Sad Songs, Old Houses, and Something Close to Faith: American Football at Newport Music hall
Some shows you stumble into. Others you wait years for.
American Football was the latter.
For years, I had somehow managed to miss them every time they toured. Wrong city. Wrong date. Some other obligations getting in the way. Given the band's history, missing them carried a little more weight. American Football has never exactly been a band you could count on being around forever.
Formed in 1997, the band released a self-titled EP in 1998, followed by their now genre-defining debut album in 1999. Then, almost as quickly as they arrived, they were gone. The members moved on with their lives while the record they left behind quietly grew into something much larger than any of them probably expected.
“Midwest emo" has become a sprawling designation in the decades since. It has been stretched, reinterpreted, memed, commodified, and handed down to generations of listeners who weren't alive when that first record came out. But American Football remains permanently attached to its foundation.
So finally seeing them at Newport Music Hall felt significant.
AFTERNOON BIKE RIDE
Before American Football, there was Afternoon Bike Ride, an indie three-piece from Montreal whose music is difficult to neatly categorize. They pull from different sounds and genres, assembling them into something eclectic while somehow remaining comfortably beneath the enormous umbrella we call indie music.
Their performance was peaceful. Still. Delicate without ever becoming boring.
Vocalist Lia Kurihara's melodies floated through Newport, haunting and beautiful, holding the room in a kind of quiet suspension.
Then I noticed something through my camera.
People were crying.
Not one person. Not two.
At one point I counted nearly ten people along the barricade with tears streaming down their faces.
I've photographed a lot of concerts. I've watched people scream themselves hoarse, crowd surf, bleed, hug strangers, and completely lose themselves in songs they've probably heard a thousand times.
I had never seen anything quite like this.
There was no spectacle responsible for it. No dramatic production cue telling the audience how they were supposed to feel. Just music finding whatever vulnerable place it needed to find and pushing directly into it.
I don't know what those songs meant to those people. I don't need to.
Whatever it was, it was real.
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
After Afternoon Bike Ride came American Football. The stage went dark and the band slowly emerged, initially little more than silhouettes against the light.
Then came “Man Overboard."
Followed by “Blood on My Blood."
Then “I Can't Feel You."
Three songs into the evening and apparently emotional stability was no longer on the menu.
American Football has always understood sadness differently than most bands. Their music rarely begs you to feel something. It doesn't grab you by the shoulders and scream about heartbreak. It gives you space. Clean guitars wander around one another. Trumpets appear. Notes hang in the air slightly longer than expected. Mike Kinsella's voice arrives somewhere between confession and resignation.
The devastation sneaks up on you.
Live, that restraint becomes enormous.
The band worked through songs spanning their career, eventually arriving at the ones everyone knew were coming.
“Uncomfortably Numb."
“Honestly?"
And, of course, “Never Meant."
Behind them, projections shifted throughout the evening. Lightning storms flickered across the screen. Familiar images appeared, including that house.
If you know, you know.
The unassuming Urbana, Illinois home that became one of the most recognizable images associated with emo music appeared behind the band like some strange monument to everything that happened after 1999.
The visuals never overwhelmed the performance. They didn't need to. They simply existed alongside the music, giving shape to the atmosphere already filling the room.
Eventually, the band announced a brief intermission before returning for the final four songs. Nobody seemed particularly interested in leaving. By then, Newport Music Hall didn't really feel like a concert venue anymore.
It felt like church.
Not the kind with pews, sermons, guilt, and someone passing around a collection plate. Something older and simpler than that. A room full of people gathering because they believe something happens when enough humans stand together and surrender themselves to the same thing.
For a couple of hours, that thing was American Football.
People cried. People sang. People stood silently and let the music wash over them.
And after years of missing my opportunity to see this band, I finally understood why people keep coming back to these songs decades later.
Some music entertains you.
Some music follows you home.
And some music waits patiently inside you until a dark room, a familiar guitar line, and a few hundred strangers finally give it permission to come out.
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