Mike Kinsella definitely noticed the glow coming off the audience at American Football’s Friday night show.
“You guys think I can’t see you out there with your phones,” Kinsella, 41, told a nearly sold-out room. “All I can think about is, ‘Oh man, I’m going to have to go on the internet and see myself all drunk and onstage singing these songs.’”
That he felt a little vulnerable seemed ironic considering that nearly everyone assembled shoulder-to-shoulder at Orpheum had probably been listening to Kinsella bear his insides on songs for the better part of the last 20 years. A few solo records under the Owen moniker have been mixed into his output, but the majority of the attention Kinsella gets is the result of an album that he and his American Football bandmates — Steve Holmes on guitar, plus trumpeter and trumpeter Steve Lomos — made and then walked away from at the turn of the century. The 1999 self-titled effort saw release on famed Chicago indie-rock imprint Polyvinyl just a few months before the group broke up. To date, it’s the best-selling release in the label’s catalog. The appeal is attached to the sparkling guitar, warm horns and innovative arrangements on the nine American Football tracks which served as the bookend for the first wave of emo and the beginning of the popular punk subgenre’s second wave.
LOOK AMERICAN
Here are photos from the American Football and You Blew It! reunion in Ybor City
In the years between then and now, the songs — especially “Honestly?,” “Never Meant” and “Stay Home” — became like religion for kids who could tolerate, but just couldn’t live by, the TLC, Nsync, Sugar Ray and Dixie Chicks that dominated the radio in the early aughts. The guitar interplay between Kinsella and Holmes inspired a generation of future band kids to write songs on open-tuned Telecasters. American Football lyrics — lovelorn, longing and perfect for the laconic passages in much of the band’s material — made it OK to be a little mopey or add weight to the seemingly meaningless details of our own easy suburban lives (the band, just out of high school when it released American Football, grew up downstate Illinois).
So it goes without saying that American Football’s Tampa debut came with a lot of anticipation. It could be felt in the room as a majestic opening set from temporarily reunited Orlando band You Blew It! cascaded into its climatic ending and the long soundcheck before American Football’s set wore on.
INTERVIEW
Tanner Jones of Orlando’s You Blew It! discusses reuniting for American Football shows, more
“Sorry about that,” Kinsella told the crowd as American Football finally took the stage, “technical difficulties.”
It wouldn’t be tough, however, to get reactions from the crowd as the band leaned into a 14-song setlist that kicked off with “Stay Home” and “The One With the Wurlitzer.” The warmth from the lonely, made-for-a-night-in-the-blankets closing combo from that 1999 album drew a roar from the audience once Lomos’ sparse horn part blasted into the darkness, and the opening duo of songs gave way to a punchy take on “My Instincts Are the Enemy” from American Football’s self-titled 2016 comeback album, where more grown-up themes propel a new set of equally anxious and emotionally onerous material.
“There are lines that you can tell I’m kind of cringing or laughing while I’m singing ’em,” Kinsella recently told CL sister publication Orlando Weekly as he talked about how some of the old songs have taken on new meaning. “And then there’s some I interpret in a new way and that I can barely get through without crying.”
Unfortunately — and honestly, not surprisingly — this Tampa crowd skipped the tears and decided to go for incessant chatter instead. No club show is immune to loudmouths, mind you, and shows where Kinsella is onstage famously include lots of sometimes awkward back and forth. Still, even Kinsella, who has a large threshold for pricks in the crowd, had enough at one point.
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, man,” he said to shut down a heckler at one point.
NEW SEASONS
Before Tampa debut, American Football’s Mike and Nate Kinsella talk reunions, new music and more
But not even that or the endless jibber-jabbering of the crowd on the outer edges of the venue could put a damper on a night of downer anthems from a band that is clearly not treating its sporadic tours like mini victory laps. Sing-alongs on encore closers “The Summer Ends” and “Never Meant” felt euphoric as fans unleashed about two decades of pent up angst, and having Nate Kinsella — Mike’s cousin and the brainchild behind revered indie-rock project Birthmark — on as a new multi-instrumentalist for the band provides a mighty backbone to the lineup. The addition happened during the first round of reunion shows in 2014, and Nate is credited as a composer on American Football’s 2016 album. Onstage, he added not just low-end frequencies, but depth on songs like “Home Is Where The Haunt Is” where bells buoyed the thoughts of a songwriter subjugated to a past he can’t escape. Nate added even more profundity to a biting run through “Born To Lose” and was essential on set highlight “Give Me The Gun” where Holmes’ ethereal harmonic droplets and drummer Lomos’ understated timekeeping elevated the unintentional mental-health anthem to fine, albeit fragile, heights.
What doesn’t seem delicate or in question is American Football’s desire to keep the party going. The Kinsellas talked about LP3 in a recent interview with CL and appeared to be enjoying the shit out of themselves at an Emo Night Tampa after-party where members of the band played DJ. There was something surreal about seeing Lomos — a writing and rhetoric professor at the University of Colorado — go from nearly stealing the show at Orpheum to just sitting in a chair at The Bricks with a smile on his face and a beer in his hand.
The normalcy had a calming effect. And it was a reminder that even 20-year-old emotions can still get gray-haired without growing less intense. American Football’s songs can still be anthems for what is now a legion of 30-and-40-something fans with mortgages kids and retirement funds to worry about it. Hopefully life doesn’t get in the way of American Football’s desire to keep meeting fans on record and on the road. And let’s hope it’s not another 20 years before we see the band again.
See more photos — and listen to setlist — from the show here.
American Football Setlist
Stay Home
The One With the Wurlitzer
My Instincts Are the Enemy
Honestly?
Home Is Where The Haunt Is
You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon
Born to Lose
Give Me The Gun
For Sure
I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional
Desire Gets In the Way
—
Where Are We Now?
The Summer Ends
Never Meant
This article appears in Aug 9-16, 2018.
