American Football with Rob Mahoney

Yasi is joined by Ringer renaissance man Rob Mahoney to tell the unlikely story of American Football, whose widespread recognition grew in the decade following their debut (and immediate breakup). They talk through the band’s Midwestern roots, the alternate tunings and jazz-inspired drumming that influenced a generation, and how time and online canonization turned 'LP1' into a cultural touchstone and the American Football House into an Airbnb destination. Episode PlaylistListen to the American Football playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuest: Rob Mahoney @robmahoneyProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Shop Folgers instant coffee and more at your nearest retailer.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Fansplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Fansplain, Fansplain, Fansplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Fansplain, Fansplain, Fansplain, Fansplain.

• 1:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Fansplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. Today's episode is about American football. This is The Ringer, so you might think, "We're talking sports, babe." We're not talking sports. We're talking Midwestern emo. My guest today, you guys. Esteemed, celebrated Robert Mahoney III. Welcome to the podcast.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:12Yasi Salek?

  I just threw that on. Are there other, I mean, surely there are other Robert Mahonies?

• 2:15Speaker 04

  There must be.

• 2:16Yasi Salek?

  In your family line?

• 2:16Speaker 04

  No, unfortunately not, but I'll take the third. It makes me feel more distinguished.

• 2:19Yasi Salek?

  It feels like you should have some sort of like title.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Esquire.

• 2:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  I think we can brainstorm.

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  You didn't go to law school, you're a podcaster.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Not yet.

• 2:28Yasi Salek?

  Not yet, you're not dead yet, babe.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  That's my second or third act. Fourth act, I don't know. Who's counting?

• 2:33Yasi Salek?

  Fourth act, I'm gonna haunt people that leave mean comments in the various channels of bands playing.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  They wouldn't dare.

• 2:42Yasi Salek?

  You'd be surprised. Rob, before we dive in to the band American Football, can you tell me a little bit about your personal connection and journey with this band?

• 2:53Speaker 04

  I would love to. I'm a late adopter, I'm willing to admit that. I came on like, basically as the swell of their initial reunion tour was starting to crest.

• 3:04Yasi Salek?

  2014.

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Exactly, like, early 2010s, as like, the rumors were starting to circulate. I had heard Never Meant, I had heard the album. It's like, alright, this is good. And then it was one of those bands for me where like, I don't know, I think about these like Venn diagram artists, where it's like, all the people in my life who have similar tastes to me, we should overlap on this thing, and for some reason it just like hadn't clicked for me yet. Revisited at that point in my life, I'm like, oh my god, guess what? The album heralded as one of the great emo albums of all time is actually in fact quite good.

• 3:33Yasi Salek?

  To my heart.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:34Yasi Salek?

  Cause in 1999, what are you doing?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  I am in 5th grade, listening to Smash Mouth, I think. I'm trying to think of like, what else is-

• 3:42Yasi Salek?

  May he rest in peace.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Honestly, I got very heavy into the Beatles in 5th grade. So, you know, we were interested in some different avenues.

• 3:48Yasi Salek?

  Precocious.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  I mean, it's just like a Beatles parent kind of thing.

• 3:51Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  You're, you take what you're handed.

• 3:53Yasi Salek?

  So, am I correct in understanding, and not to spoil the arc of American Football, but this album that came out in 1999, Too Little to Know Fair, found its way to you.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:05Yasi Salek?

  After you had already come of age, discovered midwestern emo music.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:12Yasi Salek?

  What was your gateway drug?

• 4:14Speaker 04

  I want to say it was probably like comments on purevolume.com or something like that.

• 4:19Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  I mean, just one of these things where it's like your favorite emo band's favorite emo record.

• 4:24Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Is either, I would say Clarity by Jimmy Eat World or American football's American football.

• 4:29Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  So it was one of those things that's just like mentioned over and over. And eventually it's like, all right, I guess I need to take this seriously.

• 4:36Yasi Salek?

  But what was your gateway into emo music?

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Into emo specifically?

• 4:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Oh, definitely like the more pop punk.

• 4:41Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Early 2000s wave of emo.

• 4:43Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:45Yasi Salek?

  Fallout Boy.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Yes, the Fallout Boys. I mean, the Bleed Americans, My Chem for sure. I mean, all sides of that spectrum, really. But yeah, I think, and then into Thursday and Saves the Day and that kind of avenue, too.

• 4:56Yasi Salek?

  Because now you're in high school, middle school.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, getting there.

• 5:01Yasi Salek?

  You're a teen, your hair is swooped like this.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  It still is.

• 5:05Yasi Salek?

  And you'll never let it go.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  No.

• 5:07Yasi Salek?

  Um, all right, great. I'm glad we placed you in time and space.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 5:11Yasi Salek?

  Let's get started.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  What was your introduction?

• 5:13Yasi Salek?

  You know what? I am admittedly like, I don't want to like misspeak on the waves of emo, but I suppose that would be like third wave emo that you just Fallout Boy.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Yes, that's more third.

• 5:24Yasi Salek?

  That was a little after my time. Like, listen, I'll fuck up sugar. I'm going down spinning at karaoke.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Who would?

• 5:31Yasi Salek?

  That's a god tier song. But past that, I like was not, none of this, I didn't know anything about it. My friend in college dated the guy from the Used. Let's look about as close as I got to like, none of this registered on my radar.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  All right, I'm gonna need some, I'm gonna need a download on that lore.

• 5:45Yasi Salek?

  Well, I'll have to check in with her and see. Obviously it didn't work out, but.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  A man famous for vomiting on his audience. I'm just gonna need information on his personal life.

• 5:54Yasi Salek?

  Burt.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Burt. Classic Burt behavior.

• 5:56Yasi Salek?

  Burt behavior, babe. No, but I, you know, I'm on record on the Jimmy Eat World episode that, you know, Bleed American was my entry point into Jimmy mostly. I don't want to be like this guy, but like.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  He's that guy.

• 6:09Yasi Salek?

  I loved Fugazi.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:11Yasi Salek?

  So I, you know, a little Rites of Spring, a little like, you know, Embrace.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:16Yasi Salek?

  Like, definitely in that world.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Hardcore enough for you?

• 6:19Yasi Salek?

  Well, not even that, but then I do, I did get really into the Get Up Kids.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah.

• 6:24Yasi Salek?

  And I love the promise ring. So American football came to me a bit later also because I, it was after I got into like Get Up Kids, Promise Ring.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:33Yasi Salek?

  Then I was like, but not that late. I mean, this was, this is in college, so. Couple of years after that album had come out, like I was mid 2001, 2002. But it wasn't like one of my guys, you know, it wasn't. Get up kids.

• 6:47Yasi Salek?

  That I should look to receive hers, to receive her, isn't fair.

• 6:54Yasi Salek?

  To receive her.

• 6:59Yasi Salek?

  Isn't fair. That's fucking poetry.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  It is poetry.

• 7:05Yasi Salek?

  All right, well, let's not digress, and this is not a Get Up Kids episode yet. Let's start with our guy, Michael Kinsella. Born March 4th, 1977. No surprise to me that he's a Pisces.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  No, what's the tell?

• 7:19Yasi Salek?

  Pisces are very emotional people.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  So are cancers. I guess all water signs, is that right?

• 7:23Yasi Salek?

  Not all, well, yes, but like, I think, I mean Kurt Cobain was a Pisces. It's like, it's like a really good artist emotion placement, in my humble opinion.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  That carries a lot of weight in this particular space.

• 7:35Yasi Salek?

  That's what I think. Born to be emo, if you will. Buffalo Grove, Illinois, that's where our story takes place. This is a suburb 30 miles from downtown Chicago. You spent a lot of time in Chicago, Rob?

• 7:47Speaker 04

  Couple of years.

• 7:47Yasi Salek?

  Did you?

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Well, I should say, I spent a couple of years in Evanston. For all the Chicagoans out there, I did not claim that I lived in Chicago. No, my wife went to grad school there.

• 7:55Yasi Salek?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  So a couple of years in the greater northwestern area, lovely.

• 8:00Yasi Salek?

  You loved it?

• 8:01Speaker 04

  I loved it for that period of time.

• 8:02Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  This is the thing, I love Midwest emo. What I love to be of the Midwest, ongoing in perpetuity, I'm not cut out for it.

• 8:10Yasi Salek?

  I've never felt a cold the way I did when I went to Chicago in February once.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Rips through your body.

• 8:18Yasi Salek?

  I was on a wall.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  It's not good. You can see where the music comes from.

• 8:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  You can see for one, the sadness, the angst, but also like the deep need to be indoors noodling on a guitar.

• 8:28Yasi Salek?

  Up in the house for months on end because it's like medically unsafe to be outside.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  What else is one to do?

• 8:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I was just listening to a podcast, friend of the pod, Jeremy Bollm of Touche Amore, has a great podcast called The First Ever Podcast. And on my drive here, I was listening to the Mike Kinsella episode, in which I learned that at two years old, he said there were Kiss records being played around the house, and he loved it. That was, that's a very early memory.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  How did he know? Like, how do you know at two that you loved it?

• 8:56Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, babe. He didn't elaborate. I mean, you don't have, you don't have any memories from being two years old?

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Not with that level of clarity.

• 9:03Yasi Salek?

  Why are you a Pisces?

• 9:05Speaker 04

  This is why I am not Mike N'Kensela.

• 9:07Yasi Salek?

  Well, you have other strengths.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 9:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Kiss is very, we say it on the show all the time, but I, I find it amusing that it does pop up constantly. That for men of a certain age, Mike is a little bit younger, but not that much. Kiss is always, almost always the first patient zero of getting in. And it makes so much sense. And I want to like harp on it because we talked about it on other episodes, but like it, to me, it makes so much sense because it's like so kid friendly. They're in costumes.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. But the idea of like Love Gun being kid friendly. I mean, I get what you're saying.

• 9:40Yasi Salek?

  The first thing is like, ooh, what are these guys? Kid costumes? But and then the music is like transgressive light. So it's like, you're like, yeah, I like to fucking rock. Oh, they're doing something bad, you know?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  The tween appeal is off the charts, for sure.

• 9:57Yasi Salek?

  I could see it being a way to then get into like punk or whatever, you know? There's like probably a very direct path from Kiss to The Misfits, you know? He also said he grew up going to the local record store, Hip Cat Records, where he was allowed to walk with his older brother Timothy, Timothy Kinsella, who will play a prominent part in this story.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  And in Midwestern emo proper, I mean.

• 10:17Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely a forefather. Um, when they make the Mount Rushmore, which I'm sure they will soon to do. Timothy Kinsella's visage will be.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  I would love to know where they placed the Mount Rushmore. Like what old abandoned coal mill they put the Mount Rushmore of Midwest emo into?

• 10:34Yasi Salek?

  In Evanston.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:35Yasi Salek?

  He said really early on, he learned, well, A, he loved hair metal. Again, amongst us. But then he learned about cool music, like The Smiths and The Cure. I don't know why this made me a little sad. Sitting outside Timothy's door, closed, locked.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:54Yasi Salek?

  Get out of here, fucking little brother. I'm paraphrasing fanfictioning that's not on record.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  But it's implied.

• 11:00Yasi Salek?

  It's implied.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:01Yasi Salek?

  And just like. It's like Dickensian.

• 11:06Yasi Salek?

  And that's how he learned about these gorgeous bands, The Smiths and The Cure.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:10Yasi Salek?

  Um, that he got really into. He had what I always wished I had, which is a cool older brother to put you on to stuff.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:16Yasi Salek?

  Do you have a cool older brother?

• 11:17Speaker 04

  I, I do in fact, and he put me on to a lot of these aforementioned bands, you know?

• 11:21Yasi Salek?

  It's a lot of pressure to be the cool older sibling.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  You think so?

• 11:24Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Because you, you're the pioneer. You're Columbus out in these streets, having to go find stuff and bring it home.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  That is true. But because you are implied cool, whatever you hand down, it's like, what are they gonna do? Reject it? What, your younger sibling doesn't know what's cool.

• 11:40Yasi Salek?

  You're shaping a generation.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  That is true. That is responsibility. You're right.

• 11:43Yasi Salek?

  Great responsibility. Tim was setting up shows in their basement in junior high. He was already like, we're doing bands. This is another Dickensian moment. Mike said he would sit at the top of the stairs, he was not allowed at Tim's band practice, and play guitar. That's his like first guitar moments, or playing guitar along to Tim's band that was playing in the basement or whatever, which he was, no Little Brothers allowed.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Very sad, very sweet.

• 12:08Yasi Salek?

  Very sweet.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  But eventually the Little Brothers were allowed.

• 12:11Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Well, we'll get into that. So this band was called Toe Jam. Um, Tim Kinsella met Sam Zurich in 1989 on their first day of high school. Um, they bonded over a shared love of alternative music such as Jane's Addiction and Dinosaur Jr. And they had another friend named Victor Villarreal, who they had met at skateboarding at the local high school.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Also probably on the Mount Rushmore of Midwest emo.

• 12:35Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna get into it. I think he might be like.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  The guy.

• 12:38Yasi Salek?

  The guy.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:39Yasi Salek?

  Like, I think he's like patient zero.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  I mean, patient implies a sickness.

• 12:45Yasi Salek?

  I said what I said.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 12:48Yasi Salek?

  We're, we'll get into, well, I, I mean, I don't have actually the time or the wherewithal to, to put my feminism back into my body and to get into the larger implications of emo music and men, but.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  It's like it's a flawless track record as far as feminism goes, you know?

• 13:06Yasi Salek?

  It's right here. So they form a little band, and I guess Mike, with a little guitar on the stairs, was like, I came. Up with some stuff for you. Which is so cool and precocious, like, I have some guitar lines for you. And, but that's not exactly how I got in the band. What happened was they had a drummer named Jim, who was the star running back of the high school.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  Crazy.

• 13:27Yasi Salek?

  So cool.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Double threat, at least.

• 13:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like a wild, like, it's like a wild overlap to be like a star jock and then be into like, playing weird pop punk music in a band called Toe Jam that wrote songs about like coffee.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  But I will say running backs do have drummer energy.

• 13:43Yasi Salek?

  Is that true? I don't know, as you know.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Just the percussive elements alone, including the head trauma, unfortunately.

• 13:48Yasi Salek?

  Allowed to keep working at this company while knowing little to nothing about sports.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  I don't know, you're, you're a sportswoman of a kind. You're a woman of sports.

• 13:55Yasi Salek?

  I played basketball for six years.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  How did I not know this? What? What, what's the scouting report? What was your game?

• 14:01Yasi Salek?

  Well, I started as a center because I was unusually tall.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:04Yasi Salek?

  And then as time went by, I stopped being unusually tall and progressively got worse because they kept moving me to different positions in which my ball handling required a bit more finesse than I was capable of. So by the time we hit small forward, it was over for me.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  So you couldn't keep up with like the positional flexibility of the modern game?

• 14:20Yasi Salek?

  I was very good at boxing out.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  An essential skill.

• 14:23Yasi Salek?

  Aggressive defensive player and I was very good at rebounding.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:27Yasi Salek?

  But then again, this is not for me.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Honestly, this checks out, though.

• 14:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, right?

• 14:31Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 14:32Yasi Salek?

  Goes with my persona. So yes, actually I can understand basketball quite well, but past that, I don't know what you guys are on about. Jim quit.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Bad call by Jim.

• 14:40Yasi Salek?

  Well.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  I mean, actually, that is a fair point. Would Jim, would the Jim version of the band be anything?

• 14:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Did he think Toe Jam was going anywhere?

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Apparently not.

• 14:48Yasi Salek?

  Counterpoint, did Toe Jam go anywhere?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  No.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Toe Jam did not.

• 14:53Yasi Salek?

  Did Cabin Jazz go anywhere?

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Quite a few places, it turns out.

• 14:56Yasi Salek?

  Across the country in a van, yeah, for sure. But, you know, maybe Jim is like a successful accountant.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  That's a great point.

• 15:02Yasi Salek?

  Actually, do you know who is an accountant?

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Who's that?

• 15:04Yasi Salek?

  Davy Von Bolen. He has a successful accounting practice.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  That's tremendous. I did not know that.

• 15:09Yasi Salek?

  Um, don't bother Davy Von Bolen if you don't want accounting services.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you want his business.

• 15:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, then you're allowed to contact him, but otherwise leave that man alone. Okay, so as Jim quits, then young Michael.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:22Yasi Salek?

  Who I believe is like 12.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  Literally 12 years old.

• 15:24Yasi Salek?

  Is like, I'll play drums.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:26Yasi Salek?

  And they're like, okay, did not know how to play drums. Learned it.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Somehow.

• 15:30Yasi Salek?

  I read a quote much later from one of the Steves in American football, which this is a real. It's giving Anna Krenina for me because I've tried to read Anna Krenina every winter for like the past 10 years and I am thwarted by the names.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  And you're gonna get hung up on the Steves?

• 15:46Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying. It's like, like, let's, let's differentiate. There's eight Robs at this company. I just need a little, you know, I need something to grab on to.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Incredibly rude, okay. I don't know what to tell you.

• 15:58Yasi Salek?

  I feel like it's just simply factual.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Should they be like, one is Stevie? Or do they need to completely differentiate?

• 16:02Yasi Salek?

  I think they go by their last names. Lamos and...

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Lamos, yeah.

• 16:06Yasi Salek?

  Lamos and...

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Holmes.

• 16:07Yasi Salek?

  Holmes, yeah. So I don't remember which one said this, but they basically were like, gushing about Mike Kinsella's like, incredible innate musical ability that he could just like, do anything and pick up anything. And he's just like, one of those people that's like, gifted musically.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  I know. I find those people kind of mystifying, but if you're a professional, high-level musician, I can't even imagine what you make of those sorts of people who again, can just pick up any instrument, kind of find their place in it really quickly. It gets, it's such a weird, like, ethereal savant skillset.

• 16:36Yasi Salek?

  I found it so, I find it so annoying. Because I'm jealous. Because I like, I like, you know, sat like, slaving over like, little chords on my acoustic guitar and never was able to get, make any headway. And then there's the people who are just like, yeah, I heard that one.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  I could never. I am power chords or bust. That's me.

• 16:54Yasi Salek?

  Can't even do power chords. I just, those who can't do, teach. Toe Jam is playing some shows. And these shows are, I believe, mostly at, like, a middle school talent level.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  It seems that way.

• 17:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then they start to morph into a new band that is called Cap'n Jazz, aforementioned. Where Zurich found this name, I guess he was eating Cap'n Crunch and blurted that name out.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Where did the jazz come from, then?

• 17:24Yasi Salek?

  Not really sure.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:26Yasi Salek?

  Maybe just a desire to honor the great tradition of jazz music.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  I buy it.

• 17:32Yasi Salek?

  Cap'n Crunch is a really slept-on cereal.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 17:35Yasi Salek?

  Or maybe it's a, it's, it's, it's...

• 17:36Speaker 04

  It's one of the most prominent cereals in American life.

• 17:39Yasi Salek?

  I suppose what I meant is it's slept on in my household, in which I have forgotten about it.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  You're saying you're not buying and eating enough Cap'n Crunch?

• 17:46Yasi Salek?

  I'm not buying and eating enough Cap'n Crunch.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Fair. Just keep the berries out of it.

• 17:49Yasi Salek?

