I am not pleased right now. By every indicator, I should be happier than Uncle Ed at a chili cookoff-- I've just finished with finals and I'm finally home for spring break, lounging in a coffeehouse with a nice cup of Chai-- but instead I'm quite troubled. See, beside the fact that the guy behind the counter just put on the Dave Matthews Band, I've just found out that I might like emo, thanks to American Football. This is the last thing I need right now. I've managed to elude the emo phenomenon thus far, either by explaining away the ridiculous emo tag from undeserving bands, or by cleverly avoiding ultra-emo bands like Rainer Maria.

My aversion to emo may stem from a fine girl I work with calling me "emo-boy," with her rationale being that I dress well. Apparently, any guy who'll wear a dress shirt under a sweater automatically likes emo. I can't lie to you: I like this album, even though it pains me so. And American Football are undeniably emo. You know you're faced with an emo band when not only does the line "Let's just see what happens/ When the summer ends" appear, but it takes about 15 seconds for the singer to get through it. I truly wish I could dodge the bullet again, but evidently, emo is out to get me.

American Football make a very pleasant breed of music. The sounds they produce are so maddeningly benign, in fact, that it takes all of my will power not to lay back and smile gleefully, imagining butterflies and puppies frolicking in a sun-drenched meadow. I just want to walk up to the crib of one of American Football's guitar riffs and say, "Look at the cute widdle guitar riff! Who's the cutest widdle itty bitty guitar riff in the whole wide world? You are! Yes, you are!" Then, I'd pinch its chubby little cheeks and give it a rattler. Not that the band's music is infantile. The guitar work on this disc is both intelligent and precise, a rarity in emo music. Even the drumming is remarkably inventive for the genre, forming a varied rhythmic backbone for the ethereal vocals of singer Mike Kinsella.

A trumpet is occasionally involved, though, making it suddenly seem as if you've accidentally thrown on a Windham Hill sampler. Thankfully, it usually disappears rather quickly. The pleasant-o-meter goes into the red zone whenever the trumpet makes an appearance, causing me to snap momentarily out of my reverie. But before I can dive to stop the CD, the usual trumpetless delight resumes, and so I'm left paralyzed on the floor, dreaming of cherubic angels playing on clouds. Augh!

The primary shortcoming of this album is its lyrical content, which is to be expected of an emo band, I suppose. One wonders how great the relationships Kinsella has had could have possibly been if all he deigns to sing of are the fights and breakups. In an interview, one of the other band members remarked that Kinsella seems to make up the words as he goes along at American Football shows. It's probably better this way, since he might eventually stumble across a better lyric than, "A long goodbye/ Mixed emotions/ Just fragments of/ Another life."

My biggest complaint about American Football, though, is that they don't suck terribly. As it stands, they create some very pretty tunes which are perfect for... well... emo-ish things, like cuddling, hanging around a playground at sunset, and sighing deeply. So, I guess I'll just have to pull up my argyle socks and deal with it.

-Taylor M. Clark, October, 1999