American Football (Covers), the fourth installment of the title, is aptly named for an overdone and repetitive project.
Midwest emo pioneers American Football released the reissue of their 1999 self-titled debut album Friday. The album featured various artists, including Ethel Cain and Manchester Orchestra, performing their versions of the cult classics.
American Football was only active for a brief period in the late 1990s before the members reunited and released a long-awaited second album with the same name in 2016.
The band’s style can be characterized as raw and melancholy indie, usually consisting of roving, bright guitars and longing lyrics.
The reissue celebrates 25 years since the release of “LP1,” which established the Illinois group as trailblazers of an emerging genre. Despite the immediate split after the debut, the album garnered a loyal cult following.
Two and a half decades later, an array of artists have been tapped to offer new interpretations of what quickly became a widely influential and enigmatic album. The artists were admired by the band’s members, who were interested in seeing what these talented musicians could do on the project.
[Alfie Templeman makes waves with latest album ‘Radiosoul’ and tour]
Iron & Wine, the stage name of indie-folk songwriter Sam Beam, opens the album with a cover of “Never Meant,” transforming the brightly picked riff into a slower, melancholy acoustic version. The track also features layered harmonies, creating a much more introspective and dreamlike vibe than the original.
Blondshell similarly opts for a dreamy vocal on “The Summer Ends” but bursts into a heavier, shoegaze style in the latter half.
Indie artist Ethel Cain, known for songs like “American Teenager,” deviated from the original to craft a psychedelic-adjacent soundscape in an instrumental, characteristically experimental intro complemented by repeated, high-pitched and longing vocal phrases in the final half. Her version of “For Sure” expands the original 3-minute track into a 9-minute ballad of ambiance, incorporating harmonies similar to those in the album’s opener.
The instrumental “You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon” sounds like any classic American Football song without the lyrics, but Yvette Young transforms it into a folk-country piece, replacing the neon-picked electric guitars with acoustic ones and fiddles.
By the fifth track, the album is interesting but starts to drag, as each artist seems to have opted for a slower and more musically rounded version than the original. American Football’s characteristic rawness is lost, replaced by a hefty load of overproduction and a collection of remakes that, while captivating, often are completely boring.
[Cultoure Magazine’s first showcase highlights local musicians]
Manchester Orchestra adopts this style on “Stay Home,” adding only minimal variations in guitar tones and styles while ultimately playing it safe and sticking close to the original.
John McEntire closes the album with “The One With The Wurlitzer,” a track that proves to be one of the few with enough originality to make it worthwhile and distinguishable from the original.
McEntire opts for an electric instrumental, incorporating elements of dance and underlying melodies that keep the song tethered to its roots.
The reissue reminds fans and listeners that 25 years have passed since American Football, but not much else has happened. The covers oscillate between variations that often make the tracks tiring and obedience to the reference works — which begs the question of why they were even covered.
Even though an array of talented artists came together for the project, it revealed itself to be largely forgettable. There is something to be said for commitment to the melancholy of the genre, but in this case, it makes for a hard listen that feels more boring and repetitive than daring and fresh.