  They, no, fuck out of here. Actually, the, the real move is the peanut butter.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying. Peanut butter or bust, as far as I'm concerned.

• 17:55Yasi Salek?

  The regular one is quite good, too, but I don't want those berries. You can keep that. What is that even flavored with?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Ugh, awful.

• 17:59Yasi Salek?

  What are you using? What chemical is making that purple?

• 18:01Speaker 04

  You don't want to know.

• 18:02Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to know. Cap'n Jazz was sort of... Modeling themselves, I think, in that Discord Fugazi.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 18:10Yasi Salek?

  Lineage, right? Did you get into Captain Jazz before American football?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  I did not.

• 18:16Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  I would say, like, generally speaking, in my life, that sort of like, I mean, like, kind of like on the edge of post-hardcore, a little screamer, harder-edged vocal. It's like, it's not without its appeal to me.

• 18:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  But I tend to reset more vocal forward, softer focus.

• 18:32Yasi Salek?

  You're a sad boy.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, or.

• 18:33Yasi Salek?

  You're a cardigan.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Or Lish's. I mean, definitely a cardigan. I would say I'm kind of like either or. Either let's go softer, or let's go full screamo, but like, the middle zone is a little uncanny for me sometimes.

• 18:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Captain Jazz is a really unusual band. I actually didn't realize how much I liked them. I was like, kind of back and listening, and I was like, this goes.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  It was just working for you.

• 18:52Yasi Salek?

  It actually goes.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, worked for a lot of people.

• 18:54Yasi Salek?

  A lot of people?

• 18:55Speaker 04

  I mean, of, of a certain milieu at a certain time.

• 18:58Yasi Salek?

  Right, right.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Caught on like, something, I don't know.

• 19:01Yasi Salek?

  Like a match. So Mike said, every practice ended with our friends coming over and our mom making a big bowl of pasta for everybody. Our first shows were just basement shows in our basement. Mom loved it. Their mom sounds awesome, by the way.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Genuinely.

• 19:13Yasi Salek?

  Selfishly, I think she liked knowing where we were and that we were safe. So they're, they're like, they jump right into Chicago's suburban underground scene, man. They're playing with bands like Gage and Friction. Friction features Future Braid member Bob Nana. Tim and his friend Eric start booking shows. Like, they start putting a couple of singles out here and there. I believe they did a Christmas song. Have you heard this?

• 19:38Speaker 04

  I've not heard the Christmas song.

• 19:39Yasi Salek?

  It's called, it's the, it's the Kinsella's covering Winter Wonderland with their mother, I believe, playing like some instrument for a very punk Christmas.

• 19:55Yasi Salek?

  Then in 1993, future accountant, future CPA,

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  Davy Von Bollen joins the band. Let's fucking go.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Pretty big moment.

• 20:06Yasi Salek?

  There's some drama that precipitated this involving some drug and alcohol use, and I'm not going to get into that right here. But Victor said, "I just went to practice one day and there was just this guy there." That's really emblematic of how the band were. But on that first day, as the five of us, we were writing songs. We were forging ahead. Somebody is like, "I, I need to put this record out for you guys." And this somebody is Mark Corley, a high school student who worked at a pizzeria.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Who better?

• 20:38Yasi Salek?

  Who better? Who, who else, actually? I think it was not a lot of, not a bidding war, if you will.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  Genuine question, yeah.

• 20:43Yasi Salek?

  So he convinces Tim to let him release Captain Jazz's debut full-length album. Would you like to tell the people what that album is called?

• 20:50Speaker 04

  I would, yeah. Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports, Cards in the Spokes, Automatic Biographies, Kites, Kung-Fu Trophies, Banana Peels We've Flipped On, and Eggshells We've Tippy-Toed Over, AKA Schmappin' Schmats.

• 21:02Yasi Salek?

  Schmappin' Schmats. Incredible, incredible.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  I mean, it fills, it fills out a jacket, that's for sure.

• 21:08Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of cool.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  I've heard people refer to Schmappin' Schmats, obviously. I've never heard somebody even bust out an attempt at the full-length title.

• 21:15Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of like that Fiona Apple album, When the Pawn. Like, you just kind of, you gotta go with it.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  You gotta abbreviate how you can.

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. This is great. They make Schmappin' Schmats.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  The deep sigh you just let out.

• 21:27Yasi Salek?

  Well.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  So it's basically like, in a lot of ways, the birth of a certain kind of Midwest emo.

• 21:32Yasi Salek?

  You're right. We should put a little more, a little gravitas on this.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  I'm just saying, yeah. A little pomp and circumstance is required.

• 21:40Yasi Salek?

  Midwestern emo is, depending on who you ask.

• 21:42Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 21:43Yasi Salek?

  Born as, thanks to this pizzeria paycheck and...

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Well, the depending on who you ask is important because if you ask any member of any emo band, they're not part of an emo band.

• 21:53Yasi Salek?

  They're like, "I have nothing to do with that."

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Don't know her.

• 21:55Yasi Salek?

  None of my business. David Von Bollin said, "It didn't necessarily feel like we were making it." It's probably one of those things where we thought, "Hey, maybe people will start to accept us." It sold 3,000 copies from their merch table and some small record distros. They went on a 28-date tour. One weekend, on the way to Little Rock, Arkansas, to get David Von Bollin's amp fixed, Victor via real overdoses. He'd ingested a mixture of Ritalin, lithium, and Vicodin. This is... An insane level of access

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:29Yasi Salek?

  To pharmaceuticals for what I'm presuming is like a 20 year old.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:33Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, he has to go to the emergency room. Thank God he's okay. They release him and the band is like, you know what? Well, I don't think we're gonna keep going on this tour. And they just turned around and went home. They had a little band meeting at a rest stop between St. Louis and Little Rock. Tim and Davy Von Bollin wanted to like soldier on, but Mike and Zurich were like, no. Let's fucking go home. So they break up and then they drive 17 hours home in silence. I don't know. I wasn't there, but I'm, we're telling a story.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  One can assume.

• 23:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Davy Von Bollin said in 2010, looking back, I don't think the band would have lasted even if we kept it together for that day and moved on. Mike was talking about leaving to go to college. We were gonna convince him to stay in the band and still go to college, and he didn't want to do that. And then the events leading up to the breakup sort of convinced him. Staying together would have been interesting, obviously for the band's sake outside of the individuals. I think we were beginning to write way better music than we had written for the album. And I think had we been able to keep going and keep ourselves out of our own way, it would have probably been a really good thing.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  I mean,

• 23:34Yasi Salek?

  It's a real sliding doors moment.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  It is.

• 23:36Yasi Salek?

  For Midwestern emo.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yes, but a band assuming they can stay out of their own way is, I mean, just the biggest wild card in music history. Like every band hopes they can stay out of their own way and they all mostly failed to do it.

• 23:46Yasi Salek?

  Mostly failed. Selfishly, I'm glad this happened because then I, Davy Von Bollin

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:51Yasi Salek?

  joins the Promise Ring and

• 23:53Speaker 04

  I think it's best for almost everybody involved.

• 23:56Yasi Salek?

  I think everybody, yeah. Well,

• 23:57Speaker 04

  Almost everybody goes on to even bigger and in my opinion, even better musical projects. And so, yeah, it is like a cool primordial moment for all of them, but

• 24:06Yasi Salek?

  The primordial ooze of Midwestern emo.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  And, and I think Captain Jazz's reputation is probably better for it being this thing crystallized in amber.

• 24:13Yasi Salek?

  We love a one album wonder legendary, like, oh, you, did you see them? Oh, you didn't see them? I saw them.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Frankly, it's the reason why we're doing this podcast.

• 24:23Yasi Salek?

  Correct. Okay. So like we said, Davy Von Bollin joins Promise Ring. Tim starts Joan of Arc. Um, and Michael Kinsella heads off to college, to uni, babe. At, uh, I always thought it was called Champagne Urbana, but it's Urbana Champagne.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Well, I think the metro area is sometimes flipped.

• 24:41Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  But the university is Urbana Champagne, at least as far as I've ever seen it.

• 24:45Yasi Salek?

  It's confusing.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Truly.

• 24:46Yasi Salek?

  Steve Holmes, who was besties with Mike Kinsella in high school, also goes to college at Urbana Champagne.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 24:57Yasi Salek?

  And they are roommates at UIUC, as the locals call it. Actually, I don't know. Is that what they call it?

• 25:03Speaker 04

  I hope.

• 25:04Yasi Salek?

  I have no idea.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  They'll let you know.

• 25:06Yasi Salek?

  They're, they're, will certainly will let me know. Mike said about Steve, I was sort of best friends with Steve Holmes since somewhere in the middle of high school. He was like running around with like some punks. And I guess I was sort of running around with some punks. And then our punks got friends or got to be friends with their punks.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:20Yasi Salek?

  So it was a real-

• 25:21Speaker 04

  Overlapping punks.

• 25:21Yasi Salek?

  Punks coming together. I'm only picturing West Side Story. Um, so Steve said, I met Mike Kinsella freshman year at Wheeling High School. I remember the first time I saw Captain Jazz play was in the theater of our school during the lunch periods. I didn't play guitar yet, but I think seeing them definitely spurred me in that direction. I got my first guitar when I was 15 and I was in a band a week later. A friend and I planned that first band after a Screeching Weasel show. Really can't, you really can't make it 15 minutes talking about anything in the world adjacent to punk without getting to a Screeching Weasel mention.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  It's my favorite part of any punk band emo band origin story. It's not just the-

• 25:57Yasi Salek?

  It's when Ben Weasel was mean to them.

• 25:59Speaker 04

  Well, that, but also just like the random listing of all the bands that brought you here.

• 26:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Um, some of which you've heard of, many of which you of course have not.

• 26:05Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  It's like the, the graveyards are littered with incredible bands and band names.

• 26:10Yasi Salek?

  Didn't take much, babe. A guitar and an amp and a dream. So he also said that Captain Jazz was the coolest band in their high school. And it was like a really big deal, um, that you can't overstate their influence. Steve Lamos was also at UIUC. He was in a band already. What was it called, Rob?

• 26:29Speaker 04

  The One Up Downstairs? That's a good band name.

• 26:32Yasi Salek?

  Do you think so?

• 26:33Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 26:33Yasi Salek?

  Do you think if American Football had kept going under that name, which could have kind of happened, given the way that it morphs, they would have been as successful? Do you think we'd be having this podcast right now?

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Not for them. I think if they were a consistently active band, The One Up Downstairs, I actually like as a band name. But as a weird piece of ephemera that like kind of existed but kind of didn't, American Football is the sort of name you want.

• 26:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's a good point. Lamos, a little trumpet prodigy.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  I know.

• 27:01Yasi Salek?

  Played trumpet with his dad's polka band.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Love a polka band.

• 27:04Yasi Salek?

  It's really a Midwestern. He also saw Cap'n Jazz perform in 1995 in downstate Danville.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Shout out to Larger Danville.

• 27:13Yasi Salek?

  He said, "I never experienced that kind of energy in terms of watching music. I was like, I want to do this." So you're right, Cap'n Jazz, really important moment.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  The sound you're hearing is the, the slow chiseling of that Mount Rushmore as we speak.

• 27:27Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. So Lamos said, "I didn't play the drums till I was 20. I'd been in music lessons since I was four. I played violin as a kid and trumpet at age seven. I was playing in polka and dance bands with my dad. I got to Champagne as a sophomore and didn't want to do formal music anymore because he had played in a jazz band at DePaul.

• 27:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:42Yasi Salek?

  But watching some of these Chicago bands like Cap'n Jazz and Braid got me wanting to be part of that social scene. Started messing around with the bass, which didn't take, and the drums, which I enjoyed. I started practicing a lot and was teaching myself from these How to Be a Jazz Drummer books."

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Fucking phenomenal.

• 27:56Yasi Salek?

  He had these 1960s instructional books that he borrowed from his dad, and that's how he learned to be one of, one of the greater drummers.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  I mean, especially within the genre, like a fucking phenomenal drummer, a transformative drummer for sure.

• 28:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  But I mean, it's such like an of a time and place thing. Like when you're doing bands playing in 2065,

• 28:17Speaker 04

  you know, it's gonna be like, oh, I learned how to, you know, well, no one's gonna be playing guitars anymore. But I learned to play whatever futuristic keytar instrument exists then.

• 28:25Yasi Salek?

  I learned to input into AI.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  I did. And they churned out music.

• 28:29Yasi Salek?

  I'll be on my seventh facelift. Um, it's gonna be great. We're gonna get into it, but would you agree that like Steve Lamos is like sort of winding path to music that is unconventional in terms of like being rooted in polka and dance, but also learning jazz drumming?

• 28:51Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 28:51Yasi Salek?

  Not like what Mike Kinsello was doing, Captain Jazz, which was like, boom, you know, like, and Mike Kinsello is a good drummer, but like, that's a totally different kind of drumming.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 28:59Yasi Salek?

  This-

• 29:00Speaker 04

  More of a bangier, punkier drumming.

• 29:01Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. But Lamos's style is one of the sort of like key parts of what makes American football interesting and special.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  I think it really leads into the sort of like math rock elements of what they do.

• 29:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  And you just can't like set out the formula of American football without that. Without that, you're right, they kind of are just another band with some really nice guitar parts and some evocative vocals.

• 29:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Speaker 04

  But the drums bring it together in a totally different way. And it's like, it's one of those things where, you know, never met like the guitar riff is the meme-able identifiable quality, but that song without the drums is not that song. Like it would, the bottom would fall out on it.

• 29:38Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Mike said, "I had seen Steve Lamos drum in some bands before. About a year later, I saw him play again as the one up downstairs and he blew me away." There's a couple of different stories of how this band comes together. In Noisy in 2016, Mike said he basically just walked up and said, "Do you want me to be the singer?"

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 29:59Yasi Salek?

  That's not-

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Consistent.

• 30:01Yasi Salek?

  It's not consistent with, but-

• 30:04Speaker 04

  I would say every member of the trio has a slightly different version about how the other two guys had a thing, or they and another guy had a thing and somebody suggested something. Like, I have no idea what's actually true.

• 30:14Yasi Salek?

  Of course, it's like my want to like pull out the red strings and really fucking solve this, but I don't think it's useful. I don't, I don't think it, uh- Gives us anything to sink our teeth into that's important.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  Well, what's your best guess?

• 30:29Yasi Salek?

  I think they were all kind of friends, hanging out. One up, one downstairs dissolved as bands do. But they all kind of wanted to play music and it sort of reformed in a different shape.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Makes sense. One jam leads to another. As you said, two of them are already roommates.

• 30:46Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  It lends itself to that.

• 30:47Yasi Salek?

  And if that's not right, I don't care. Um, I'm so sorry. Go tell it to a wall. I don't know. Yes, write me a letter. The one up downstairs had recorded a few songs, but they flamed out, like I said, 1996. They were banned for about six months.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  If only they didn't get out of their own way.

• 31:03Yasi Salek?

  If only they had gotten out of their own way. The three songs were meant to come out on polyvinyl, I believe. Quick polyvinyl sidebar.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  Very important.

• 31:12Yasi Salek?

  I think so. 1994, high school students Matt Lunsford and Darcy Knight from Danville, Illinois. Shout out, larger Danville, as you said. Founded Polyvinyl Press, a fanzines created to celebrate the midwestern DIY scene. In the fifth and final issue of the Polyvinyl Press in 1996, they put out an accompanying 20-track compilation called Direction. Then in 1996, they started putting out their very first releases from Braid, who are also from Champagne.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  You may have heard of them.

• 31:43Yasi Salek?

  I love Braid, and Rainer Maria from Madison, Wisconsin.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Also a prominent figure, and I think the larger, might can sell a story, but also an American football story.

• 31:50Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Um, although I have have gone on record to say something really controversial, which I just like to say, and I'm just like to stir the pot sometimes.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:00Yasi Salek?

  Like how the wringer likes to rank things.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Do we? Never heard of it.

• 32:03Yasi Salek?

  Are you making a joke? Are you joking with me? Are you pulling my life?

• 32:06Speaker 04

  What shit would you like to stir?

• 32:09Yasi Salek?

  Um, I think emo music is fundamentally male. And I don't think women can make it because it's depraved in a way that only men can be depraved.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:16Yasi Salek?

  And this is a compliment to women.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  All right. So it's depraved in a way that women can't access? In order to create that kind of music or they are barred structurally from participating?

• 32:26Yasi Salek?

  Fundamental male kind of like depravity.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Hmm. I have no counterpoint.

• 32:34Yasi Salek?

  I mean.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  It is definitely depraved. It is unquestionably male oriented. I mean, I think there are some interesting counterpoints, right? It's not like there have been no women who have broken into the space and been successful. Some of which we will talk about later, but.

• 32:47Yasi Salek?

  I just think what they're doing is something beautiful and different and wonderful and less depraved. And that's okay if you don't agree.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  I have no argument.

• 32:56Yasi Salek?

  Go ahead and at me. Please don't at me. So Matt Lunsford said, "I sort of discovered Cap'n Jazz when I was still in high school and living in Danville. For the size of the town, there was a really cool DIY scene of kids just putting on shows for other kids. I had heard the Cap'n Jazz record and I was in love with it. They were one of the major bands we wanted to bring to Danville. They were friends with some of the guys from Braid. Those guys were really young too, and playing these shows in central Illinois, but they were all teenagers from the suburbs. Strictly through booking the Cap'n Jazz shows, I got to know Mike and his brother Tim. And it wasn't long after that that Mike came to school here in Champaign. So that's the polyvinyl connection." Like we said, we've coalesced back into a sort of a new band. Steve Holmes said, "It's really kind of luck that American football happened at all. It could have easily have

• 33:41Yasi Salek?

  been the One Up Downstairs that people remember today if they had stayed together." That was a really cool band with tons of potential, but luckily for me, it didn't work out. Steve Holmes was not part of.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  One Up Downstairs.

• 33:52Yasi Salek?

  Thank you. "They recorded those three songs and broke up before the single could even come out. So Lamos and I started playing together and after a few weeks, I can't remember how it happened, it was a mutual decision from all three of us that Mike should join the band on guitar and vocals. Mike was insanely good on guitar, but for whatever reason, he had never played guitar in a band, even though he wrote some of the Cap'n Jazz songs. Mike became the singer by default because I couldn't play those fast picky parts and play at the same time."

• 34:14Speaker 04

  It does seem immensely difficult.

• 34:16Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Playing guitar and singing at the same time in general seems immensely difficult.

• 34:20Speaker 04

  Much less when you're playing in the styles and just like constantly shape shifting melodies and structures that they are. I just, I don't know how anyone would do it.

• 34:28Yasi Salek?

  I don't know how they do it.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  And we should say, like, yes, he was nominated to do vocals, but they were basically an instrumental band at first.

• 34:35Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  It was like not intended to really have much of a vocal part. And it was like, how do we, okay, maybe a third of our setlist could have some words to it.

• 34:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  And even then, it's like, when they put it into practice, they didn't own a microphone.

• 34:47Yasi Salek?

  I know. I like how you say setlist when they played like maybe 20 shows total before their dissolution.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Not really a live band, but as guys playing in their living room slash in a garage are trying to put some things together, can't even hear what the vocals would be if they exist. So like, no one even really knows this, like, what has become a hyper, like, focused, literal lyrical band.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Just like an afterthought of the entire project out of the gate.

