How does an anonymous looking house on an unassuming Illinois street become so famous it gets bought and made subject to an unofficial kind of conservation order? Answer, when it’s the house on 704 West High Street in Urbana, and it’s photo was on the cover of American Football’s eponymous debut album.
The accompanying backstory you can look up for yourself, but American Football‘s blend of math and post rock, along with it’s emotive storytelling and relentless sense of uncertainty and change, made it a word of mouth touchstone for the emo movement before it became a parody of itself.
The minor issue is that it was previously reissued a decade ago with a slew of new material, but this version instead is boldly twinned with an accompanying set of cover versions. Assuming we know the original, the alternates are each in their own way absorbing, with Sam Beams (aka Iron And Wine) reverently beautifying Never Meant and Ethel Cain adding shoegaze fuzz to For Sure.
The chosen artists clearly have a great reverence for the task, but it’s Tortoise drummer John McEntire that steals the show, his krautrock styled take on The One With The Wurlitzer a reminder of the scope by which American Football‘s was so open to interpretation in the first place.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 