words: “I’m sorry.”
6. Patron Saint of Pale
The band leans into the jazzy sensibility teased in the record’s first half, a slightly off-kilter approach that matches the twisted playfulness of Kinsella’s lyrics. As if granted permission by ‘Bad Moons’, it emotes beyond the abstract poeticism that marks the first few songs, choosing instead to take shots: “Subjective truths that once filled a forever home now fill two.” Additional vocals by Stella Sen and Lila Deckenbach paint a picture of that home, the kind where children play oblivious to the adults’ bickering, let alone their silent struggles. It’s dramatic without necessarily reaching for something grandiose.
7. Wake Her Up [feat. Wisp]
Though a more straightforward American Football track on the surface, ‘Wake Her Up’ manages to house a flurry of ideas, not all of which work – the mostly two-note guitar solo feels especially redundant. As with the other song to prominently feature a female guest vocalist, Kinsella’s language turns darkly romantic as shoegaze star Wisp sort of carries the torch from LP3’s Rachel Goswell. As if enchanted by her voice, the song lingers in the ether a bit longer, momentarily transported.
8. Desdemona
It’s in the perpetually undulating ‘Desdemona’ that the album’s Steve Reich influence becomes apparent; while patient, the song twists and turns like a tired body unwilling to lay its fears to rest. Like its predecessor, it’s a Trojan Horse of subtle musical shifts, stretched along by the singer’s unwavering insecurity (“You’ve already moved on and I’m barely holding on”). Hold on it does, though, and with one interlude and proper song remaining, promises another surprise.
9. Lullaby
No piano here, no irony in the title at all: ‘Lullaby’ wafts prettily for two minutes, as if tucking in the little boy in the trenchcoat before spilling one final confession.
10. No Soul to Save
I don’t know if the sentiment of a song called ‘No Soul to Save’ counts as a surprise, but the LP4 does have a few final tricks up its sleeve: buoyant chords and a three-person choir to relax its most destructive urges. Unburdened by fear but still clutching on to shame, Kinsella addresses “Ladies and only the gentlest of men,” catching himself in the irony by cursing for the second time on the record. What does breaking the fourth wall mean when the whole house is available to the public and anyone can spend a night with the ghosts of your past for $200? Does it pay to lift the veil, to continue suffering, or is the cost of soul-baring too high not to close the curtain on American Football? Does the night ever end? It might take a while before we find out if and how the band continues its existence, but LP4 only makes them sound bigger than ever.