• 35:13Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I thank God, though, because I'm, again, controversial. I think if there was no lyrics, nobody would fucking care about this band, respectfully.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  It's one of those you really need all three.

• 35:22Yasi Salek?

  Maybe not nobody, but you know, you gotta grab people with with some lyrics.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  I think they are one of those true, like, if you remove either, any of the legs of the stool, it just doesn't work. Like, you need the guitar synergy between Kinsell and Holmes, which is like, I think, really unique for really any rock music, but especially emo music. We talked about the drums already. Mike Kinsell is like the front man of the band, and thus the most visible in a lot of ways. And yeah, he's carrying the vocals and the writing to give them kind of a signature sound. But I really think it's equally load bearing all around.

• 35:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I agree. Okay, well, 1987, the birth of American football. That's the day they're born. You alluded to this, but they like, didn't really have adequate equipment.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  They didn't have basically any equipment.

• 36:08Yasi Salek?

  Mike never had anything. He was borrowing Steve's guitar. I think Steve also had a bass. They would borrow amps. Steve Holmes said, "Our practices would be in part dictated by whether or not we could get the gear to practice with."

• 36:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:23Yasi Salek?

  And like you said, no mic or PA. So this is not a serious band. They're not really doing this.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  What is what is serious?

• 36:30Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, I don't think they were like, okay, put us in maximum rock and roll. We're gonna book a bunch of shows. We're going on tour. We're putting out music. It sounds like it was just sort of this like beautiful, fun, male bonding, you know, dudes rock.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  And you say that's depraved.

• 36:47Yasi Salek?

  I, well, I-

• 36:48Speaker 04

  I think it's beautiful.

• 36:49Yasi Salek?

  You're right. You're right.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  I think it's two dudes who are roommates, sitting on their couch, noodling guitars back and forth, trying to see how it all fits together.

• 36:58Yasi Salek?

  And what's better than that, honestly?

• 37:00Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the irony of all this, of not owning the equipment, is that when this first album eventually takes off, I would say it launches an entire generation of like, how do I get my guitar to sound like that? And the answer is, you don't own it, and you have no idea what the equipment is. And the setup is kind of a mystery to everyone involved.

• 37:17Yasi Salek?

  Everyone's like, we don't know either, babe. Sorry.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Who cares?

• 37:20Yasi Salek?

  Sorry. Steve Lemos.

• 37:24Yasi Salek?

  Said, "When we started playing together, we definitely had a desire to sound a bit different from what was going on around us. Those guys were into the hardcore stuff coming out of Discord, but we didn't want to sound like that. We didn't want to sound like Braid and all the other emo bands that were around either," he said emo. "Not that I didn't love that sound, I did and I still do, but we were determined to be quieter than that, more post-rocky and jazzy than loud and aggressive."

• 37:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:47Yasi Salek?

  I thought this was interesting, so about the guitar playing that we were talking about. So Steve Holmes said, "Mike didn't even own a guitar, so I, we had one guitar between the two of us, and I would say, 'Hey, Mike, show me how to play Ooh Do I Love You' or whatever, some Captain Jazz song, and he would teach me that. And then I would show him some riffs that I'd been writing. So I knew he could play guitar. And I knew that Mike had written half the Captain Jazz songs. He said, 'I think the first time I saw him playing guitar, maybe our sophomore year, he was playing Dinosaur, Dinosaur Jr. song and singing. So I was like, oh, this guy can sing too, sort of. It sounds like Jay Mascis, you know, that kind of warbly singing. Mike's just a natural. He's one of those annoying musicians who like intuitively is good at everything. Like, he picked up the drums, probably started guitar in 7th grade or something, learning Metallica. So he had that heavy metal

• 38:31Yasi Salek?

  roots that grounded him and the technical ability, but he just picked up everything incredibly quickly. He's just a naturally musical person.'" The alternate tunings. Okay, this is where we're really gonna get into-

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Here's the thing, are they alternate tunings if all you play is alternate tunings?

• 38:46Yasi Salek?

  Well, Rob, this is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the birth of Midwestern emo.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  Please.

• 38:51Yasi Salek?

  These alternative tunings came from Victor Villarreal of Captain Jazz. Because Victor took classical guitar lessons as a kid, Steve Holmes said, "Whoever his teacher was, that person should get credit for inventing Midwest emo."

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:08Yasi Salek?

  Because technically, they taught him fingerpicking and the open C tuning that I eventually stole. And when he had it, it was like E A C G C E. And then I added the F on the low E string.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  F A C G C E?

• 39:23Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 39:26Yasi Salek?

  And that's what we made famous was Never Meant.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  I mean, is that formula is like-

• 39:30Yasi Salek?

  I don't know what the fuck that means.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  It's above our pay grade.

• 39:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  But what I am hearing is-

• 39:34Yasi Salek?

  But I respect it.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Classical guitar plus jazz drumming.

• 39:37Yasi Salek?

  Plus jazz drumming.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Plus kind of post hardcore punk background.

• 39:41Yasi Salek?

  Plus alternative tuning.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, of course.

• 39:44Yasi Salek?

  Open tunings. Again, when I say this stuff, I'm doing theater, babe. It's jazz hands because I don't know what I'm talking about. I think importantly is probably their influences, right? Like, obviously, they are coming from this scene birthed, you know, from the head of Zeus, Captain Jazz, but around Braid, around what's going on. But, you know, they were really into Nick Drake and the Red House Painters, um, the C and Cake.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:13Yasi Salek?

  Tortoise.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  The Sundays.

• 40:15Yasi Salek?

  The Sundays. Obviously, Mike had that Cure and Smith's kind of like-

• 40:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:21Yasi Salek?

  Goth sensibility.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Like Depeche Mode comes up a lot.

• 40:24Yasi Salek?

  Depeche Mode comes up a lot in the lyric writing.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 40:27Yasi Salek?

  But I thought that, I thought those musical influences were really interesting because you, I can really hear that, you know? Um, and they also loved that Yank Crime album by Drive Like J-Hoo, one of the, one of the greater albums.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  And like it to a degree where it informs them going softer because they hear that album and they're like, that's as good as you can do that.

• 40:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  So we need to do something else. I mean, quite a compliment.

• 40:52Yasi Salek?

  I think it's, I think it's very cool. We are rooted in this one thing, but we want to kind of stretch it in this other direction, which is towards post-rock, math rock.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 41:03Yasi Salek?

  Pinback. And they don't mention pinback, but I hear a lot of pinback. Low. And then also, we said this already, but I'll say it again. Steve Lamos loved jazz fusion, 70s jazz fusion. So The Weather Report and Miles Davis is also coming into the picture here. Should we talk quickly about the looping?

• 41:19Speaker 04

  I would love to.

• 41:19Yasi Salek?

  Because now they're writing the American football songs, so we're just setting this up. Mike in Sells said, I do remember writing a couple of songs, like specifically sitting on a couch with Steve on a Saturday morning, and he's like practicing looping his part. Again, here's me doing theater, which is in like 13 or something. And I'm trying to ignore him and also play my part, which is in seven. And then, you know, they only catch every six cycles around or something when the one lands. So then we're like both learning how to create these patterns. This is like physics to me, what they're talking about.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  I mean, why go to therapy when you can fuck with time signatures, you know?

• 41:53Yasi Salek?

  Men will fuck with time signatures before they'll ever go to therapy.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  But it's proven effective.

• 41:59Yasi Salek?

  Did it?

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Uh, TBD. Based on the later songwriting, maybe, maybe not as effective as it needed to be.

• 42:05Yasi Salek?

  It gave us some beautiful music.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  That is for sure.

• 42:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then the last, the last tidbit, last leg of the chair stool.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  It's becoming an elaborate piece of furniture.

• 42:13Yasi Salek?

  I know. It's, it's beautiful. It's much like a American football song. It's more complicated than meets the eye.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Really is.

• 42:19Yasi Salek?

  Um, trumpet.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  I love the trumpet.

• 42:22Yasi Salek?

  Do you? In general?

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Well, no, in this context, yes. In general, I find it a little ostentatious. A little, a little like, look at me, I'm a trumpet.

• 42:30Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  I would say.

• 42:31Yasi Salek?

  It calls too much attention to itself.

• 42:32Speaker 04

  You know, it's not as subtle as a saxophone. It's not as understated as even like a French horn.

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  The trumpet insists upon itself.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  You know, it really does. But here it does not. Within this band, it is not like, I think it's, it's a testament to the trumpet playing. And Steve Lemos is the one playing the trumpet, a rare double threat drummer, trumpetist, trumpeter?

• 42:51Yasi Salek?

  Trumpeter. I don't think it's trumpetist.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  I think trumpeter makes sense.

• 42:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I think trumpet player might be the most, yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  But they never became the trumpet band, you know, in the same way that like, Yellow Card has a violinist and they're like, oh, it's that band with the violin.

• 43:05Yasi Salek?

  There's a band with the violinist. Yeah. Damn, I thought we could have made a whole day with going through and not mentioning Yellow Card, but there you go.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Not on my watch.

• 43:13Yasi Salek?

  We gotta bring in the Yellow Card violinist.

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• 44:50Yasi Salek?

  They played a couple of shows.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  They did.

• 44:53Yasi Salek?

  Steve Holmes says it often gets written that we played only 10 shows, never to more than 20 or 30 people. That's not entirely accurate, but we played probably 25 to 30 shows. And I'm talking, this is four years of college.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:05Yasi Salek?

  So they're averaging seven shows a year? Six shows a year? I can't do math.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  If that. I mean, you know, give or take.

• 45:11Yasi Salek?

  5.5 shows a year? 5.2 shows a year? They're not touring.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Well, they're gone for summer. You know, they're gone for the holidays, spring break, you know? The time disappears.

• 45:20Yasi Salek?

  Well, this whole time, Mike is also participating in Joan of Arc. So. He would write, record and tour with Joan of Arc during the summer.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:28Yasi Salek?

  So again, this is why I mean that American football wasn't serious. Like, that's what I mean. It's like, they weren't like, this is our ticket to ride.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:35Yasi Salek?

  You know, like, we're, we're getting out of Urbana, Illinois, thanks to American football. We're gonna make it. It was just like, an art project.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  It is 100% an art project. I would venture to guess it's really the only reason it worked.

• 45:47Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Because if you put, if you pressurize this.

• 45:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  It's gonna implode. Like, there's no reason this should have been as big as it was. It needed to have the ease of like, no one actually taking it that seriously.

• 45:57Yasi Salek?

  Yes, and it also needed to have a good 12 years of a time for the world to catch up to it.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Very true.

• 46:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so we've written, we've written stuff. What do we do now? We need to record. We don't really need to. Like I said, it's not serious, but let's do it. Polyfinal's offering.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  They are.

• 46:16Yasi Salek?

  In 1998, they record their EP.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:20Yasi Salek?

  Everything is called American football. Everyone is named Steve and everyone is called American football. Um, American football EP. What do you gotta say about American football EP, babe?

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Not super notable, to be honest with you.

• 46:32Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  I mean, I think it, look, I think it's very good for what it is.

• 46:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  And it's incredible that, especially the guitar sound is already there. Like, the twinkling definitive nature of the guitars.

• 46:43Yasi Salek?

  Twinkle daddies.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  They are true twinkle daddies already, even in their early twenties.

• 46:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  So like, the fact that they have their finger on that particular pulse, I guess it's not really a pulse at this point. They're creating that pulse.

• 46:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Uh, is remarkable, but I can't say it really returned to these songs that often.

• 47:05Yasi Salek?

  I don't think I'd ever listen to them. I like them more than I thought I would. I was blown away by the lyric, "If only she were older," which does not age well. In fairness, they were referencing a J.D. Salinger short story for Esme with Love and Squalor. But it's just, you know, given, given the long arc of time.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:25Yasi Salek?

  We just, maybe lyrics, "If only she were older," I'm just saying, it's maybe you don't wanna have that on your CV.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  You know, it's tough, but it's a reasonable objection.

• 47:35Yasi Salek?

  First of all, Letters and Packages is the name of the song. It's a really good song. You know what? Maybe everything is tragic contemporary. It's the first, first line.

• 47:43Speaker 04

  There's really no doubt about it.

• 47:44Yasi Salek?

  You can't be like, we're not an emo band. And then you start a song with, everything is tragic contemporary.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  The thing about denying them being an emo band in the first place, this is as confessional a lyrical band as you're gonna find.

• 48:07Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I do think in all of the research I did, I didn't, they're one band that I never saw be like, they mostly were just like, that wasn't a thing.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 48:16Yasi Salek?

  They were like, we're not part of this. But they were just like, we, that wasn't really a thing, you know, like, in retrospect, you've sort of like, shoehorned this thing together. But like, while we were existing like that, that wasn't like, we were like, we were gonna be an emo band.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  True. Yes. In that sense, absolutely not. It wasn't a thing you could aspire to being. The ways I've seen them address it are one, aren't all forms of music emo music?

• 48:39Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  Which I, I guess is like a galaxy brained way to think about it. Not untrue.

• 48:43Yasi Salek?

  Is that Ella Maffeo song emo music?

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Which, Party Rock Anthem?

• 48:47Yasi Salek?

  Party Rock Anthem.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think of a single lyric other than Party Rockin' in the House tonight.

• 48:53Yasi Salek?

  Who let the dogs out, emotional music?

• 48:55Speaker 04

  Of course it is.

• 48:56Yasi Salek?

  What's, I guess the emotion is.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  As a fellow dog owner, don't you understand that? Like, who did let the dogs out?

• 49:02Yasi Salek?

  They don't sound melancholy about it, though. They seem stoked that the dogs got let out. That's, that's a celebratory song about the dogs being let out.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  You're right. You're right. I, I guess it is, it is a celebration of a kind. But I think you can tap into that with emo as well. It doesn't have to all be sad boys all the time.

• 49:19Yasi Salek?

  What is the Who let the dogs out of emo music?

• 49:23Speaker 04

  I think it might be Sugar. We're going down, honest with you.

• 49:26Yasi Salek?

  I love it. Yeah, I'll take it. This is a total sidebar, but this Letters and Packages, which again, I like very much, made me really sad that I was like, I do feel we used to see a lot more songs that referenced literature. And actually specifically JD Solinger, are we just like really illiterate now?

• 49:43Speaker 04

  There's no question. Was that, was that up on the table? I thought we had asked and answered that we are all illiterate.

• 49:49Yasi Salek?

  It's really heartbreaking.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  I mean, the kids can barely read books to get through school. They have to have like consolidated assignments. It's a whole thing.

• 49:55Yasi Salek?

  They're certainly not writing beautiful tomes to Holden Caulfield.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  No.

• 50:00Yasi Salek?

  Like Green Day.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  And to be fair, a lot of people who are citing literary works in songs are just like, oh, that line sounded like a bar.

• 50:08Yasi Salek?

  Not Robert Smith.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  No, I'm, look, I'm, I'm not here to besmirch Robert.

• 50:11Yasi Salek?

  So you're here to besmirch the Jonas Brothers, who in their song Six Minutes have the lyrics, "Sometimes I feel like the catcher in the rye, sometimes a witch that I could catch her eye." That's who you're talking about?

• 50:22Speaker 04

  That is what I'm talking about, yes.

• 50:23Yasi Salek?

  You don't think that Joe Jonas has read J.D. Salinger's classic Catcher in the Rye?

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Book on tape, maybe.

• 50:29Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 50:32Yasi Salek?

  I think Joe Jonas has a book club.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Okay. But is it a real book club or is it a social club where they pretend to read the book?

• 50:38Yasi Salek?

  And they have wine and cheese.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  I could see that too.

• 50:41Yasi Salek?

  Again, while no one, as far as I know, experienced this in real time, except for like 12 to 15 people.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:47Yasi Salek?

  I think this is a very promising first piece of released music.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  Yes. As EPs go, if, if this EP came out in a slightly different time and context, there probably would have been actual like label interest in a band like this. But we've kind of crested past that point where bands like them are getting real chances in that vein.

• 51:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, because this is 98.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  That's what I'm saying.

• 51:10Yasi Salek?

  The boom is kind of, the 90s boom of let's, let's sign every guitar rock band on earth is like fully over. And we, we, we talked about it a bit, the Jimmy World story, like we saw what happened with them with their first major label deal and how it's sort of like, they got it, but then it was like, just kidding. So that would have been their junior year. So now their senior year, couple of weeks after graduation, 19, May 1999, Steve Lamos was already in grad school. They're like, all right, let's record our, our debut album. Are we breaking up? The answer is yes.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Definitively yes.

• 51:45Yasi Salek?

  Definitively yes, because we're graduating, my man is going to grad school. We're all gonna seek our fortunes.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Get real ass jobs.

• 51:54Yasi Salek?

  Yes. But Polyvinyl was like, no, we should capture this for posterity, basically, which is really fucking cool of a label to do.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Crazy.

• 52:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, this is DIY, babe.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 52:07Yasi Salek?

  We do things for the love of it. I say we, we work at the Ringer. We work at a tech corporation.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  I mean, you're DIY.

• 52:13Yasi Salek?

  In a sense.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:14Yasi Salek?

  Spiritually. I do do the Google Doc myself.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  You do. No one else could do it like you. You're in the Google Doc Hall of Fame.

• 52:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm on the. Steve Holm said, "The band had no following at the time and we were just documenting a thing and that was it. We had zero expectations that anyone beyond the 1,000 people in our scene would hear it." Steve Lamo said, "It shouldn't have even existed. They knew the band wasn't a band anymore." And he said, "I'd always assumed that Mike, they knew you were gonna do solo work with them and that's why they're like, oh, we'll break even."

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:45Yasi Salek?

  Because we'll have Mike's project, which was called Owen. But I think Paulie Maddow just thought they were really good.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  They were right.

• 52:52Yasi Salek?

  I have some quotes about that. We'll get into it. Okay, so now it's 1999. It's not really relevant, but I think it's interesting to talk about the musical landscape of 1999.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  Please.

• 53:02Yasi Salek?

  To, for us to understand why, um, perhaps this didn't break ground.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  What broke ground? Did anyone feel the breaking of the ground in the moment?

• 53:12Yasi Salek?

  Right. Well, it was released physically in a way that it was hearable music.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:18Yasi Salek?

  Correct.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  But, but also like, I would argue 1999.

• 53:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Is probably like the single most important year in emo music history.

• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Clarity, obviously.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  Clarity, obviously. As I mentioned, like-

• 53:27Yasi Salek?

  Clarity had Stand Up.

• 53:28Speaker 04

  Those were like the two definitive, like inspirational generational albums to come out around this time.

• 53:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  You also have a Promise Ring album. You have, uh, Very Emergency. It was like a little on the poppier side for them, but very good.

• 53:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  You've got the Get Up Kids album, Something to Write Home About.

• 53:41Yasi Salek?

  Let's fucking go.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Huge landmark album. Thursday has their first album this year, Saves the Day as Through Being Cool. And you also have Raina Maria, you have Juliana Theory, you have Orchid. It's like, this is the formation of what ultimately becomes an entire wave.

• 53:55Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what those bands were doing?

• 53:57Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 53:58Yasi Salek?

  Touring.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  They certainly were. They were playing live without having to stop for eight minutes to tune in between songs.

• 54:03Yasi Salek?

