All his life, it seems as if Mike Kinsella has been at odds with himself in a way that has made him his own worst enemy. Beyond the battle wounds and fuck-ups he’s tallied up along the way, it’s hard to argue that such a negative trait has not at least managed to push his most famous band of his many in Midwestern emo originators American Football further from their starting point because of it. And for the fascinatingly better.

Every eponymous effort release since their scene classic 1999 debut and their reunion following a decade and a half of silence has heard Kinsella alongside core members in guitarist Steve Holmes, bassist / cousin Nate Kinsella, and returning drumming Steve Lamos raising the bar they’ve set for themselves to make something bigger — a greater grandeur, if you will — from the heavy sighs Kinsella places over his own soft shoulders (and those around him, for that matter.)

We now meet Kinsella and company seven years removed from their last album. He’s since become a very divorced dad who — as his bandmates attest — has some questionable drinking habits that have only fueled creative tensions within. The pain of his (mostly) self-inflicted morbid existentialism is all the more bitter to swallow, but you wouldn’t be able to guess it from the sounds of this one. No longer just the humble indie-emo rock outfit with the iconic artwork of the suburban Illinois home on the album cover, they’ve fully embraced the Airbnb venture with a limited Vans sneaker side quest of their lore by turning twinkling embers into a big red sky atmosphere.

Throughout LP4, Kinsella’s painfully honest admissions envelope spaces much larger than the band has ever reached through post-rock dynamics and dreamy, celestine post-punk. It’s odd how these songs can sometimes feel a little like eavesdropping in on somebody’s intimate, internal monologues with themselves. The epical “Bad Moon” line “I found new kinks in the dark” — among many other stark insights into Kinsella’s personal demons as of late — is rued more with guilt than it is a flex on sex positivity, for example. And yet, American Football sweeps you into its broken sky and leaves you amazed by the soft spectacle that is their own singular sound of post-emo rock.

There’s good company to be had, too. Turnstile’s Brendan Yates guests in the alien void encroaching of “No Feeling”, old friend Caithlin de Marrais of Rainer Maria reemerges in the spill canvas of “Blood On My Blood”, and modern shoegaze star Wisp shines through the deathly gleam of “Wake Her Up”. Embellishments of vibraphone and synths by Cory Bracken as well as violin from Ben Russell justify the sonic expansion, too. For an album so centered on inner darkness, American Football captures the beauty of it all with sparkling awe.

Recommended: “Blood On My Blood”, “Bad Moons”, “Wake Her Up”

American Football’s American Football is available now on Polyvinyl Records.

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