Describing genre these days
is like naming every spider species
–of which there are 50,000.
Wikipedia calls American Football
an “emo” band. I find the term “emo”
to be about as helpful in describing
music as it would be to distinguish
what you’re doing in the kitchen right
now as “food cooking,” as if there
are types of music out there
deliberately devoid of emotion
(there may be some),
or types of cooking for the purpose
of sustenance that are absent of food
(there may be some).
American Football is an objectively
funny name for a band. It is not
a band name that is in any way
helpful in describing its music.
Is a band an “it” or a “they”?
I have never reached a satisfying
conclusion, but tonight, I’m listening
to this debut album by a band
that became accidentally famous,
after they broke up, no less,
so much so, that 25 years warranted
a deluxe anniversary edition of the record.
“I’m thinking about leaving.
How should I say goodbye,” a young Matt
Kinsella sings. Sure, he’s capturing
a feeling, and he’s a nice singer,
but he wouldn’t know a hook if
it slapped him in the face.
The glue that sticks for me is
their ensemble playing, energetic,
proficient, groove-oriented, angular,
sometimes repetitive, drone-like.
Hypnotic. Emotive. Emo?
Sure, I will give them that.
I’m glad I have this record, but by
the time they reconvened 17 years
later for a second album, they
were likely a much better band.
It kind of makes me angry
that they could be so successful
with so little effort, but that’s okay.
They’re a little thing with feathers: hope.
College-aged kids who can play,
just screwing around, having
zero idea that they were making a classic.
If they had known that, likely
it would have stopped them in their tracks.
Notes on the vinyl edition: This copy of the eponymous and debut album American Football (also known as LP1) is the 2024 25th anniversary edition complete with a fancy silver mirror version of the original cover art, double-record on a kind of mottled silver heavy weight vinyl, pressed at 45 rpm, remastered from the original DAT stereo masters, bountiful but rather dull booklet with handwritten lyrics, photos, and short essays by the remastering engineer and the co-founder of Polyvinyl records. At 45 rpm, there are only two songs on each side, so you can’t leave the room. Good pressing. Sounds great. No noise. I came to American Football only AFTER discovering Mike Kinsella’s solo work under the moniker OWEN.
Postscript in Bullets:
- This is the 5th poem in a series of poems about records in my collection, A to Z
- All the poems in this series will have dumb titles
- The poems may or may not be a direct response to the listening, but tangential, discursive, journal-like
michael jarmer 