  They were traversing the country in a van with a box full of CDs or vinyl and T-shirts and hawking their wares and spreading awareness about their band.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  They certainly were.

• 54:13Yasi Salek?

  And American football was like, "I sat on the couch and played in 13 time while my bro played in 7 time for six hours today. And then I went to poli sci class and now we're gonna go record this album and break up."

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Well, this is why all, like, all that kind of third wave stuff- We were talking about the very pop punk radio version of emo, the Fall Out Boy version of emo, takes no influence from these bands, but the slow gestation.

• 54:37Yasi Salek?

  Fall Out Boy sounds like American football. Is that what you're saying?

• 54:40Speaker 04

  I know it's a bold stance to take, but like.

• 54:42Yasi Salek?

  Actually famously took a lot of inspiration from American Nightmare, but we'll have to get into that right now.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  Different episode.

• 54:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  But like, because it gestates for so long, because this sound that's coming out of this American football and that's coming out of clarity, that's like what defines fourth wave emo, right? It's like those records are bought and kept on a shelf somewhere and kids a little later along, find them and are inspired by them. So it's just like, there's a weird delay in terms of the groundbreaking quality, I think.

• 55:12Yasi Salek?

  So old and tired.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  It's okay. Confusingly, I think the first fourth wave band I think of is modern baseball.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  So we're, we're just, we're fully in the sports zone.

• 55:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I literally had to Google this because I'm so old. Do you understand?

• 55:30Speaker 04

  I think you can do it. I think you can hang with the kids.

• 55:34Yasi Salek?

  Algernon Codwallotter, good band. Um, my beloved Joyce Manor.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Love Joyce Manor.

• 55:41Yasi Salek?

  Not sure I would consider them an emo band.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  Well, how would you identify them?

• 55:46Yasi Salek?

  I'm just kind of a punk band. I guess they were emotional punk music.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  For being honest about it.

• 55:51Yasi Salek?

  I fucking love Joyce Manor. Hometown heroes. We're both Zorans.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  Look at that.

• 55:56Yasi Salek?

  Um, Tiger's Dog, great band. Uh, I don't know any of these other bands. And they're, oh my God, I'm not well. Um, I'm not well. Subgenres and trends. Who is even, people just are saying things. Twinkle daddies.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  We just said that on this podcast.

• 56:15Yasi Salek?

  I know, but I thought I was just like saying stuff.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  No, turns out you are not unique. You're saying the same things that all of the other twinkle daddyers out there are saying.

• 56:23Yasi Salek?

  Sparkle punk, weed mo. Do you know what these things are?

• 56:28Speaker 04

  I mean, are all genres this way? Bubble brunch?

• 56:30Yasi Salek?

  Grandma get you to bed hours for me. Um,

• 56:36Yasi Salek?

  okay. Well, fourth wave emo, you learn something new every single day. Embrace, found dead in a ditch. Um.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  That's in the zone, though.

• 56:47Yasi Salek?

  Do you think the kids listen to Embrace?

• 56:49Speaker 04

  I do not.

• 56:51Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, time has flattened for all music, except unfortunately, Embrace.

• 56:57Yasi Salek?

  Do the kids listen to Rites of Spring?

• 56:58Speaker 04

  I hope so.

• 56:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  I mean, it genuinely does feel like those, whether you're talking about the Rites of Spring era of like, if you even want to call that emo and the American Football Clarity era stuff, like, those are the touchstones, right?

• 57:12Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  If you look at modern, contemporary, quote-unquote, emo revival music, a lot of it sounds like that, or sounds like people who grew up listening to that.

• 57:21Yasi Salek?

  Got it. Okay, so you're saying it's Skipper Generation, like a recessive gene or something?

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Yes. I think there's like-

• 57:26Yasi Salek?

  Twinkle Daddy-ism.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  There's a couple of highways kind of going alongside each other, and one of them just like veered into like Blink-182 territory so hard that it blended it all together into a weird mix that became a slightly different kind of emo for a while.

• 57:39Yasi Salek?

  Got it.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  And I don't say that with any judgment. I love, I love that music too, but it is clearly different than anything that a band like American Football is going for.

• 57:48Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Okay, well-

• 57:50Speaker 04

  Welcome to my TED Talk. Thank you.

• 57:52Yasi Salek?

  That was beautiful. I'm gonna tell you what else is going on in music, though. This is the year of Backstreet Boys' Millennium and also Britney Spears' Day one more time.

• 58:02Yasi Salek?

  Blink-182's "Enema of the State" comes out this year and is pretty popular.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 58:07Yasi Salek?

  Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Heard of it.

• 58:10Yasi Salek?

  Ricky Martin.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:12Yasi Salek?

  "Live in La Vida Loca."

• 58:13Speaker 04

  It's the only way to live.

• 58:14Yasi Salek?

  You know it, babe. Is that an emo song?

• 58:17Speaker 04

  It's an emo song. I would say you could retitle many of the tracks on American Football LP3.

• 58:23Yasi Salek?

  "Live in La Vida Loca."

• 58:24Speaker 04

  And it would kind of work.

• 58:25Yasi Salek?

  "Live in La Vida Sad."

• 58:27Speaker 04

  Certainly.

• 58:27Yasi Salek?

  Sad Boy. All right, let's fucking go. American Football LP1. Ian Cohen, our great Ken Burns of emo, if you will, the scholar, the great scholar of emo, said, "American Football's greatest innovation was successfully removing any trace of punk rock while still functioning within the genre." I thought that was actually a really astute point, right? There's not much

• 58:50Speaker 04

  There's not.

• 58:50Yasi Salek?

  Recognizably punk about this music. The drumming is jazz. Punk guys don't know how to play the guitar. That's kind of a hallmark.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  It's one of the deals.

• 59:01Yasi Salek?

  Or, you know, it's, it's power cordy or, you know. Um, I mean, respect, Joe Strummer was a phenomenal guitar player. He said, whatever you think punk rock means, they got rid of American football. There's no confrontation, almost no distortion, no power chords, and none of the verse chorus structure that was maintained even when emo became virtually synonymous with alt rock. That's really interesting.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  Definitely. I, I think there's something too there where those bands that are punkier, that are coming with a harder sound. The musicianship, I think you're right, is kind of the differentiating point where it's like, if you are, even in your primitive 20, 22 year old way, a really inventive guitarist, you don't have to overcompensate with energy. You know, regardless of what you're going for, what your artistic aims for. It's like, there's a certain kind of musician where like, if you don't come with 150% energy all the time.

• 59:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  It's just gonna be power chords, right? Like, it's just gonna feel flat. And I think part of the reason that a band like American Football can afford to be understated, that can afford to trail out a one and a half minute song into a five minute instrumental, is because like, they have the musicianship to back it up even this early.

• 1:00:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. And it's just interesting when we get what we talk about, when we talk about emo, is so interesting because what a fucking like area it traverses with how different every aspect of it.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  It's a big tent.

• 1:00:26Yasi Salek?

  And the way, it's a big tent. And the way you can have this album that is just so fundamentally far away from, I mean, any of those bands that you just mentioned.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Yasi Salek?

  Fall Out Boy, Thursday, even Thursday. I mean, Thursday's maybe a little bit closer.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  You could see, like, again, a long trail leading to Thursday, but it's not a straight line.

• 1:00:46Yasi Salek?

  It's not a straight line. Okay. This album is produced by Brendan Gamble. Brendan Gamble, uh, was in a new wave band called Ak Ak. Um, that's right. They had a 1985 single called Another Face. And then he was the second drummer in the band Poster Children. Um, and he was just like a local, cool musician guy.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Yasi Salek?

  Who was really not that much older than them, but they felt he was like this, like sort of elder in the music space.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  Yet another older brother figure.

• 1:01:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They recorded in like a garage.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. A literal garage.

• 1:01:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So we've already, we've established American football LP one.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:29Yasi Salek?

  Is a founding father of this wave of emo.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:01:35Yasi Salek?

  You'd agree with that.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  I would agree. Again, on delay, but yes.

• 1:01:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, on delay, on delay. Um, but what if it's actually wistful ska?

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  Hmm. Because of the trumpet.

• 1:01:46Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Are you inventing wistful ska?

• 1:01:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  In the vein of the genres you were just listing.

• 1:01:53Yasi Salek?

  I think it's better than Twinkle Daddy.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  I think they might be one and the same. What is Twinkle Daddy if not wistful ska?

• 1:02:00Yasi Salek?

  If not wistful ska. Okay, that's all I just wanted to pop. I wanted to throw my hat in the ring.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  I appreciate it.

• 1:02:05Yasi Salek?

  For a new, a new genre for American football.

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  Well, did anybody, um, what is the form of dancing you do when you play ska?

• 1:02:12Yasi Salek?

  Skinking?

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Did anybody in American football ever at any time skank?

• 1:02:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, I don't feel like with wistful ska, you could skank.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  You skunk.

• 1:02:20Yasi Salek?

  You, yeah, sure. Okay. I need, I need a workshop this more. Um, okay. Well, to the emo question, besides the fact that maybe they're not, uh, they're not wistful ska. Um, Mike Insola said, if we were, you know, whatever, I guess if emo is the word, and I don't know, I think we were just sort of like a quiet, understated emotive band.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. That is true.

• 1:02:46Yasi Salek?

  That's true. And then Steve Holmes said, um, why is one genre emo and every other one is not? I just think it's so dumb. Aren't the Smiths the most emo band that ever was, which is an excellent question?

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  They are.

• 1:02:56Yasi Salek?

  Isn't all good music emotional? If so, Tori?

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Not necessarily.

• 1:03:00Yasi Salek?

  Well, we just talked about Who Let the Dogs Out.

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  Which may or may not be.

• 1:03:04Yasi Salek?

  The Baha Men.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  That's the, that's the question I want bands and listeners to answer more than any others. Like, what is the deep-seated emotion within Who Let the Dogs Out?

• 1:03:12Yasi Salek?

  Who, who?

• 1:03:19Yasi Salek?

  Why is this not post rock? Or is it?

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  It's definitely partly post-rock.

• 1:03:25Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:03:25Speaker 04

  And it doesn't work without that element, as we've already described. Like, that being a differentiating quality, I think, is really important. And it sort of factors into, like, the looping nature of their music, where this album especially is such a, like, put-the-record-on piece of art.

• 1:03:39Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Uh, I am usually a, like, put-on-music-while-I-do-stuff kind of person.

• 1:03:44Yasi Salek?

  What's your activity that you do to American football?

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  Lay on the couch and think about life?

• 1:03:49Yasi Salek?

  I messaged you the other day and I said, um, I've been listening to American football for one week straight.

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Yasi Salek?

  And I need to go to hospital.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  It's really the only follow-up activity.

• 1:03:59Yasi Salek?

  I think they have to put a medical advisory, like, the parental advisory, but a medical advisory sticker on all subsequent releases that says, "Do not do this. Do not listen to this only for a week."

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  You gotta space it out. You gotta mix things up.

• 1:04:14Yasi Salek?

  I had to put on Groove Armada Super Stylin.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  That makes sense. Pallet cleanser.

• 1:04:18Yasi Salek?

  Like a...

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  Or defibrillator.

• 1:04:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like an adrenaline shot, like, bring me back to life. Because I was truly, like, I was drowning.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  Yes. It will slow you down, and then, again, just put your ass on the couch and make you lay out and just kind of immobilize you.

• 1:04:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  With...

• 1:04:32Yasi Salek?

  It's like Xanax.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  It is like Xanax.

• 1:04:33Yasi Salek?

  It's like musical Xanax. Except that it doesn't make me not feel anxious, unfortunately. The album was recorded to ADAT tapes. This is for my heads. You know who I'm talking about. My gear heads.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Yasi Salek?

  My Tape Op subscribers.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:50Yasi Salek?

  And mixed on a Tascam digital tape deck. That mix was bounced to a DAT tape master, from which subsequent reissues have been struck. Steve Holm said, "We recorded the album the week after graduation. I remember being particularly pleased with how Never Men came out. We knew that we nailed that one." The whole thing was pretty easy, though. Most songs were done in a couple takes, and then we'd go back and double guitars to build up the sound a bit. There was no bass, except for the two tracks Mike played bass live on. It's very interesting, right? Very unusual to have no bass in a mate.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  Completely. I think this is where the post-rock elements of that pay off, right? Because it's like, they don't have a bass, but they have two guitars and a drum, and sometimes a trumpet, and they're double-looping both guitars. So there's, like, four guitars, basically, how... Like, to me, so much of the part... Started listening to American football. It's like the first time you listen to it's like, oh, this is pretty rad. Like, this is cool to listen to. The second time you're like, oh, this is devastatingly sad. And the third time you're like, is that a fifth guitar that I hear? And then the fourth time you're like, oh, wait, this is really rad. And the sixth time you're like, oh, no, I need hospital.

• 1:05:49Yasi Salek?

  I need hospital. Yeah. Six times is probably the time where you're like, ja, telephone ambulance. Ja, telephone police and ja, telephone ambulance.

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  This is American football. You need to speak English, please.

• 1:06:02Yasi Salek?

  Mike said, this is the vibes of them recording. I remember those days recording not being very fun. I think there was some tension by the end. I remember on a song, Les Mus wasn't happy with my bass playing, so he re-recorded it. And that's what you hear on the album. Stuff like that was just like, well, we're breaking up anyway. Who cares? The song that he re-records the bass on, it was, I'll see you when we're both not so emotional.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  Great song.

• 1:06:22Yasi Salek?

  And he felt he played the drums badly. So he wanted more bass on top of it to hide his messy, his shoddy work.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:06:32Yasi Salek?

  And Mike was like, I'm not doing that. Presumably because he was like, this band is fake. We've already broken up.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Yasi Salek?

  Who fucking cares? Slap that shit on the record. And Steve was like, no, it's, I will not be humiliated.

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  I will play more bass.

• 1:06:47Yasi Salek?

  I will play more bass.

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  To camouflage my own flaws.

• 1:06:49Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:06:49Speaker 04

  And what could be more American football than that?

• 1:06:51Yasi Salek?

  And I would simply have never noticed, but now you know the lore behind that.

• 1:07:04Yasi Salek?

  Steve said, it's weird in retrospect that breaking up was such a non-event. The distance from Chicago to Champagne just felt insurmountable, I guess, or maybe unnecessary. We didn't think anyone would care. We only played a couple of shows. I needed a job because I had loans. It was fun and we documented it for posterity, but now we're moving on. It's more of an art project than anything for us. Indie bands weren't a thing, or it was at a level that we felt was unattainable for us.

• 1:07:28Speaker 04

  Well, I think that's a reasonable way to feel.

• 1:07:30Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Given the lack of live experience, given how like, they have said themselves, like, they thought they played awfully in those live performances. Like, they just weren't ready to be a band other than guys noodling around in the garage.

• 1:07:42Yasi Salek?

  Also, you have to want it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  You do have to want it.

• 1:07:44Yasi Salek?

  I think being in a band at this level is really fucking hard. And it's a lot of schlepping and it's a lot of misery and it's a lot of sleeping on people's couches and punk houses and floors. And making no money and like. If you don't want it, you're never gonna make it. You're never gonna make it past St. Louis or whatever.

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  No, this, this part that you're describing is in a lot of ways, the fun part, right? Like the early stages of DIY where you have all the energy and all the momentum. And it like, again, the creativity is flowing and you're not bogged down by logistics yet. That's the easy part.

• 1:08:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  They bailed before it got truly hard and where so many other bands just kind of completely peter out.

• 1:08:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay, you alluded to this earlier, but I think it is really interesting that Mike Consola did not do the vocals until the last session at the studio.

• 1:08:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Yasi Salek?

  Ninety percent of them, he finished in the studio. They did not exist. He said he just had these notebooks with like vague high school diary stuff in them. And he was, he said, I'm trying to write songs that sound like Depeche Mode or The Cure, the bands that I liked. That's sort of like overtly dramatic. And they seemed at the time, super youthful to me still, but they weren't even like, that wasn't necessarily themed. It was just sort of these lines and then maybe I would flush them out a bit and give this line a bit of a story. But nothing was that specific.

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:09:08Yasi Salek?

  Basically what he's saying in a lot of words there is like, I was just vibing.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  Just vibing, not real in this, in the strictest, the most literal sense.

• 1:09:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  I think is also part of the reason it works, like the vagueness.

• 1:09:18Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:09:19Speaker 04

  You fill in the gaps.

• 1:09:20Yasi Salek?

  It has this like really dreamy, fragmentary nature that I do think really like lends itself to the dreamy music that's happening.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  But it still feels really intimate.

• 1:09:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Especially with this first record, the feeling it always gives me is like that very uncanny vibe of, am I allowed to be here? It's like, I'm reading, it's like I've gone.

• 1:09:41Yasi Salek?

  Too intimate, like you shouldn't be privy to this.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  I've gone into some, like my friend's house and I opened the wrong door and I'm like, I shouldn't be seeing this. And I think it's like how, again, like raw and confessional, the lyrics are even being that vague and sparse. And then also like the production of the record is like very intentionally unfinished. Right? Like it's like stylistically, that's the choice that they've chosen to make where there's the outtake at the start of Never Met.

• 1:10:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:10:02Speaker 04

  There's all these like rough around the edges moments and it gives it that like lived in, in this moment, inescapable quality. But it does feel like, like, am I allowed to be a part of this or not?

• 1:10:22Yasi Salek?

  I do wonder now, like, knowing all of this information,

• 1:10:27Yasi Salek?

  how much of the knowing that American football is breaking up and that likely thinking that nobody would really hear this, like they said, outside of 1,000 people, created the environment in which Mike Consello could feel free enough to be kind of so vulnerable with those lyrics that he kind of put in the 11th hour. And also to your point, that they could feel so free as musicians to maybe not overthink it or stress it too much. And obviously, they gave it a really, you know, strong effort, but like, there's unfinished bits and there's rough around the edges, like you're saying. And all of that created this beautiful storm that made this album that many people consider perfect as exactly as it is.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  An album that's about the endings of things. In a very like, I'm 22 kind of way, right? It's like when the summer ends, kind of the endings of things, but it's really impossible how it all came together. And you're right, like, there is a certain release in the fact that if you know it's doomed, why not do the thing you want to do? And to your point about like, redubbing the bass or taking parts over, it's like, you don't have to be so precious about every single thing if you know this is already over.

• 1:11:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I mean, I find, I don't know if you would agree, but I find often with creativity in my own life, like, the best things come out when I don't feel this pressure or I don't think about the outcome of other people experiencing it, because then I'll get to it in my own head.

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  If it's just for you, and there's no chance it will ever mean anything.

• 1:11:58Yasi Salek?

  If it's just for you and the members of Braid, then it's fine.

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  I make everything in my life for the members of Braid.

• 1:12:04Yasi Salek?

  For the members of Braid, yeah. Every podcast you do, you're like, this goes out.

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  Dedication.

• 1:12:08Yasi Salek?

  To Braid. Before we get into all the songs, let's talk about the cover. Because obviously, what is more...

• 1:12:17Yasi Salek?

  Iconic in the emo genre visually. Than the cover of the American Football.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  It's very important. For better or worse, depending on who you ask, but is very important.

• 1:12:29Yasi Salek?

  Once again, imagine you and your bros are making an album of your college art project that you are certain no one will ever care about. That is over and it's time to pick some artwork and you're like, that house picture is good.

