By the time I got away from the Buford Highway Stage and The Mountain Goats and over to the Boulevard Stage, American Football were already into Stay Home, but that was fine. From a distance, I could hear the chiming guitars of the long instrumental intro, and the sound drew me toward the stage like a moth to the lit window of their iconic album cover.
American Football is an emo band from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, that released only one eponymous album in 1999. The music merged plain-spoken, sad-core confessional lyrics with the varying time signatures normally found in math rock in such a way that the album became a critical favorite even though the band had disbanded by 2000. In many ways, the heart-breaking album and its softer musical sensibility became the defining statement of the emo genre, which otherwise came to be associated with bands that could more accurately be described as post-hardcore. As the reputation of the album grew, the band finally announced a reunion in 2014 to play a few festivals and New York dates, followed by a wider tour. That tour currently has them in the UK, but on May 8, after The Mountain Goats set, they played Atlanta's Shaky Knees Festival.
That iconic album cover was used as the backdrop behind the stage during their set.
To my surprise, the trumpet parts, including some lovely interludes between songs, were provided by the drummer.
Between other songs, guitarist/singer Mike Kinsella engaged in some of the most uncomfortably awkward stage banter I've ever heard. I liked the trumpet interludes a lot more.
The stage wasn't as crowded for this set as I would have expected, but after all, it was dinnertime (7:15 to 8:15) and a lot of the crowd was over at the Peachtree Stage for Mastodon (whom we've already seen at last year's Hopscotch Festival). However, something about the relatively smaller audience only served to make the show feel more intimate, a small gathering of friends within a bustling festival, and the audience was respectfully quiet, even (or especially) during the delicate instrumental passages.
A little over a year ago, nobody expected to ever hear American Football perform live again, and it seemed like American Football was destined to be a cult album only. As it turns out, they were a highlight of the first day of Shaky Knees.
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