American Football‘s third and most recent album, 2019’s LP3, is the best-produced and most gorgeous sounding record they’ve ever made, and we have a new vinyl pressing of it. Our exclusive new variant is “clear purple with red and black splatter,” and limited to 300 copies. Pick up yours HERE while they last.
LP3 features contributions from members of Paramore, Slowdive, and Land of Talk, and we named it one of the Best Albums of 2019 and Best Punk and Emo Albums of 2015-2019. In his writeup for the latter, Andrew wrote:
When American Football broke up in 2000, their 1999 debut album had hardly left any kind of noticeable dent at all, but today it is maybe the single most influential album on 2010s emo. Hundreds of bands copied it, though none could truly capture its charm… until American Football themselves. Their cult status grew until they finally reunited for live shows in 2014, polished the rust off with 2016’s LP2, and then made the best album of their career yet with 2019’s LP3. American Football helped pioneer a blend of math rock, post-rock, and emo that was a huge feat instrumentation-wise, but it wasn’t until starting his solo project Owen that frontman Mike Kinsella really learned how to sing and write lyrics and choruses that left the same impact on the heart that his noodly guitar playing left on the brain. When American Football reunited, he and the rest of the band (including new bassist Nate Kinsella, Mike’s cousin and longtime collaborator) began putting those two things together and they perfected it on LP3. The album still has the math rock signifiers that made American Football so unique and so influential, but LP3 succeeds because it isn’t trying to recreate any previous American Football album. American Football have now been a band in the 2010s and 2020s for longer than they were in the ’90s, and they’ve really figured out who they are now; they’re not just living off the nostalgia for who they were 20 years ago. LP3 is just as much a dream pop album as it is a post-rock/math rock/emo album. It’s the best-produced and most gorgeous sounding album the band ever made, and it sets no limits for what it means to be an “American Football album.” It brings in glockenspiel, a children’s choir, and high-profile guest vocalists from members of Paramore, Slowdive, and Land of Talk, whose voices are as essential to these songs as Mike Kinsella’s. LP3 may never hold the same cultural significance as LP1, but, artistically speaking, it’s a massive leap forward.