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, the one that's like slightly askew, looking up, catching some sky in the background. Sure, man.

• 1:12:48Yasi Salek?

  That's fine. Thanks, Chris Strong.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:12:50Yasi Salek?

  Who took that photo for us. We don't even live there. It has literally basically nothing to do with our band.

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  I think he lived there. Somebody lived there.

• 1:12:58Yasi Salek?

  Chris Strong lived there.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, the photographer himself.

• 1:13:00Yasi Salek?

  And he was their unofficial band photographer. And now it's iconic. Now you can rent it on Airbnb when you do your Midwestern emo tourism.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  You can.

• 1:13:08Yasi Salek?

  And that is really funny.

• 1:13:12Speaker 04

  How do I feel about the fact that you can rent the American Football House as an Airbnb? I think like honestly, this is kind of.

• 1:13:19Yasi Salek?

  I feel bad about it.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  I feel, I feel bad.

• 1:13:21Yasi Salek?

  I feel not well.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  But it's like, this is the reckoning you have to do with this band.

• 1:13:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  Is they wouldn't exist in their current form. You and I would not be talking about them on this podcast if they were not a weird online memeable phenomenon. That caught so many other people up on their music, in some ways myself included, on delay.

• 1:13:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Speaker 04

  And that's the thing that makes this available and it's, that is beautiful. But then the commodification of that into you can now rent this house as an Airbnb and there's like an X out on the sidewalk where you can take the exact photo from the, it's, it's all kind of gross and weird and also awesome and I don't know what to do with all that.

• 1:13:57Yasi Salek?

  Would you rather take a photo in front of American Football House or Discord House?

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  It's gotta be the American Football House.

• 1:14:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:14:05Speaker 04

  I would rent this. This is the thing. I say all this.

• 1:14:07Yasi Salek?

  You would rent it.

• 1:14:07Speaker 04

  I would rent it. I, if I ever found the occasion to be in Urbana Champagne or Champagne Urbana, I would do it.

• 1:14:13Yasi Salek?

  You can renew your vows with your wife.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Maybe so.

• 1:14:16Yasi Salek?

  At the American Football House.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  That seems like a cursed idea. I'm gonna be honest with you. These are not the songs to renew your vows to.

• 1:14:23Yasi Salek?

  Mike Gonzalez said about the cover, it's just a joke to us now. It's not like we set out to extrapolate or communicate any sort of greater feeling or message with that cover. All the associations kind of happen themselves. I guess I like the cover. Chris is an amazing photographer. We just thought it was a cool picture.

• 1:14:39Speaker 04

  And we should say, I believe they and the label in some combination now own the house. So like it isn't.

• 1:14:44Yasi Salek?

  Is that true?

• 1:14:45Speaker 04

  I, they at some point purchased it. I think it was at risk of being demolished. They bought it to save it, even though they kind of hated it.

• 1:14:51Yasi Salek?

  That's where we put the Mount Rushmore of emo.

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  Just right on the front.

• 1:14:54Yasi Salek?

  On the property of the, the American football house.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  You're absolutely right.

• 1:14:58Yasi Salek?

  Don't you agree?

• 1:14:59Speaker 04

  It was right there in front of us all along.

• 1:15:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  Unless, does the house need to be one of the four faces on the Mount Rushmore?

• 1:15:05Yasi Salek?

  Great question.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  That might be the only problem.

• 1:15:06Yasi Salek?

  We need to call in a real artist to tackle this.

• 1:15:08Speaker 04

  Truly.

• 1:15:09Yasi Salek?

  Okay, the song titles are all titled after the last note line of the song, correct? Yeah, it's an interesting one. Never Meant.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  I've heard of it.

• 1:15:18Yasi Salek?

  You've heard of it. Not to be overly dramatic.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:15:22Yasi Salek?

  But this is obviously, this is the song.

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  It's the one.

• 1:15:26Yasi Salek?

  This is the one.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Yasi Salek?

  It is played in six four time. Again, I'm doing theater. That's just what I read.

• 1:15:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. I would believe any combination.

• 1:15:33Yasi Salek?

  Thirteen, twelve, seventy-two, six, like.

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  Yes, but, but I believe that not just because in this moment you and I don't know what we're talking about, but also if you said they shifted eight times over the course of the song, I would believe that because it feels in character for them.

• 1:15:47Yasi Salek?

  So true. Okay, so this is what Limo said about Never Meant. We decided before the album was even recorded that we were gonna quit. I vividly remember finishing the Never Meant take. I just thought, wow, we'll never play that song that well again. It's funny, now I'm not even that crazy about that song. I don't dislike it, but it's not my favorite. There are others like Stay Home and Honestly that I like playing more in a live setting. But that recorded version of Never Meant feels pretty special. And Mike Consola said, I'm surprised it's sort of popular. No, I'm like, it's a great little fucking pop song.

• 1:16:21Yasi Salek?

  But am I surprised the whole album is popular? Yes. What, what is, is Never, you said Never Meant was the first American football song you heard?

• 1:16:31Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:16:32Yasi Salek?

  What did you feel about it when you heard it?

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  I've never heard anything like this. You know, I think, I think a lot of that is the lead in the guitar specifically, right? The riff is famous for a reason. There's nothing else like it in the genre or anything that's come since has been basically an imitation of it in a lot of ways. And so it's just like reaching for something out of the gate, track one.

• 1:16:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  It's like, oh, this, maybe this is an album worth digging into in its entirety. Maybe this is more than just like a silly pop song out of the gate. And I think all of their music, but especially this song. It's just like activating all the parts of your brain.

• 1:17:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  And I think the best songs often do. But the simplest ones, you know, like a really great, really simple pop song doesn't like stimulate something in the way that like, weirdly enough, math rock does. Where you're just like, listening to these weird rhythms and your brain's trying to put them all together. And at the same time, you're listening to these like, achingly sincere lyrics. And it's just emotional and evocative and it's just like stacking over and over and over and looping over and over where it's just like, it grabs you and it never lets you go.

• 1:17:39Yasi Salek?

  I feel like there's something about this type of music that American football makes this, that is like, binaural beats. Do you know what I mean? That it does put you into like, a weird trance, like a meditative state. It's hypnotic. And you are sort of like, against your will, thrust into this like, accessing emotions of the past, you know? And hospital.

• 1:18:05Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 1:18:05Yasi Salek?

  Should telephone ambulance.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  I, I think that they allow themselves to be that hypnotic is a talent in itself. To get out of the way of thinking, especially if you're as technical as these guys clearly are of like, oh, we need more of this, or more of that, or more of this, or more of that. They are a band that, and maybe, this is what I love about them, if you don't like American football, maybe what you hate about them, when they know a good idea when they have it, and if it's a riff, they're just gonna play that shit on loop, the whole song. And if it's a line, they might just repeat it for half the song.

• 1:18:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  And it's like, that lends itself to that sort of hypnosis, but I think it gives a lot of their music a really unique feel as a result.

• 1:18:43Yasi Salek?

  I don't wanna harp on this, but I just can't, I'm continuously struck by the fact that like, none, this album probably would never have happened in the incredible way it did, had they not been a band that played live. You can't fucking play these songs, you can't tour and know that you're gonna play all these songs live every night and write songs like this.

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:19:02Yasi Salek?

  You wouldn't do it.

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  You would never do that to yourself.

• 1:19:04Yasi Salek?

  Yes, or to the audience. Should telephone, please, hospital.

• 1:19:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Never Meant's a banger. Sorry about it.

• 1:19:12Speaker 04

  It's very good.

• 1:19:12Yasi Salek?

  Banger is maybe the incorrect term.

• 1:19:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Yasi Salek?

  It is banging on my heart.

• 1:19:18Speaker 04

  Yes, on something inside of you.

• 1:19:20Yasi Salek?

  On my tender and raw heart.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:23Yasi Salek?

  "The Summer Ends" is the next song. Steve Lamo said, "Because I'm not a singer, I'm afraid to sing. I think this was sort of my attempt to contribute something melodically."

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  The trumpet.

• 1:19:34Yasi Salek?

  Trumpet. "I listened to almost nothing but jazz, especially to that point in my life, but I love it so much. And I think it's bubbled up into whatever this is in ways that I hope are at least true to the spirit." You know, jazz is sort of like this amazing cultural expression in this country of love and joy and African-American struggle and freedom and all these things. And here's me as a white kid from the suburbs. Just that music was so incredibly meaningful and important to me. And I think if nothing else, it's just sort of given me a frame of reference for trying to understand what music is about. That was nice.

• 1:20:04Speaker 04

  I think that's very sweet.

• 1:20:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  They are very sensitive boys, you know?

• 1:20:08Yasi Salek?

  He did go ahead and put it into the whitest music genre of all time.

• 1:20:11Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 1:20:11Yasi Salek?

  Which is emo music, Midwestern emo music. Um, Midwestern emo music is for white men.

• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  Can't argue it again. You're making very fair points.

• 1:20:20Yasi Salek?

  It's available to everyone, but it is seem to be embraced the most.

• 1:20:23Speaker 04

  It does.

• 1:20:24Yasi Salek?

  Sad white men.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:20:25Yasi Salek?

  With hooded sweatshirts who just constantly are breaking up with people, I guess.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  I guess so. Yeah, I've heard in terms of the reunion tours, like the audiences at these tours been described as like, I mean, frankly, a bunch of guys who look like me basically doing the Charlie Brown dance. It is just kind of what it is, you know?

• 1:20:43Yasi Salek?

  It's rough.

• 1:20:43Speaker 04

  You either lean into it or you don't.

• 1:20:44Yasi Salek?

  This is the closest thing you guys have to like a support group, I guess.

• 1:20:47Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 1:20:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Mike Insella said, "Summer ends, if I remember." What we were trying to capture or evoke back then was the ending of things. I think we were conscious, like we didn't want to be like a rock band. I think it's got a nice pace to it. I'm not sure, um, at what point I put the vocals in. I think it was kind of last minute.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  But the vocals are beautiful.

• 1:21:08Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:21:09Speaker 04

  And the trumpet is beautiful. Like, this is another one where the trumpet, of course, is very melancholy, because these are very melancholy songs.

• 1:21:15Yasi Salek?

  Wistful ska, would you say?

• 1:21:17Speaker 04

  I would, I would dare say it's wistful ska. But it's like, it's wistful and melancholy in a way that like, feels like I'm being wrapped up by a warm blanket or something. You know, like, there, there is a weird-

• 1:21:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, wrapped up over and over again, over my mouth-

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Yasi Salek?

  And my nose, until I can't breathe anymore, and then I'm lulled away.

• 1:21:32Speaker 04

  Bury me so long as it's listening to this song as you do it.

• 1:21:47Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna be honest.

• 1:21:48Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:21:48Yasi Salek?

  Honestly-

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Yasi Salek?

  Is my favorite song.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  It's a great song.

• 1:21:51Yasi Salek?

  I know that's kind of a basic opinion, because it is the most standard song.

• 1:21:57Speaker 04

  But it rips.

• 1:21:58Yasi Salek?

  It's a rockin' song, babe, as Steve Holmes called it.

• 1:22:01Speaker 04

  Do you remember your teenage feelings?

• 1:22:04Yasi Salek?

  Every day, babe. They've never left, unfortunately. And that's why I'm the way I am.

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  It is the way you are. It's also why, look, you resist it. You, you're holding it at arm's length, but you are a Midwest emo at heart.

• 1:22:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, in many ways, yes. And many, well, as, as I've said on the podcast, in many ways, I'm a, you know, middle-aged white man at heart. So that makes a lot of sense-

• 1:22:23Speaker 04

  It does track.

• 1:22:23Yasi Salek?

  That it would resonate with me. God, that's a, that's a really good line. Honestly, I can't remember teen dreams, all my teenage feelings and the meanings.

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  The guitar on this one is also super fun, or guitars, uh, because it's, it's that like weird, one is chasing the other, kind of like just out of time feeling. It's, it's awesome.

• 1:22:50Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool. Yeah, basically, Steve Holmes said, Mike wrote the opening riff, and we're basically playing the same part. So he's playing-

• 1:22:58Speaker 04

  Literally the same part.

• 1:22:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's playing like the melody, and, um, we're both playing the same thing, but he's on the upbeat and I'm on the downbeat. And I feel like it has a stutter start. It's almost like a mess-up, but what people don't realize is that's on purpose. Because what you're hearing is the upbeat, and then we come in on the down. So it feels abrupt when the drums come in. But it's basically the two guitar parts chasing each other the whole time.

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 1:23:21Yasi Salek?

  And that's so cool.

• 1:23:31Speaker 04

  There is a lot on this album that is like college kids who think they are quite clever.

• 1:23:36Yasi Salek?

  See what I did there?

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, or like we talked about, like, I'm trying to write a Robert Smith lyric. Or I am trying to make a My Bloody Valentine outro to this song.

• 1:23:46Yasi Salek?

  This is what they said about this one. They were trying to make a My Bloody Valentine outro.

• 1:23:49Speaker 04

  It feels like it.

• 1:23:50Yasi Salek?

  A big swirling thing. This song has synth on it, which is one of the few songs that has synth in that outro. And then we have For Sure. Blow that horn, honey. Let's go. Whisper, scoff.

• 1:24:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I mean, we're going like full shoegaze on this one.

• 1:24:04Yasi Salek?

  Because of the vocals.

• 1:24:06Speaker 04

  I think it's as shoegazy as his vocals ever gotten.

• 1:24:08Yasi Salek?

  I mean, when the whispered, "Imagine us together," goodbye. Je telephone. Je telephone ambulance.

• 1:24:15Speaker 04

  You're deceased.

• 1:24:16Yasi Salek?

  That's where I'm in the hos- in le hospital.

• 1:24:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think I agree with you. That is the shoegazyest. This is one of the two songs that has bass on it. Mike plays it. Steve Holmes said this is the first song they wrote.

• 1:24:35Speaker 04

  Is that true?

• 1:24:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. First song the band ever had. He said, "I wrote it probably like in winter break, right before we started the band. I had just gotten my first acoustic guitar."

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  It kind of makes sense in a way. It's a little disconnected.

• 1:24:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because like you're saying, it has that like really shoegazy thing that none of the other songs have. I don't want to say it's more simple.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:24:56Yasi Salek?

  But a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Not as intricate, maybe.

• 1:25:01Yasi Salek?

  June seems too late.

• 1:25:03Speaker 04

  A lot of summer happening.

• 1:25:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, they're in college.

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  This is the thing.

• 1:25:06Yasi Salek?

  They orient themselves around summer. It's so, it's so obviously

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Yasi Salek?

  an album written by college students, you know? Nobody else in adulthood orients themselves around the summer anymore, right?

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  I wish I did.

• 1:25:19Yasi Salek?

  Unless you're a school teacher, I guess.

• 1:25:20Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:25:21Yasi Salek?

  Maybe you do. What, when does basketball start?

• 1:25:24Speaker 04

  I mean, it ends in the summer. The NBA finals are in the summer.

• 1:25:27Yasi Salek?

  So in a way.

• 1:25:28Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:25:28Yasi Salek?

  You're free.

• 1:25:29Speaker 04

  Yes, into late summer, early fall. You're, I mean, you're right. I, I in many ways am trapped in eternal adolescence, you know? Never have escaped it.

• 1:25:38Yasi Salek?

  I don't know why I didn't write any notes for, you know, I should be leaving soon. It's a good song. I just didn't know.

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  It is a good song. I mean, it's fully instrumental, if I'm not mistaken.

• 1:25:45Yasi Salek?

  That's why, because no, no, no lyrics for me to quote. Interesting that it's fully instrumental, but that's the title.

• 1:25:55Yasi Salek?

  Because they put all the meaning right there in the title.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 1:25:58Yasi Salek?

  But the regrets are killing me.

• 1:26:00Speaker 04

  Also has some great riffs. They're, I mean, again, Never Meant is the, the very splashy one.

• 1:26:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  That if you know American football in any capacity, you have heard.

• 1:26:08Yasi Salek?

  When they were like, we made a pop song.

• 1:26:10Speaker 04

  Yes. But like, a lot of these songs have riffs that other bands would be very jealous of.

• 1:26:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Speaker 04

  And I think But The Regrets Are Killing Me is one of them.

• 1:26:26Yasi Salek?

  If you guys wanted to know, it's a song that Steve Holmes wrote in a tuning that he made up called C sharp, G sharp.

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:26:33Yasi Salek?

  It's basically standard, but the D is dropped half a step and the G is raised half a step. This was really challenging for me to search because I was like, I am reading Russian Yeah. over and over and over again. I don't know what you guys are talking about.

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  I would love, I would pay good money for a subscription to Yasi Salek doing explainer videos on music theory. Just, just you researching and riffing. That's all I want.

• 1:26:55Yasi Salek?

  Maybe like, okay, so G is what's being played here. I think. Steve Holmes is actually gonna sing this song. He wrote the lyrics.

• 1:27:05Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:27:05Yasi Salek?

  But then when it got to the 11th hour, he was like, I can't, I can't do it. So Mike.

• 1:27:10Speaker 04

  Too much guitar, too much singing. Don't want to do it.

• 1:27:11Yasi Salek?

  Just like, he just didn't want to sing.

• 1:27:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Yasi Salek?

  But, so Mike is singing Steve Holmes' lyrics on this one. So I think this is one of the ones that he actually didn't write the lyrics to. Makes sense because the lyrics are a little bit different than the ones usually.

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  That's a great shout. I hadn't put that together.

• 1:27:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, you didn't, uh, read 400 articles.

• 1:27:30Speaker 04

  That was a mistake.

• 1:27:32Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it was. Okay. The next song is I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  This might be my favorite song.

• 1:27:38Yasi Salek?

  Interesting.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  I love, I love this one. I do love Honestly. Never Meant is kind of, Never Meant is kind of its own, like.

• 1:27:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's, you can't, that can't be your favorite song.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  It can't.

• 1:27:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's disqualified.

• 1:27:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:48Yasi Salek?

  This is definitely neck and neck with Honestly. And it's no surprise to me that Steve Lamo said, we used to call this one the promise ring song.

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  Yes. That's, this is why I like it.

• 1:27:56Yasi Salek?

  Let's fucking go. David Von Bollin. They wanted to write a normal song, is what he said.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  It is very normal. Maybe that in itself is a reason why it can't be my favorite song.

• 1:28:06Yasi Salek?

  Is it very normal, or is it just very normal within the context of this album?

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  It's all relative, yeah. It's not top forty material yet. I did see a quote from Mike Nocello where he's like, "We almost don't have choruses because I don't know how to write a fucking hit." Like, all these songs feel that way. Like, they don't have traditional structure, they don't have choruses. Even their attempt to be like, "This is the poppiest thing we can do."

• 1:28:27Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna tell you what, Nocello Brothers could not write a hook, gun to their heads, and that's fine. They don't need to.

• 1:28:33Speaker 04

  That's what the guitars are for.

• 1:28:34Yasi Salek?

  That's what the guitars are for. And even though Steve Lamos played drums poorly in his own estimation on here, I think it worked anyways.

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  I see nothing to hide.

• 1:28:43Yasi Salek?

  I literally can't hear it.

• 1:28:45Speaker 04

  But maybe that's because he hit it.

• 1:28:46Yasi Salek?

