AMERICAN FOOTBALL
AMERICAN FOOTBALL (COVERS) - CD

UPC: 644110050021
Label: POLYVINYL RECORDS
Format: CD
Release Date: October 18, 2024
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TRACK LIST:

1. Iron & Wine - "Never Meant"

2. Blondshell - "The Summer Ends"

3. Novo Amor & Lowswimmer - "Honestly?"

4. Ethel Cain - "For Sure"

5. Yvette Young - "You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon"

6. Girl Ultra - "But the Regrets Are Killing Me"

7. M.A.G.S. - "I’ll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional"

8. Manchester Orchestra - "Stay Home"

9. John McEntire - "The One With the Wurlitzer"

Alongside and in celebration of American Football (25th Anniversary Edition) arrives American Football (Covers), an ingeniously programmed set that highlights not only the way American Football fueled an eventual “emo revival,” but also and perhaps more important how their songs and sounds infiltrated and inspired so many corners of music. From string-swept and imaginative folk to idiosyncratic international pop, from intricate instrumental splendor to open-road shoegaze wonder, (Covers) traces—or at least teases—the endless ways the source material has cut across borders of generation, genre, and geography. It affirms just how important the nine songs three college kids cut in four days remain.

Kinsella’s lyrics on American Football were specific in detail but vague in situation. What we knew was that a relationship was collapsing with less animosity than regret, a sense of future nostalgia shaping words that asked how an ex-couple might feel as the summer passed and they maybe saw each other again. This framework, then, is a perfect invitation for different singers to climb inside and find their own interpretation. There is, for instance, a sweet sense of hope to Iron & Wine’s opening rendition of “Never Meant,” Sam Beam’s singular falsetto pealing like an apology, hoping to pull his lover back toward a relationship’s center. Ethel Cain, meanwhile, lingers and wallows in the uncertainty of the paradoxically titled “For Sure.” Above long, soft drones and guitars that twinkle like stars being extinguished forever, she settles into this song about never really knowing what’s happening. Doom is a foregone conclusion. It is beautiful and tragic, every scene of being together rendered as a pure hypothetical.

In one of the most faithful interpretations here, M.A.G.S. borrows the bitterness and conviction of “I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional,” less a break-up song than a reckoning with the breaks reality sometimes requires. His keyboard-traced and drum-driven version is sweet but sharp, a reminder that a stop can be an act of self-care. Blondshell slinks into a similar realization during “The Summer Ends,” taking shelter beneath a haze of multi-tracked harmonies and circular guitars to wonder what it’s going to take to move toward happiness—for herself and her partner, either together or apart. “Both been so unhappy,” she sings faintly after a fever breaks. “So let’s just see what happens/when summer ends.” Appropriate for a band who could never have predicted what the future held for these songs, American Football is about not knowing what’s up ahead. Each band here sings that eternal plight in their own tone and tongue.

When American Football wrote and recorded these nine songs in 1999, they were also punk kids who were becoming interested in jazz and modern classical. The touchstones that always appear are Miles Davis, Steve Reich, and The Sea and Cake, but the bigger lesson is their interest in engaging other textures and approaches than distortion and drive. That’s clear in the sparkling guitars and shifting rhythms, in the traces of trumpet and whiffs of keys. And it is obvious on (Covers)in the assorted shapes these songs take.

Though never forsaking the tune itself, Manchester Orchestra imbue “Stay Home” with Reich’s pulsing repetition and Electric Miles’ opalescent glow. They find a way to reconnect the song to its burgeoning references. Yvette Young, of Covet, uses webs of guitar, layers of granular synthesis, and lines of mercurial strings to turn the once-skeletal “You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon” into a lush world. And there at the end, John McEntire, busy back in 1999 scheming Tortoise’s Standards and The Sea and Cake’s Oui, routes “The One With the Wurlitzer” into a Motorik anthem. It feels as emotionally unsure as all of American Football, the beat pushing forever forward while the bittersweet keys seem to turn backward, staring off at what might have been.

On the sidewalk outside of the famous house on the cover of American Football, several lines mark where Chris Strong likely stood when he snapped the photo. They are invitations to capture the scene, just as Strong did in 1999. But on the cover of (Covers), nine different images show the home during subsequent phases of the night, the glow from the upstairs window eventually overrunning the frame. That’s more fun than a mere replication, the same lesson that this compilation holds: Eschewing mimics for acts that took a little bit of American Football and made their own way, (Covers) is a testament to the imagination not only of the original but to those who continue to find it twenty-five years after the band assumed they were done.

All songs originally by American Football
Executive Producers: American Football, Amber Leone, Natalie Davila, Seth Hubbard & Matt Lunsford
Art Direction by Janelle Abad & Ryan Miller
Layout by Bradley Hale
Mastered by Emily Lazar

Never Meant

Produced By Brad Cook and Sam Beam
Engineered By Paul Voran
Mixed by Paul Voran and Brad Cook

Acoustic Guitar and all Vocals: Sam Beam
Drums and OP-1 Synth: Matt McCaughan
Acoustic Guitar, Organ, Samples and Additional Production: Brad Cook
Additional Production: Paul Voran

The Summer Ends

Produced By Yves Rothman
Engineered By Yves Rothman & Jake Supple
Mixed By Lawrence Rothman
Recorded at Sunset Sound Studios 3 & The Bungalow on Sunset, Hollywood CA

Drums : Bosh Rothman
Electric Guitar:  Sam Stewart
Bass : Keith Karman
Electric Guitar & Wurlitzer : Joe Kennedy
MS20 : Yves Rothman
Vocals : Sabrina Teitelbaum

Honestly?

Produced and engineered by Ali Lacey and Ed Tullett
Mixed by Ali Lacey

Strings by David Grubb
Trombone and trumpet by Dave Huntriss
Additional vocals, trumpet and synth by Jemima Coulter

For Sure

Hayden Anhedönia - vocals, synths, bass, guitar, production
Hayden Anhedönia - mixed
Angel Diaz - guitar, lapsteel
Matthew Tomasi - guitar
Bryan De Leon - drums

You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon

Guitars/strings/arrangement : Yvette Young
Recorded, mixed: Dryw Owens 
Drums: Ali Lacey

But The Regrets Are Killing Me

vocals: girl ultra
backing vocals: sam katz
vocal arrangements: girl ultra & sam katz
production: sam katz
mix: kalifrn

I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional

Drums, guitars,bass, vocals:  Elliott Douglas
Guitar, synth: Ehmed Nauman
Produced & Mixed: Elliott Douglas

Stay Home

Andy Hull – Vocals, Guitar
Robert McDowell – Guitar, Keys, Bass
Tim Very – Drums
Andy Prince -Bass
Brooks Tipton - Additional Keys

Mixed by: Tj Elias
Engineer: Robert McDowell
Addition Engineering: Jamie Martens
Recorded at Favorite Gentlemen Studios, Atlanta GA

The One With The Wurlitzer

All Instruments; John McEntire
Mixing: John McEntire