Urbana, IL · emo · math rock

American Football

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One album in 1999 that quietly became the emo-revival blueprint, and a reunion that turned out to have real songs in it.

Mike Kinsella and Steve Holmes met as students at Wheeling High School in Illinois, where Kinsella already played drums for Cap'n Jazz. Before American Football, he and Steve Lamos played together in a short-lived band called The One Up Downstairs, alongside David and Allen Johnson, which broke up before a planned single could be released.

Holmes has said the band's sound grew out of a deliberate turn away from the fast post-hardcore of groups like Drive Like Jehu, toward slower, quieter songs influenced by Red House Painters and Nick Drake. The result was interlocking clean guitar lines, unusual time signatures, Kinsella's quiet, conversational singing, and trumpet from Lamos.

American Football released a self-titled EP in 1998 and the self-titled album in 1999, both on Polyvinyl Records. Within a year the band had effectively become a studio project as its members moved on to separate lives, and it disbanded, though the album's reputation grew steadily afterward into a touchstone for later emo and math rock groups.

Polyvinyl announced a deluxe reissue of the debut in 2014, and the sold-out reunion shows that followed in Champaign and New York brought the band back together, with Mike's cousin Nate Kinsella joining on bass and becoming a permanent member. Further self-titled albums have followed, expanding the original sound with fuller arrangements and guest vocalists.

Lamos left the band in 2021 and rejoined in 2023. Mike Kinsella has continued to release music as Owen and remains known for his earlier work in Cap'n Jazz and Joan of Arc.

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emomath rock