  Because he played so much bass over it.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  He just layered it up.

• 1:28:48Yasi Salek?

  What do you think they do live? He didn't say. Do you think now that they're reunited and touring, he made Nate Nocello?

• 1:28:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, the newfound bassist and cousin.

• 1:28:58Yasi Salek?

  The cousin of Mike and Tim to play the fancy bass over his... Or do you think he corrected his drumming?

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  I think he corrected it. He seems like the kind of technical perfectionist who'd be like, "I would never let that happen again."

• 1:29:09Yasi Salek?

  But then it won't sound the same as it does on the record if there's not the extra bass on it.

• 1:29:12Speaker 04

  It never would. We are decades into the future.

• 1:29:15Yasi Salek?

  You're so right. None of these songs will ever sound the same at any given show, probably.

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  That was lightning in a bottle. Can't find that again.

• 1:29:22Yasi Salek?

  Sure. "Stay Home" is Steve Holmes' favorite song.

• 1:29:26Speaker 04

  See, I'm tempted by that, too.

• 1:29:28Yasi Salek?

  Now you're here. Wow, you're a real fair weather favorite song guy on this.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  You're just listing songs. Okay, I actually do have a favorite.

• 1:29:34Yasi Salek?

  I am just listing songs, that's what bands want.

• 1:29:36Speaker 04

  Well, I know, but I'm swayed by the listing. My actual favorite American football song, we haven't talked about, we're gonna talk about later. This one, though.

• 1:29:44Yasi Salek?

  Your actual favorite song is not on LP1?

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  It's not.

• 1:29:47Yasi Salek?

  Incredible. I can't wait to talk about it.

• 1:29:49Speaker 04

  I can't wait to talk about it, too. "Stay Home," though, I think has an argument as like their best, most complete song on this album. It feels like the most fully actualized, most mature effort. And frankly, like, look, this is your show. I don't know what authority I have here. I would love to hear.

• 1:30:05Yasi Salek?

  What would you like to illustrate?

• 1:30:07Speaker 04

  The transition's like twenty to twenty-five seconds into the song, where we go from one very charming guitar to all of a sudden just pounding layers of instruments that are piling up as the song intensifies. And I feel even more sunken into my couch in the process.

• 1:30:22Yasi Salek?

  That's when you're like... Shoulda telephoned. That's your moment? That's your telephone police moment for you?

• 1:30:28Speaker 04

  That's mine.

• 1:30:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, this song is incredible. There's no really getting around it. This is a phenomenal song. Steve Holmes called it the quintessential American football song.

• 1:30:46Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 1:30:47Yasi Salek?

  Mike Kinsale said it's the one he's the most proud of. So I think you'd be in good company. Steve Lamo said, "My kids will come down and be like, 'This song doesn't go anywhere.'" And he said, "You're right, except that, you know, it's so deliberate and it takes its time. And you have to be willing to be in the headspace and mindset to want to go on that trip." And I can understand how folks, maybe they don't want to, but man, that's a trip I've never gotten tired of. This could be extrapolated to all of this album, but yeah, like, you kind of have to like, be willing to go for the ride.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:31:21Yasi Salek?

  You're not just gonna like toss on a song.

• 1:31:23Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:31:24Yasi Salek?

  You're not putting "Stay Home" on a playlist.

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think of what the most playlistable song on this album is. Like, again, we'll put "Never Meant" aside. "Honestly," I think would be good. "I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional," I think could also fit. But even "Honestly" has like a four-minute instrumental outro, like we were saying. It's like, that's, that doesn't transition well into whatever else you got next.

• 1:31:42Yasi Salek?

  No. Maybe you could put it at the end of the playlist.

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 1:31:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. No shuffle. Steve Lamo also said, "God, I don't remember a damn thing about how we wrote it or what it meant to record it. I'm a big fan of Miles Davis and there's this track called 'Peaceful' off of a record called "In A Silent Way." And it has that same sort of organic thing, like it's just watching life happen or something. And I feel like this was my chance to shoot for that feeling that I get from listening to that Miles record. But like, it's my band, you know? But I think my love of that song has erased any memory of how it came together."

• 1:32:13Speaker 04

  That was cool. I appreciate that all of them are just kind of like, "Yeah, I sort of remember that." But really, to them, it was just five days in a garage in college.

• 1:32:22Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:32:23Speaker 04

  And the way that any of us were like, "Yeah, you can remember that one party you went to, kind of, sorta."

• 1:32:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  But that's about it?

• 1:32:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I remember one that I went to where we did like nine shots of like tequila before we left the house.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  Okay, how did that go?

• 1:32:35Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, I'll tell you. We walked over to the party, the house party. And I was with my cousin and I, she was peeing and I hopped up to sit on the sink. And the whole thing crumbled and shattered onto the ground. And then we laughed hysterically and ran out of the party because we were like, oh my God, we broke their sink and bathroom. And then we like went off throughout the rest of our evening. And then when I woke up in the morning, I was like, my butt hurts. And I looked and there was literally had cut through my jeans and I had a huge cut on my ass. And I had no knowledge of it until the next morning. Dad, please put your, you should not listen to that part, Dad.

• 1:33:19Speaker 04

  You know what? That's not even your fault. That's shoddy craftsmanship.

• 1:33:22Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:33:23Speaker 04

  You know, all you did was sit on the sink.

• 1:33:24Yasi Salek?

  Frankly, if I was a

• 1:33:26Speaker 04

  Honestly?

• 1:33:27Yasi Salek?

  Honestly, if I was a litigious person at 21 years old, that's right, I was 21. I could have sued.

• 1:33:36Speaker 04

  I think you could have.

• 1:33:36Yasi Salek?

  Did I know who's home? It was? No, but.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Either whoever built the sink or whoever owned the sink. Either way, not your problem.

• 1:33:43Yasi Salek?

  And R I P those Diesel jeans. I love them dearly. Big gash in the butt. Stay Home is the last song ostensibly.

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  Kind of.

• 1:33:51Yasi Salek?

  Until there's the one with the World War, which is just sort of like an extension.

• 1:33:55Speaker 04

  Also, it's like a sick trumpet solo, basically. Not mad at it.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  Stop trying to make Whistful Skah happen.

• 1:34:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna, it's my show and I'm gonna mint Whistful Skah. If we, if we have to have Twinkle Daddy as a thing.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Yasi Salek?

  We can have Whistful Skah.

• 1:34:10Speaker 04

  I gotta tell you, we don't have any power over that. It exists in the world and we cannot take it out.

• 1:34:15Yasi Salek?

  It upsets me.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 1:34:25Yasi Salek?

  Steve Holmes said the World War was just because the studio had one and I was like, this is cool.

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, why not?

• 1:34:30Yasi Salek?

  And I wrote that little part and that's it. And now this, we have described an album that to some people is their entire identity.

• 1:34:38Speaker 04

  It is.

• 1:34:39Yasi Salek?

  It has shaped who they are. They will die for this band and album.

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:34:46Yasi Salek?

  But not right now.

• 1:34:48Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:34:48Yasi Salek?

  Not in, not in 1999.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:34:50Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:34:52Speaker 04

  Well, no one has heard it yet.

• 1:34:54Yasi Salek?

  No one has heard it yet.

• 1:34:59Speaker 00

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• 1:35:29Speaker 01

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• 1:35:55Speaker 01

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• 1:36:00Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk about what happens.

• 1:36:02Speaker 04

  I would love to hear an account of what happens.

• 1:36:04Yasi Salek?

  In the 14 years.

• 1:36:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06Yasi Salek?

  Subsequent. So, you know, the lads graduate, split, go off on their own ways. Mike Kinsella begins his solo project, "Owen",

• 1:36:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Yasi Salek?

  in which he performs everything. It's a one-man show.

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  And still does.

• 1:36:20Yasi Salek?

  And still does. You fuck with Owen?

• 1:36:22Speaker 04

  I like Owen.

• 1:36:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  Not as much as American football.

• 1:36:25Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:36:25Speaker 04

  But a lot of great stuff.

• 1:36:26Yasi Salek?

  Quite different.

• 1:36:27Speaker 04

  Quite different.

• 1:36:28Yasi Salek?

  Well, you can't really do what you're doing with American football when you're just the one guy.

• 1:36:32Speaker 04

  I mean, very clearly.

• 1:36:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Speaker 04

  But also you don't get where American football's about to go without Mike Kinsella playing as Owen for all of these intervening years.

• 1:36:40Yasi Salek?

  For sure. And honestly, there were a lot, I had not listened to Owen, I'll be honest. There were a lot of songs I really liked. It's really more in the vein of like, tweet, like-

• 1:36:52Speaker 04

  Singer-songwriter.

• 1:36:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like, it was given like "Herspace Holiday", which I love. Like, even like "Dashford Confessional", it's really more in that vein.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 1:37:00Yasi Salek?

  Beautiful. But it's so different than, um, I didn't listen to all 12 albums or whatever. I only have one. Brain and ears and life.

• 1:37:09Speaker 04

  I would say.

• 1:37:10Yasi Salek?

  But I jumped around.

• 1:37:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Yasi Salek?

  I liked it.

• 1:37:11Speaker 04

  If you are going to venture into Owen and you're unfamiliar, I would say The Avalanche is probably the place I would recommend to go.

• 1:37:17Yasi Salek?

  Oh, the 2020 album.

• 1:37:18Speaker 04

  2020.

• 1:37:19Yasi Salek?

  The 10th album.

• 1:37:20Speaker 04

  The 10th album. Well, I mean, look, you can start anywhere you like. Uh, I think that album's pretty great. Another, like, shocking to hear, very sad.

• 1:37:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Speaker 04

  Uh, breakup album, you know, carries a lot to it.

• 1:37:31Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Divorce album.

• 1:37:32Speaker 04

  Divorce album.

• 1:37:33Yasi Salek?

  Um, I li- I really liked No Good For No One.

• 1:37:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:37:36Yasi Salek?

  Now, but I like that 2002, you know, A Girl With Bangs Broke My Heart core music.

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  Who Among Us.

• 1:37:44Yasi Salek?

  Who Among Us. Steve Lamos and Steve Holmes also played in a band together after American football. They were called The Geese.

• 1:37:52Speaker 04

  Not to be confused.

• 1:37:53Yasi Salek?

  Not to be confused with Cameron Winter.

• 1:37:56Speaker 04

  Litigious backgrounds. Do they have a case?

• 1:37:59Yasi Salek?

  That, do you, do you think Cameron Winter has ever heard American football? Probably.

• 1:38:06Speaker 04

  I, I would guess.

• 1:38:07Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Emily from Geese is an incredible guitar player.

• 1:38:10Speaker 04

  Honestly, it does sound like, as, as kind of tours go, throw it on the tour bus and vibe out down the highway.

• 1:38:15Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  Kind of music.

• 1:38:16Yasi Salek?

  Totally. That was short-lived. I believe it was like sort of alt-country-ish.

• 1:38:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Yasi Salek?

  Uh, Steve Holmes then started working in the IT field because he has a computer science degree. Steve Lamos moved to Boulder, Colorado to be a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

• 1:38:34Speaker 04

  A scholarly chap.

• 1:38:35Yasi Salek?

  Scholarly chap. Meanwhile, the American football record was percolating.

• 1:38:39Speaker 04

  It was.

• 1:38:40Yasi Salek?

  As Matt Lunsford said, it was a frog in boiling water. I don't know if that's the right usage of that phrase.

• 1:38:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz I don't think there's like a specific point of demarcation where the frog is cooked.

• 1:38:51Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:38:52Speaker 04

  It's more just that it was slow burning all the time for years and years and years and years.

• 1:38:56Yasi Salek?

  Mike Nsella said that he would play shows, and I don't know how early on this is, but he said people started coming and asking him to play Never Met.

• 1:39:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:05Yasi Salek?

  So again, I don't know at what point in these 14 years that starts happening, but he was like, I think it might've been a little later cuz he did say, I didn't realize that American football was more popular than the thing I was doing for 15 years. If I had to guess, it was a little bit difficult to triangulate, but just anecdotally and based on what you told me. I think it was blogs.

• 1:39:26Speaker 04

  I think blogs were huge.

• 1:39:27Yasi Salek?

  I think the internet is what unearthed this album.

• 1:39:29Speaker 04

  Even before that, I think it was like LimeWire.

• 1:39:32Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  Like the kind of file sharing and music online.

• 1:39:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:36Speaker 04

  And then it feeds into blogs and forums.

• 1:39:38Yasi Salek?

  But to be, you had to be put onto something, right? So like, I get like, pre-internet.

• 1:39:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Yasi Salek?

  How are you even gonna get from clarity to American football? Like.

• 1:39:48Speaker 04

  You would have to have someone in your life who knew.

• 1:39:49Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:51Yasi Salek?

  Short of like, you know, scouring like what we did was magazines and stuff, but like, American football's not really being name tracked in magazines. Maybe, maybe Braid thanked them in a line or not.

• 1:40:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:02Yasi Salek?

  You know what I mean? Maybe there was like, but that's very few paths in. But I think to your point, like earlier of the pure volume of it all, I think once people started having message boards, forums, the, you know, lovers of these bands throughout the country can start being able to come together in a little chat room on AOL or whatever. But it starts to pick up and swell and I'm guessing that must have been what spread the word, the good word of American football LP1.

• 1:40:30Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 1:40:30Yasi Salek?

  And you know, if you're one of the people, please bang our line, but I did not. I wasn't able to really find that information.

• 1:40:36Speaker 04

  I don't think there's a clear answer.

• 1:40:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't think there is either.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  I think some of it is like.

• 1:40:40Yasi Salek?

  Zenith types thing.

• 1:40:41Speaker 04

  Not to be like overly romantic about that particular era of human life or like overly emotional, I suppose. But like, that like 2003 to 2005, as you're saying, felt so different on the internet in terms of when you do, go from your existence where it's like, I like this kind of music and no one else at my school does, or no one else in my town does, or no one that I know listens to what I do. And finding those pockets of community online, like, that was a powerful drug in a way that an algorithm attempts to grab at and hit that same like dopamine center, but can't really imitate.

• 1:41:12Yasi Salek?

  It was such a pure time.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Yasi Salek?

  It reminds me of one of my favorite tweets of all time, which was like, "Amazon in 1998, hey, we sell books, but online." It's like, "Amazon in 2030, hello, prime citizens. Please return to your prime homes for prime dinner time."

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  We are alarmingly close.

• 1:41:31Yasi Salek?

  We are pretty close to prime dinner time.

• 1:41:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:41:33Yasi Salek?

  Is what's happening right now.

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  But at least you'll be able to order the American Football LP.

• 1:41:37Yasi Salek?

  I know. I honestly was going to do it, but I didn't realize it in time, which is why we have charmingly and winkingly. You see what we did here. Um, okay. So yes, percolation has happened. Online forums are buzzing.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Royalties are weirdly streaming in.

• 1:41:53Yasi Salek?

  Y'all heard American Football LP1. Yeah. The checks are coming to the members of American Football in increasing amounts. And they're like, what the, what the hey? I'm sure Matt Lunsford is noticing as he is the one consolidating the money.

• 1:42:08Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:42:09Yasi Salek?

  Now Steve Holmes finds this live recording of one of their shows, uh, one of the first ones with the song The Sevens on it. And he was like, oh, when I found this, my big ambition was to send it to Mike and Matt from Polyvinyl and maybe get it on the website for a free download.

• 1:42:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Yasi Salek?

  Matt was blown away and he wanted me to send him the whole show. So we took the 15 best tracks, which worked out because it was about to be the 15th anniversary of LP1. So I started writing these liner notes for the reissue. They were supposed to be from All of Us, but Steve and Mike read them and thought, okay, that's good enough. I sent them some old pictures I took from that era too. So this, like, they decide to re-release.

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, the reissue.

• 1:42:49Yasi Salek?

  Again, I don't, even at this time, I think they knew there was enough interest to release a reissue. And obviously Polyvinyl has a lot of love for this band and album.

• 1:42:57Speaker 04

  Clearly.

• 1:42:58Yasi Salek?

  Um, but I still don't think anyone was prepared for what happens when they do.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  How could you be?

• 1:43:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So they do this like deluxe reissue and Matt Lunsford said, so we put the reissue together. And when it finally went up on the Polyvinyl site, our website crashed from all the traffic.

• 1:43:14Speaker 04

  Imploded.

• 1:43:15Yasi Salek?

  Too much.

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  Imploded like a sink at a frat house, you know?

• 1:43:19Yasi Salek?

  All of the men in American Apparel zip up hoodies across the land.

• 1:43:26Yasi Salek?

  Pushed their bangs aside.

• 1:43:28Speaker 04

  Certainly did.

• 1:43:28Yasi Salek?

  Logged on.

• 1:43:29Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:43:30Yasi Salek?

  And we're like, I'm ordering this fucking bitch.

• 1:43:31Speaker 04

  Gotta do it.

• 1:43:32Yasi Salek?

  Crashed the website.

• 1:43:33Speaker 04

  Crashed the website, went up to number 68 on the Billboard 200.

• 1:43:38Yasi Salek?

  Insane.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  American football won.

• 1:43:39Yasi Salek?

  Insane.

• 1:43:40Speaker 04

  Fucking nuts.

• 1:43:41Yasi Salek?

  15 years later, now at this point, the band still was not, had zero intention of reuniting.

• 1:43:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Yasi Salek?

  They were still already like, that's weird. That's weird that people like the album.

• 1:43:53Speaker 04

  It did seem like polyvinyl or somebody with some management team or whatever would check in periodically and be like, do you guys have any interest?

• 1:44:01Yasi Salek?

  I read something and I didn't write it down, but I did read something that Mike Consella had a manager for Owen, who behind his back, offered American football up just to gauge interest. And got like a pretty good offer and came back and was like, sorry, I didn't ask you about this, but.

• 1:44:20Speaker 04

  Would you do it?

• 1:44:21Yasi Salek?

  Would you do it? And they were like, that offer? And so they book a couple of shows. I think it was only like two. I think it was like Chicago and Webster Hall, maybe?

• 1:44:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:44:30Yasi Salek?

  And they sell out like immediately.

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  This is where I'm entering the picture, basically, is in the lead up to those shows.

• 1:44:36Yasi Salek?

  Welcome Rob Mahoney into the story. Your zip up hoodie is on.

• 1:44:40Speaker 04

  I'm zipped.

• 1:44:41Yasi Salek?

  Your bangs are swooped.

• 1:44:43Speaker 04

  I'm ready to not purchase the album on vinyl just yet, but I'm like, okay, what is everyone freaking out about? Like.

• 1:44:49Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:44:50Speaker 04

  The level of specifically online explosion, if you are in those corners of the internet.

• 1:44:54Yasi Salek?

  Brooklyn vegan comments are popping the fuck off, bitch. Okay?

• 1:44:59Speaker 04

  The volume cannot be measured. The magnitude cannot be comprehended. And like, this is one of those things where it's like a scene grasping moment when a band like this gets together. A band that you might have heard of, that you might have heard their album, that you might have some vague attachment to. But if you weren't following along with every step of that weird frog boiling percolating journey, it feels like the planet's got like been struck by a comet. And I'm trying to figure out like, okay, so what have I missed here? That everyone is this excited about a band I kind of know, but don't really?

• 1:45:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And what did you do about that?

• 1:45:30Speaker 04

  I downloaded their music.

