This spring American Football will release their fourth album, once again self-titled and referred to semi-officially as LP4. It's the legendary emo/post-rock band's first album in seven years, and it has occasioned a profile in GQ written by Grayson Haver Currin, the current king of the format. The story is long and rich with detail, and some of those details are troubling.
In the feature, singer-guitarist Mike Kinsella refers to himself as a "high-functioning alcoholic" and a "drunk fucking idiot," and Currin notes repeatedly that at least a dozen sources for the story told him they're concerned about his drinking. Mike's brother and Cap'n Jazz bandmate Tim Kinsella, specifically, shared this statement: "Their relationship with drinking as a whole band absolutely fucking disgusts me. They think the world is a frat hazing."
Drummer Steve Lamos, however, is 18 months sober. The story gets into his departure from American Football in 2020, announced in 2021, which was due to feeling belittled by Mike Kinsella and losing creative control over his work. Kinsella remembers Lamos reacting to some creative input on a drum part by telling him, "Fuck you, Mike. You’re drunk. You ruin more shows than you don’t. I quit this band. Fuck this shit." He returned two years later because he missed his bandmates.
The article also details how Mike Kinsella's marriage fell apart, largely due to an online affair he maintained with the woman to whom he is now married. Regarding potential response to the sonic shifts on LP4, Kinsella repeatedly told Currin some variation of this quote: "I used to be insecure, but now it’s like, ‘You cannot kill me. I’m dead. I got divorced with kids, and I’m responsible for that. I’m dead."
There are fun anecdotes in the piece too, like the one where the Kinsellas' mom Donna drove down to Champaign to pick them up for a Fugazi show in Chicago when they were in college, bringing along a cake she baked for Ian MacKaye and his bandmates. "What was the word they used—straight-edge? I really liked that," Donna told GQ. "I really respected Fugazi and was glad my boys were following such a good band." (Fugazi accepted the cake. MacKaye recalls, "She was psyched. She was crazed.") Also amusing, given current events: In the years before American Football reunited, Lamos and guitarist Steve Holmes played together in a band called the Geese.
Almost everything you could ever want to know about American Football is in this story. It touches on the Kinsellas' coming of age, the rise of Polyvinyl Records and "Midwest emo," the family lives of the members, the interpersonal dynamic between bandmates, the decision to buy the American Football house and turn it into an Airbnb, and the seemingly negative impact reuniting the band has had on the members' personal lives. This thing is nearly long enough to be a book, and if you read it, you will likely be both depressed and impressed.
