Chicago emo godfathers American Football returns with first album in seven years

On a recent chilly night in April, a large group of people huddled into a line at the Davis Theater. Everyone was given a blindfold, told to turn off their phones and get comfortable in a dark theater where an image of a blood red sky engulfed the screen. On any other night, it might’ve been the setup for an immersive horror film. But on this night, it was a listening party for American Football’s new album, “LP4,” ahead of its May 1 release.

“We’ve never done anything like it,” front man Mike Kinsella shared in a recent Zoom chat about the hometown fan event, which also included a Q&A. “I loved the blindfold idea as a kind of sensory deprivation. I know I’d appreciate having time carved out to listen to music intently like that.”

The dark cocoon was a fitting environment for fully taking in the band’s latest album, its first in seven years and one of its darkest since forming at the University of Illinois in 1997. Songs from opener “Man Overboard” to closer “No Soul to Save” already say it all before the moody guitars, stalking drumbeats and echoey reverb that fills the shadows of the tense subject matter even kick in.

While making the album, two members endured divorces, COVID hit and drummer Steve Lamos submitted a premature resignation, forcing the band into a hiatus. “There was a lot in the mix to write about this time around,” said guitarist Steve Holmes, joining the call from his home in Roscoe Village, just down the street from Kinsella. “There was a long gestation period for this record that started during the pandemic when we were virtually writing and sharing files. And then Lamos quit the band for a while so it was a long stretch where a lot of life happened. When you're an adult and you have kids and there's marriage and divorce, there's a lot more intensity of real-life drama than like teenage feelings of a breakup when you're in college.”

“But the bigger picture is that we lost the band during COVID,” Kinsella added. “And coming back made us realize the band was also an important part of our lives as we went through the ups and downs.”

The Midwest emo rock kings have undoubtedly come a long way from those days in Champaign-Urbana, where the music scene with Hum and Braid and the huge support of local label Polyvinyl Records led to the 1999 debut, “LP1.” Even though the record was a one-off and the band fizzled a year later, over time, American Football has gained massive respect as godfathers of a music scene, which inspired their reunion in 2014.

American Football continues to gain followers and cred from the benchmarks of that early release and its follow-ups, “LP2” and “LP3” (album names still elude them). Phoebe Bridgers is a fan. PinkPantheress sampled the band’s 1999 track “Stay Home” in her hit, “Just for Me.” Turnstile’s Brendan Yates and Wisp’s Natalie Lu have guest spots on “LP4.” Paramore front woman Hayley Williams has also long collaborated with the band — most recently, pulling Kinsella on stage at Aragon during her April solo tour stop.

Zachary Gray

“My daughter's a fan, so I was already going to the show and she reached out,” Kinsella said. “I guess I happen to be like the resident cool old guy.”

Even though the band members, also including Mike’s cousin Nate Kinsella on bass, may now be middle-aged with college kids of their own, Champaign-Urbana is still a big part of their lives. In 2023, Polyvinyl’s Matt and Darcie Lunsford along with band members and photographer friends Atiba Jefferson and Chris Strong together purchased the iconic “American Football Home.” The property at 704 W. High St. in Urbana makes up the memorable cover art of “LP1” and has become a fan landmark over the years as many take road trips to capture selfies with it in the background. Vans even immortalized the cover art on a pair of shoes in 2025 that sold out instantly.

“We joked about it for a long time, because it's sort of infiltrated our lives so much,” said Kinsella of the house, which the group has fixed up and now rents out as an Airbnb or offers as a spot for contemporaries to work on albums or crash when they tour through town. In the future, they want to open it up to house shows and are talking with the city of Urbana about a semiannual street festival out in front.

Beyond the keys to the house, the lore of “LP1” continues to directly affect the band to this day, including a 25th anniversary tour of the album in 2024 that was fundamental to the making of their new material, said Kinsella.

“I didn't realize at the time how much doing that tour did influence the new album. Over the span of that year, we got dialed into the songs and really fleshed them out,” he said, noting the arrangements started to mirror the larger instrumentation and ambient setting they were bringing to the stage on that run. “There was a confluence of bringing what was old, reviving it and then using what we learned to make the new music. … I also think the reason ‘LP1’ resonated was because it was earnest and honest to who we were, and that’s who we still are.”

Holmes agreed, saying “LP4” finds the band in one of their most positive places yet, listening party vibes be damned.

“I feel like even though this new record is maybe the darkest lyrically and musically that we’ve put out, it does feel like the most exciting time ever in the band right now,” he said. “We're writing music we're really excited about. Having that hiatus and appreciating what we were missing, there's a newfound love and respect and appreciation for all of each other as a band and as friends and longtime collaborators. And I think you can feel that on this record.”