• 1:45:32Yasi Salek?

  Great. Illegally, you illegally downloaded, just go ahead and say the statute of limitations is up. You logged on to LimeWire, you gave your computer a virus and you got LP1.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  I think we're more in the torrenting era at this point.

• 1:45:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, sorry, I was absolutely not participating in this kind of behavior.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  Nor would I ever.

• 1:45:49Yasi Salek?

  Because I'm, no, I did, let me, let me tell you about fucking Napster bitch, you don't even know. You don't even know that the year I entered college into the dorm, which had high, high.

• 1:46:00Speaker 04

  Quote unquote, high speed.

• 1:46:02Yasi Salek?

  The highest speed we had experienced, it wasn't like the squawk dial up. It was the slowest thing you, you couldn't even imagine, but it was, it coincided with the same year that Napster came out, which Napster was only really kind of functional for one year, if I'm correct.

• 1:46:14Speaker 04

  Maybe two.

• 1:46:15Yasi Salek?

  Maybe two. So imagine my July, I'm in the dorm with my fucking.

• 1:46:22Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:46:23Yasi Salek?

  PC.

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  The world at your fingertips.

• 1:46:25Yasi Salek?

  My desktop PC and I could just leave it on all day, downloading song after song. What a dream.

• 1:46:31Speaker 04

  A mere three hours per album.

• 1:46:33Yasi Salek?

  A mere three hours per song, burning that bitch on to a CD.

• 1:46:37Speaker 04

  Crucial.

• 1:46:37Yasi Salek?

  Little Mix CDs, Discman, biking around town. Those were the fucking days, babe.

• 1:46:44Speaker 04

  They genuinely were.

• 1:46:45Yasi Salek?

  You had to work for it. We're such a frictionless society now. We need more friction.

• 1:46:50Speaker 04

  Now Grandma Yasi has entered the chat.

• 1:46:52Yasi Salek?

  That's right. I'm mad and you could put it in the newspaper, but I believe we need more friction to experience more joy. Things are too easy.

• 1:46:59Speaker 04

  You're not wrong, though.

• 1:47:00Yasi Salek?

  Hello, prime citizens.

• 1:47:02Speaker 04

  Honestly, and the, look, the friction is part of the story.

• 1:47:04Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 1:47:05Speaker 04

  If, if LP2 would come out three years after LP1, American football is just a band.

• 1:47:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  Like they're just a band people like that probably would have receded from memory, but having that layover builds all of the underground reputation we talked about, builds the anticipation for its output. It transforms them into something else entirely.

• 1:47:23Yasi Salek?

  What if like they're, this whole time, they've been doing an elaborate, like.

• 1:47:28Speaker 04

  Something in performance art?

• 1:47:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like what if they're like absolute Svengali's, like the, the emo Svengali's?

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:47:35Yasi Salek?

  And they're like, oh my God, people rediscovered the bands, but what they were really doing was hiring Russian chatbots.

• 1:47:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:42Yasi Salek?

  To infiltrate the Midwestern emo rooms on the internet.

• 1:47:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:47Yasi Salek?

  And start bolstering in interest and they knew that it would coincide perfectly. I'm just saying 15 years, that's a little convenient. Why wasn't it 14 or 16?

• 1:48:01Yasi Salek?

  Mike Kinsella, you dirty dog.

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  I mean, you're the journalist. You should be getting to the bottom of that.

• 1:48:05Yasi Salek?

  Four dimensional chess over here.

• 1:48:07Speaker 04

  See, if you told me Gerard Way did that, I'd be like,

• 1:48:10Yasi Salek?

  You'd believe it.

• 1:48:11Speaker 04

  I kind of believe it.

• 1:48:11Yasi Salek?

  You'd believe it.

• 1:48:12Speaker 04

  But these guys, I genuinely buy it.

• 1:48:13Yasi Salek?

  They're college educated.

• 1:48:15Speaker 04

  They're, oh, they're, it's not that they're not smart enough to pull it off. It's do they give a shit enough to pull it off?

• 1:48:19Yasi Salek?

  Fair enough, fair enough, yeah.

• 1:48:20Speaker 04

  It seems like all of them, part of the magic of American football is they're like, yeah, this is cool, I guess. And we'll participate in it and we'll do it and we'll do these shows and this seems fun, but like,

• 1:48:30Yasi Salek?

  I like my story better.

• 1:48:31Speaker 04

  I do like, I mean, yours is a lot more intriguing.

• 1:48:33Yasi Salek?

  I like my story where they were like, okay, 12 O N albums. This is gonna happen. Brooklyn vegan. Anyways, regardless of what the real story is, what does happen is the live dates in Champagne in New York sell out.

• 1:48:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:48Yasi Salek?

  And then they start adding more to Webster Hall.

• 1:48:50Speaker 04

  They do.

• 1:48:50Yasi Salek?

  And they keep selling out too. And they're like, okay, what in the what? They do add Nate Kinsella, aforementioned cousin.

• 1:48:59Speaker 04

  Basically, Mike demanded it.

• 1:49:00Yasi Salek?

  Well, how, I mean, how are they gonna play live? How, he can't play bass and guitar.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:49:06Yasi Salek?

  I know there's only two songs, but, so.

• 1:49:08Speaker 04

  Yes. You, you need a bassist for the sound?

• 1:49:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  Cause you can't do the four looping guitar tracks in a live performance.

• 1:49:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Musically challenged family, it must be genetic.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  Clearly.

• 1:49:19Yasi Salek?

  Steve Lamo said, when we started putting this reissue together and we're crashing the polyvinyl website, we just thought, what does that mean? Up until that point, we had been strictly opposed to reuniting. That was the first time we thought, okay, this could be bigger than we thought. A sold out Webster Hall show happened and after that it was mind boggling. Then another show sold out in 30 seconds. We thought, okay, this is definitely bigger than we thought it was. In 2014, though, before these shows, Mike was like, yeah, we're just gonna do these shows, but we're not gonna tour. Like, this is not, we can't do that.

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  This isn't a thing.

• 1:49:49Yasi Salek?

  We have normal lives, like, you know, we are, people have kids, like, we, there's, we're not touring. Spoiler. But again, maybe he was, once again, as part of his nefarious master plan, working to drum up further demand.

• 1:50:02Speaker 04

  The long con continues.

• 1:50:03Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. They did tour on, spoiler, US, Canada, Spain, the UK, Japan, and Australia.

• 1:50:10Yasi Salek?

  Mike Nsala has a theory about why this happened.

• 1:50:12Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:50:14Yasi Salek?

  Might it be a red herring? We don't know. To distract us away from his master plan? Unclear. But he said, I have a theory. My theory is that the album speaks to younger people. I think for teenagers or those in transition years, that's the target for that album. I had a lot of friends in bands at that time and they're much more confused about how this is going than we are. They're like, you guys opened for us and you sucked. I think what happened was initially some people heard the record and liked it. In the past 10 years, those people grew up and now they write for blogs. Now they have these influential positions. And I think when these people hear it now at 30, they don't connect with it as much, but it has some importance. Personally, I think that record sucks compared to the Sundays. It's incomparable, but now people accept it was an important record.

• 1:50:58Yasi Salek?

  I'm telling you right now, though, it was not an important record, at least initially. We liked it, but no one else really cared. Like, OK Computer came out and people were like, holy fuck, this changes music immediately. The record was not like that, nor is it anywhere as good as OK Computer. Our record came out and no one gave a fuck, but the few kids that did are influential. From there, it has sustained its momentum, which is cool. I think that's an interesting angle.

• 1:51:21Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:51:21Yasi Salek?

  Like, the idea that eight people cared about this and they all went on to work at Pitchfork.

• 1:51:26Speaker 04

  They're all tastemakers somehow.

• 1:51:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they all are online bloggers or whatever.

• 1:51:30Speaker 04

  I mean, we should say, this is an extremely Pitchfork kind of band.

• 1:51:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:51:35Speaker 04

  And so there is, there's like a grasp at like a cool that is just sort of out of reach. I think it's accentuated by the fact that the band was dead and honestly, the specters-

• 1:51:44Yasi Salek?

  You make a great point. It is so fucking prime, you don't know about this, you weren't there.

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 1:51:50Yasi Salek?

  Core.

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Yasi Salek?

  And so of course they're gonna, I mean, I don't think it's undeserved. This album is incredible. So it works on every level, but like, I totally- You need both. You need both.

• 1:51:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:59Yasi Salek?

  You need that like- Oh, you know about this fucking gem? Of course you don't, bitch. You weren't in fucking Champagne Urbana in 1998 at the one show with 12 people. I was, and now I write for Pitchfork.

• 1:52:09Speaker 04

  And within that time, like, there's, there's so little material about this band. There aren't live shows, there aren't like bootlegs passing around. There just is this one album. I think this is a huge part of the reason The House became The House, too. Because it's like, there's just no photos of these guys.

• 1:52:23Yasi Salek?

  They had one thing, I know. There was a funny thing with Mike and Sal saying is like, once like they started redoing merch around the reunion, he was like, does fucking House have to be on everything? And they were like, people like The House.

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  They're now on like Vans Shoes, you know?

• 1:52:36Yasi Salek?

  So insane.

• 1:52:37Speaker 04

  Wild.

• 1:52:37Yasi Salek?

  Shout out Vans. Mike also said, this is in Noisy in 2016. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said I thought Cap'n Jazz was bigger or more culty. I really had no idea. My thing is, I have a thousand Owen songs. So it's weird to think those 12 songs define me. Just because more people have heard of them. It's hard to quantify. I think now with the tour and the reissue, at least sales-wise, it's my biggest record. I think my Owen records are better than the American football record, though.

• 1:53:06Yasi Salek?

  The American football record has so many flaws. I can pick 12 Owen songs that are great compared to the American football output. I'm a much more thoughtful songwriter now. For me, it's another spot in the discography, but more of a bookend. It is really interesting psychology to think about. You've dedicated your life at this point. I'm guessing, and I don't have the discography for me, but like, at this point, again, he's probably made like seven or eight Owen albums by 2014, right? Seven, six, maybe.

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  It's not even just Owen albums, too, like.

• 1:53:33Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, Owls, there's all these other projects.

• 1:53:36Speaker 04

  Like, and he played in Joan of Arc for a little bit, like There, There, There. Like, he's been part of so many projects. If you want to zoom out, like 30 years of a musical career, I have like 39 full-length releases that he's been a part of in some way, to varying degrees. And it's like, all of that is growth, right? All of that is, and you can see it by the time the second LP comes around, like, he's a dramatically different musician and songwriter and vocalist especially.

• 1:54:02Yasi Salek?

  We like that other thing you did in the beginning.

• 1:54:04Speaker 04

  I think that's, like, that's kind of inescapable, right?

• 1:54:06Yasi Salek?

  When your voice was cracking.

• 1:54:07Speaker 04

  I know, but that's what they latched on to. And I think it speaks to his greater point about the targeted age of that first album, too, where if you are in a certain bracket, you were going to imprint on American Football LP1. And nothing else they do is ever going to quite measure up to that feeling, because it was like, what did it feel like to be 17 and have this album put in your hands?

• 1:54:26Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's also like, it's a shooting star, like, in a way where it's like. It's a very unique combination of a thing we talk about on this show a lot, which is that you could never bottle or capture youth

• 1:54:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Yasi Salek?

  as an ingredient for what makes music great.

• 1:54:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:54:43Yasi Salek?

  You don't know about the world, you feel things more deeply, you don't have perspective. That all lends itself to incredible

• 1:54:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Yasi Salek?

  emotional music making. But then also with American football, you have this unique layer of musicianship, which usually young people don't have, right? They're still sort of learning and growing, but they were just such incredible musicians. So it like kind of intersects to make this like phenomenal thing that you can never replicate.

• 1:55:07Speaker 04

  Well, especially if they had been five years older, maybe they buy a microphone and then the vocals are different because there's a self-consciousness about hearing them. It's like the butterfly effects of all of the weird happy accidents that led to the first American football. Youth is an inescapable part of it. Their circumstances, the fact that at least two of these guys are living together, just like constantly ideating in the way that during college, you can just be like idly, working on an idea all day, every day.

• 1:55:34Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:55:35Speaker 04

  Like you don't get to do that. Once you have your normal nine to five.

• 1:55:38Yasi Salek?

  You gotta go to work.

• 1:55:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39Yasi Salek?

  Gotta make a living.

• 1:55:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Gotta be a professor.

• 1:55:42Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible, incredible intersection of like naivete and skill.

• 1:55:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:55:48Yasi Salek?

  So yeah, they're like, cool, we'll play some shows. People like this album. That's great. It's helping putting tile in our bathroom, I believe Mike Consol said.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  Helpful.

• 1:55:57Yasi Salek?

  And then they did decide to make another album, which I, of course you are.

• 1:56:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:01Yasi Salek?

  Right? 2016.

• 1:56:03Speaker 04

  It seemed like part of it was just their want to play more than the first album.

• 1:56:07Yasi Salek?

  The 12 songs.

• 1:56:08Speaker 04

  If we're gonna play shows, we need something to play that's not just this.

• 1:56:10Yasi Salek?

  Right. American football, P2, 2016. So you were fully up on this.

• 1:56:15Speaker 04

  Fully up on this, ready on launch day, eager and excited and waiting for it. And I mean, it's so hard to capture how it landed because you're right, there is the inescapable, this is not the thing that I thought it was gonna be, that I wanted it to be. And you could get a sense of that as they were teasing the album.

• 1:56:34Yasi Salek?

  Did I say that? I didn't say that.

• 1:56:35Speaker 04

  Well, you were saying that like the feeling of this was not like the exact sound, the warbling vocals, right, for example. And it's like, I think for a lot of people, that's always gonna be the way you receive an album like this. And so the response was positive, but I would say like a little muted, a little like, what, is this what I want?

• 1:56:53Yasi Salek?

  Well, I imagine if you've put so much stock into that first album and you're obsessed with it and it hung the moon, and then these people are 18 years older.

• 1:57:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:57:05Yasi Salek?

  And they sound different.

• 1:57:07Speaker 04

  It would be weird if they didn't.

• 1:57:08Yasi Salek?

  It would be weird if they didn't. Mike Kinsella said to Rolling Stone, "People seem to like it and that's cool, but like the minute you try to make something new, people get mad that we're gonna tarnish however they felt about our first record", which is weird. The first record was like a high school diary. "People also critique how my voice has changed. I mean, yeah, I got older." His voice has changed, though, pretty dramatically.

• 1:57:30Speaker 04

  But he's changed how he sings, right? It's not just like it's gotten gruffier. He's frankly gotten a lot better. A better performer, a different vocal style. It's so much more melodic than it is on LP1.

• 1:57:49Yasi Salek?

  They asked him in GQ that year, was there a conscious effort to connect the two personalities of those two albums? And he was like, "Yeah, I was aware of it. I would sift through notes on my phone and think, oh, this could be American football. This is sincere." There's some Owen stuff that can get sloppy or a little crude that doesn't sound like American football. I would sort of edit it towards American football, but I didn't write to it. Then he talks about reading the comments.

• 1:58:12Speaker 04

  Don't do that.

• 1:58:13Yasi Salek?

  And the guy was like, "Don't do that." He said, "I know, but the ones that bum me out were people, when people held the first record so high, that they were like, why even bother?" Because it's like, we're just guys and we like doing it. We're not trying to conquer the world. If you don't like it, that's cool, but it's weird to hate a thing just because it's been 17 years.

• 1:58:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:58:29Yasi Salek?

  Give it a chance. I don't know. Don't be a hater.

• 1:58:33Speaker 04

  He's right to feel that. Obviously, as an artist, he's right to feel that way. This is something that musicians of all kinds, actors of all kinds, directors of all kinds, writers of all kinds deal with if you have a huge success. This is a record, though. If you get out of its way and let it do its thing.

• 1:58:49Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  And put your expectations at the door.

• 1:58:51Yasi Salek?

  If you try to hear it as its own thing.

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  If you meet this album where it is.

• 1:58:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Speaker 04

  It is fucking beautiful.

• 1:58:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Speaker 04

  I think it's really great. And it's grown on me immensely over time.

• 1:59:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I liked it. It's definitely my third favorite.

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  I think that's fair, though.

• 1:59:05Yasi Salek?

  Um, and it's not one that I throw on.

• 1:59:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:59:07Yasi Salek?

  Um, but I liked it. I could see, it felt a little to me, and I'm not a hater. I am one of the biggest proponents of bands should continue to make music till the fucking bitter end.

• 1:59:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:59:19Yasi Salek?

  Even if people don't want it anymore, don't like it, or it sounds different, or whatever, you know? And I'm not saying that's what's happening here. But it does sound to me, given like the arc, like, if we didn't have the third album, I don't, I wouldn't be able to say this, but it feels like this is like shaky, kind of like cultish, like getting our legs again as a band. It's been 18, you know? It's like, who are we even? We've been touring, but like, we're not the same guys. We don't have an identity anymore as a band, like, and I think it's good. But then when you hear the third one, you're like, oh shit, like, they fully coalesced.

• 1:59:55Speaker 04

  They do.

• 1:59:56Yasi Salek?

  Back into like a real band that has a real sound and identity that is both different from the first album, but more solid and defined than the second album. That's my opinion.

• 2:00:08Speaker 04

  I think it's totally fair. And you can see it in the process of making this, that they, when they get back to those reunion shows, they have to relearn how to play those songs. And then they basically have to rewrite the relearning so that they can actually play them live. And then they have to learn how to be a band again, and now they're dealing with the massive expectations that come with an album like this. So like, this is not a normal creative environment.

• 2:00:27Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 2:00:28Speaker 04

  Which I think is part of why, and I find this criticism to be fair, but I'm gonna maybe put a spin on it, like, it does feel like an Owen album with different instrumentation.

• 2:00:36Yasi Salek?

  Sure. I mean, again, we've at this point made like eight.

• 2:00:40Speaker 04

  Tons.

• 2:00:41Yasi Salek?

  Seven or eight Owen albums.

• 2:00:43Speaker 04

  That's been his.

• 2:00:43Yasi Salek?

  We're really in Owen mode.

• 2:00:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely. That's been his defining creative mode for a long time.

• 2:00:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49Speaker 04

  And it turns out to me, an Owen album with different instrumentations, pretty rad.

• 2:00:53Yasi Salek?

  Pretty rad. Yeah.

• 2:00:53Speaker 04

  I really like this album.

• 2:00:54Yasi Salek?

  Totally. What tracks jump out to you? If like, if you, if you feel like people wanna like, really, maybe they're not ready to put on the whole album, or they just wanna get like, a real sense of...

• 2:01:04Speaker 04

  Well, how sad do they wanna be, I think, is the question.

• 2:01:06Yasi Salek?

  Give Me The Gun, do you think is the, how sad do you wanna be?

• 2:01:09Speaker 04

  Sometimes Give Me The Gun, like, isn't even the saddest. Uh, I think like, I Need A Drink is a great American football song. Look, this is a band that talks about, thinks about, sings about, writes about alcoholism a lot. In the DNA of this band and the people who are participating in it.

• 2:01:24Yasi Salek?

  Because only Mike Consola is responsible for the lyrics.

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  Right. And it is such like, a pained and hopeless song. And part of what I love about American football is like, there's no like, we're gonna do the sad song, but at the very end, there's gonna be like, the little silver lining that's gonna, you know, here's the PSA, or here's the upturn of hope. It's just like, a twist of the knife at the end of their saddest songs.

• 2:01:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  And I think I Need A Drink is, again, like, an achingly beautiful composition. Incredible piece of music, and just really bums me the fuck out every single time.

• 2:02:07Yasi Salek?

  It's also incredibly direct in its lyricism.

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  They often are. Yeah.

• 2:02:11Yasi Salek?

  Again, which is a, it's a departure from LP1, right? Which is a little more opaque.

• 2:02:16Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 2:02:17Yasi Salek?

  And vague, but beautiful, and, and easy to connect with, you know? But there is something, I mean, there's still really incredible, he's such an incredible lyricist.

• 2:02:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:25Yasi Salek?

  This, this I love about American football. But I like that, on, on this album, I, there's so many more examples of like... A different kind of vulnerability.

• 2:02:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I think that comes with you're not writing about teenage feelings anymore.

• 2:02:38Yasi Salek?

  Not being 21.

• 2:02:39Speaker 04

  Not being 21. This is a more adult album in the way it's constructed, but also in what it deals with. Right? We're talking about substance, substance abuse. We're talking about dissociation, marriage, like self-loathing in a different kind of way.

• 2:02:51Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:02:52Speaker 04

  Like, it just feels like a more adult album.

• 2:02:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Listen, don't mistake me. I think it's a good album. It's just in the arc of American football. I, I just find it interesting, especially if you're very, if you're into American football, it's, it is cool to look at it through the maturing of a band that like made one incredible shooting star, perfect record, dissolved for 18 years, tried to come back together and then solid. It's just such an interesting and unusual path and trajectory for a band.

• 2:03:23Speaker 04

  It's a miracle to me that this album, under those circumstances, could even be this good.

• 2:03:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 04

  Uh, they're set up to fail in every conceivable way. And yeah, I think definitively, if you ask almost any fan of American football, their canonical rankings, it will be at the bottom of almost everyone's list. But you catch me on the right day and like, I'll make the argument that maybe it should be at the top, or maybe it should, should at least be number two.

• 2:03:44Yasi Salek?

  Like, it's still better than a lot of what else is out there.

• 2:03:46Speaker 04

  I mean, there's no doubt.

• 2:03:49Yasi Salek?

  Might not be as good as their best, which doesn't mean that it's not better than a lot of the other slop that's living out in the world.

• 2:03:55Speaker 04

  Unquestionably so. I also want to say the lyric, "Everyone knows the best way to describe the ocean to a blind man is to push him in." Um, any allegation that you're not an emo band just went out the door. Beautiful lyric. Also could be a Panic at the Disco song title. So we're, we're in the zone.

• 2:04:25Yasi Salek?

  I feel like you, you're, you're tormenting me.

• 2:04:29Speaker 04

  Am I?

• 2:04:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Because again, why, why are you invoking Panic exclamation point at the disco here?

• 2:04:35Speaker 04

  Specifically exclamation point. This is pre-dropping.

• 2:04:37Yasi Salek?

  We're already a yellow card violinist to me and now you're like.

• 2:04:41Speaker 04

  I'm trying to bring you my culture, you know? This is, this is a meeting of the minds.

• 2:04:45Yasi Salek?

  I was an editor at buzznet.com. I'm extremely aware of this culture against my will. Seen music?

• 2:04:52Speaker 04

  Yes. Incredibly seen.

• 2:04:55Speaker 04

  What a time to be alive.

• 2:04:56Yasi Salek?

  Speaking of y'all weren't there, and you know what? Thank your fucking lucky stars.

• 2:04:59Speaker 04

  Shout out to also, I've been so lost for so long. I do love that track as well.

• 2:05:03Yasi Salek?

  I mean, it's, it's a good album.

• 2:05:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:05Yasi Salek?

  The lyric about you're like wet paper.

• 2:05:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:05:18Yasi Salek?

  Okay, and then lots of touring, 2019.

• 2:05:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:24Yasi Salek?

  Third full length, LP3. It almost feels like the myth-making of American football did not stop.

• 2:05:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:35Yasi Salek?

  Would you agree?

• 2:05:36Speaker 04

  In some ways, like against all odds and logic, right? So it should have by now.

• 2:05:41Yasi Salek?

  Like, you would think that, like, okay, the reunion happened. We played all those shows. We put out an album.

• 2:05:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:05:47Yasi Salek?

  Would have like, kind of been like, okay, great. We got what we wanted, you know? But it seems to have just grown and grown around the first album still.

• 2:05:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:05:55Yasi Salek?

  Like, just, just snowballing over the years. Because then you go to LP3 and you have these like incredible cameos.

• 2:06:03Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 2:06:05Yasi Salek?

  People still, these people still talking about American football daily, you know? This album is really good.

• 2:06:12Speaker 04

  I think it might be their best album. Like, front to back, I think it might be. Like, I'm not trying to make the contrarian take. I understand the first one.

• 2:06:19Yasi Salek?

  You're such a rock, that was such a rabble, honey.

• 2:06:22Speaker 04

  I don't even like the sound of that. I don't, whatever that implication is, I don't like it.

• 2:06:25Yasi Salek?

  That's such a twinkle daddy take of you.

• 2:06:27Speaker 04

  It's a twinkle daddy take. I just think, for one, everything you said about the first album is what it is. The product of these kids at the right place at the right time. The second album is a band in flux, trying to figure out if they can even be a band again. And this one is like a perfect synthesis, to me, of a lot of the best parts of one and two.

• 2:06:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:46Speaker 04

  And it takes them to places that, say, like, if you love LP1 version of American football, that band could not put Hayley Williams in a featuring vocal.

• 2:06:58Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:06:58Speaker 04

  That kind of vocal with, frankly, like, one of the most impeccable voices in emo history.

• 2:07:04Yasi Salek?

  All time, in hit.

• 2:07:05Speaker 04

  Emo, emo history.

• 2:07:06Yasi Salek?

  I will go ahead and remove emo.

• 2:07:07Speaker 04

  Oh, just history, period.

• 2:07:09Yasi Salek?

  One of the greatest singers of all time.

• 2:07:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:07:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:11Speaker 04

  If you've never delighted yourself to the YouTube clip of her in the booth singing an isolated vocal of, I think it's "I'm Into You," the Paramore song, "I'm Into You." It's like.

• 2:07:27Yasi Salek?

  I love the chills.

• 2:07:28Speaker 04

  I just didn't know someone could do this.

• 2:07:30Yasi Salek?

  She's phenomenal.

• 2:07:30Speaker 04

  She's so great. She's so great on that song. And it's like, you can't get there without all of the expansive growth in the songwriting and the composition that you see all over this album. Like, this just feels like a vision realized. And LP1 feels like something awesome, lightning in a bottle, a happy accident, like, something that could never be-

• 2:07:49Yasi Salek?

  Something that birthed fully formed from the ocean.

• 2:07:52Speaker 04

  Completely.

• 2:07:52Yasi Salek?

  Like, primordial, yeah.

• 2:07:53Speaker 04

  Versus, this is like, if you turn over any corner of LP3, it's like, that feels like a deliberate choice, and I trust the thought process that went there.

• 2:08:00Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Yeah, and also, like, I think something that really jumped out for me on LP3 is, it almost seems like on LP2, there was like, a real concerted effort to not revisit any of the sounds of LP1, which makes total sense. We're like, we're fuck, get the fucking house, although we didn't say, isn't the artwork of LP2 from the inside of the house?

• 2:08:22Speaker 04

  The interior of the house.

• 2:08:23Yasi Salek?

  But like, spiritually, get that house out of my face. You know, like, I don't, we don't want to do this anymore. But here, it's like, almost like the twain have met, where like, we can be this completely kind of new band, but we're not afraid to revisit the best parts of what made LP1 good. Like, a great example is how Silhouettes starts. I'm warming up to Twinkle Daddy's, "All That Twinkling Babe."

• 2:08:46Speaker 04

  That Glocken spiel?

• 2:08:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Glocken spiel. And that is such, to me, a direct through line back to LP1, you know? It's setting that same kind of tone and feel.

• 2:09:07Speaker 04

  It's indulgent in the way that like, a 20-year-old can be indulgent when they're writing a song.

• 2:09:11Yasi Salek?

  It's a great song. And then, "Every Wave to Ever Rise." I'm very impressed by the choice of the collaborators, and I think it's no accident they're all women.

• 2:09:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:09:22Yasi Salek?

  Because- It's about time we brought some feminine energy to this space.

• 2:09:27Speaker 04

  Do you think we fixed it? Like, did we solve the problem?

• 2:09:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's right. It's over.

• 2:09:32Speaker 04

  Thank God.

• 2:09:32Yasi Salek?

  We don't have to litigate this anymore. No, I just, I do, I just feel like this music's benefits so much from having a female voice in it.

• 2:09:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:09:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just like, it adds this sort of like layer to it that I didn't even know that I wanted there.

• 2:09:46Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 2:09:46Yasi Salek?

  The song with Haley Limb is called Uncomfortably Numb, sort of a hat tip to Pink Floyd.

• 2:09:51Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 2:09:51Yasi Salek?

  Um, real sad and vulnerable lyrics there as well.

• 2:09:56Speaker 04

  If we're gonna put up a champion in the bracket of American football songs, it's like, who would we want meeting Never Meant at the end of the bracket?

• 2:10:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:10:04Speaker 04

  This would be my pick.

• 2:10:05Yasi Salek?

  So ring repelled.

• 2:10:06Speaker 04

  I want people to consider the possibility.

• 2:10:09Yasi Salek?

  Is this your favorite song that you were alluding to earlier?

• 2:10:11Speaker 04

  This is my favorite song.

• 2:10:12Yasi Salek?

  Are you, are you a huge Paramore head?

• 2:10:14Speaker 04

  I'm a decent sized Paramore head, a reasonably, a reasonably involved Paramore head. But here, honestly, even if I had no association.

• 2:10:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:10:22Speaker 04

  I am a sucker for a duet in conversation, for sure.

• 2:10:26Yasi Salek?

  Love it. When done well.

• 2:10:27Speaker 04

  Yes. And, and this is hitting all the right notes. Like, I think, to me, it's like the biggest holy shit moment on one of their albums since Never Meant, right? Like, that riff comes in, you're like, oh, this is like grabbing me in a way that I can't deny. This song comes on, and it's more of like a lyrical chokehold for me, honestly. Like, the music is lovely, like, again, the vocal stylings are so nice out of the gate, but there's just something like I feel in my bones about, like, there's this line about like, the lessons are so much less obvious the further you get from home. That's like, that is a, on the nose, as you said, very straightforward sentiment, and yet it is a god tier lyric to me. It's like hitting at something so precise that, and so identifiable, and I think speaks to a lot of the album more broadly, which is like, we are just getting into these adult concerns, right?

• 2:11:12Speaker 04

  We are, we are moving from like, I mean, it's still an I hate my dad album in some ways, but it's also a dad rock album.

• 2:11:31Yasi Salek?

  All albums by men are, I hate my dad albums.

• 2:11:33Speaker 04

  Only men?

• 2:11:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I feel like women, I mean, I'm not saying women don't hate their dads, but it's

• 2:11:37Speaker 04

  They don't channel it in that particular way.

• 2:11:40Yasi Salek?

  Specifically, music is.

• 2:11:42Speaker 04

  Yes. But it's like, what if the predominant, like, if you thought divorce was sad, breakups were sad, even hating your dad was sad, I think what LP3 confronts you with is, what about fucking up your kids for life?

• 2:11:54Yasi Salek?

  Right. May I introduce you to the idea of being a terrible father?

• 2:11:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. What if, what about the pain of things you can never take back? You know, like, this album really, really works for me. And maybe, maybe I'm just like, the right age and it's, it, when it hit me, but-

• 2:12:07Yasi Salek?

  Would you say it's dad rock on every level?

• 2:12:09Speaker 04

  I think it kind of is. And certainly, the fanbase has aged into the point where, like, American football fans are-

• 2:12:15Yasi Salek?

  Are dads.

• 2:12:16Speaker 04

  Are of dad.

• 2:12:16Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I do feel the last line of Uncomfortably Numb is about me listening to help people and I'll make new friends in the ambulance.

• 2:12:22Speaker 04

  That, that's the twist of the knife I'm talking about, though.

• 2:12:24Yasi Salek?

  Just a telephone.

• 2:12:25Speaker 04

  Like, what a line.

• 2:12:26Yasi Salek?

  Police.

• 2:12:35Yasi Salek?

  I also really love the song with Rachel Coswell from Flo Dive.

• 2:12:38Speaker 04

  And that's just like, let's put a neon sign at the influences on this one.

• 2:12:42Yasi Salek?

  Totally, yeah. Oh, Flo Dive, you ever heard of them? Yeah, well, we got Rachel Coswell on the album.

• 2:12:55Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Air Parent is really good.

• 2:12:57Speaker 04

  Love Air Parent.

• 2:12:58Yasi Salek?

  Also really sad. It's, yeah, it's a really beautiful album about, as a counterpoint to LP1, this is about being an adult.

• 2:13:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:13:05Yasi Salek?

  As much as LP1 is about being a teen, young person, this one is really about being an adult and reckoning with what that means. What does it mean to be a full-ass grown person?

• 2:13:15Speaker 04

  And I think it, it drum, like, drums up interest in the band. And we should say, supposedly, Polyvinyl said LP4 is coming this year, 2026.

• 2:13:23Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 2:13:24Speaker 04

  There's supposedly one on the books, there's no data attached. Again, who knows with this stuff?

• 2:13:27Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:13:28Speaker 04

  That's where we currently sit. The anticipation coming out of the layover after LP1 was like, oh, I get more of this thing I like. I think the anticipation coming out of LP3 is like, I don't know what they could do anymore. Like, thi- this feels like it opens up so many possibilities.

• 2:13:42Yasi Salek?

  Do you think they'll make like a Jag and like, sonically go in kind of a slightly different direction?

• 2:13:48Speaker 04

  Like a Whistful Scott direction, or which one?

• 2:13:50Yasi Salek?

  I'm just saying.

• 2:13:51Speaker 04

  But this already is a different direction.

• 2:13:52Yasi Salek?

  No, I don't know.

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

  That's my point. You know, it's like if if we're kind of furthering our way down the road.

• 2:13:56Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 2:13:57Speaker 04

  This feels like the kind of album that all of a sudden there are so many forks and there's so many different directions you could take versus if you're just trying to make more LP one.

• 2:14:04Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 2:14:04Speaker 04

  That's cool, and I would have liked that in its way, but I'm kind of more entertained and eager by this.

• 2:14:09Yasi Salek?

  I agree, and I think just from reading interviews with them, like, it occurs to me that musicians like this could never be satisfied remaking the same album.

• 2:14:18Speaker 04

  How could you?

• 2:14:19Yasi Salek?

  Over and over again, like, they're talented and creative and like, it's not, and now I'm saying not, you know what I mean?

• 2:14:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:24Yasi Salek?

  Like, there's a musicianship that is not going to be satisfied by, like, redoing reruns of a thing you've already done. Well, we should talk about, before we wrap out, the Fade Into You cover.

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 2:14:38Yasi Salek?

  Which is pretty fucking good.

• 2:14:40Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 2:14:40Yasi Salek?

  As he starred with Mia Folic, and that came out in 2021. Then there's an entire album of American football covers.

• 2:14:47Speaker 04

  How did you feel about this album?

• 2:14:49Yasi Salek?

  You know, I didn't know it existed.

• 2:14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:14:52Yasi Salek?

  And I tried to listen to it, and I think it has some real bright spots.

• 2:14:56Speaker 04

  It does. It also, like many a cover album, has many, like, I don't know what was going on there.

• 2:15:02Yasi Salek?

  Some real question marks. Yeah, but I like the Blanche L.

• 2:15:05Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 2:15:06Yasi Salek?

  Really good.

• 2:15:07Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 2:15:07Yasi Salek?

  The summer ends, ah, everyone knows I'm a Blanche L stan. Actually, really like Ethel Kane's for sure.

• 2:15:12Speaker 04

  I do, too.

• 2:15:12Yasi Salek?

  I think it's super, I mean, if she somehow made it more.

• 2:15:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:15:15Yasi Salek?

  Into Telephone Hospital than the original, which is absolutely insane.

• 2:15:19Speaker 04

  Well, that one's like Ethel Kane as Slow Dive.

• 2:15:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:21Speaker 04

  It's like she's like tripled the runtime.

• 2:15:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:24Speaker 04

  Shoegaze the shit out of that thing. And it it really works. Like, that's a nice, like, cover as redefinition kind of exercise.

• 2:15:40Yasi Salek?

  And I like Manchester Orchestra.

• 2:15:42Speaker 04

  I do, too.

• 2:15:42Yasi Salek?

  Stay Home a lot.

• 2:15:43Speaker 04

  Always loved Manchester Orchestra.

• 2:15:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, great band. And then they put out a live album in 2025 from The L Ray, where you got that show.

• 2:15:50Speaker 04

  I was not, I wish.

• 2:15:52Yasi Salek?

  Seems like Ethel Kane joined them for for sure.

• 2:15:54Speaker 04

  What the fuck?

• 2:15:55Yasi Salek?

  What the fuck, man, you missed it.

• 2:15:55Speaker 04

  Really missed opportunity.

• 2:15:57Yasi Salek?

  And that, for now, is the end of the incredible American football story.

• 2:16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, they went from college kids making sad music to dads making sad music.

• 2:16:08Yasi Salek?

  With a 14. With a 14 year break.

• 2:16:10Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 2:16:11Yasi Salek?

  Minding their own business. Until the internet came calling and said, "We'd love you to reform." And they were like, "Oh." Um, this was really wonderful, Rob Mahoney. I know, I'm sorry. I promised you earlier that it would be a shorter one. And as usual, I lied.

• 2:16:26Speaker 04

  I would have been disappointed if it were.

• 2:16:28Yasi Salek?

  Thanks so much.

• 2:16:29Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:16:30Yasi Salek?

  For coming on. You guys, check out Rob Mahoney on the Prestige TV podcast. Several ones about basketball.

• 2:16:39Speaker 04

  Yes, The Ringer NBA Show. I mean, honestly, just-

• 2:16:42Yasi Salek?

  Where else can they find you, Rob?

• 2:16:43Speaker 04

  Around.

• 2:16:44Yasi Salek?

  Around town.

• 2:16:45Speaker 04

  I work here. I'm on some shows, you know? Come find me.

• 2:16:51Yasi Salek?

  And come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 2:17:03Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Rob Mahoney. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Jacob Corbett and Sarah Reddy. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Delvac and me, Yasi Selig. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessey and the television program The Pit. Noah Wiley, come on Bandsplain. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to or watch podcasts.

• 2:17:51Yasi Salek?

  Why did I put so many, so many notes?

• 2:17:57Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, Rob.

• 2:17:57Speaker 04

  It's okay.

• 2:17:58Yasi Salek?

  Bear with me here.

• 2:17:58Speaker 04

  You're good.

• 2:18:00Speaker 00

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 2:18:09Speaker 00

  We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.

• 2:18:35Speaker 05

  Killers for half my life? It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for that. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser.

• 2:18:46Speaker 05

  And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter: Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.