On its inconceivable third album since reuniting in 2014 after a 14-year hiatus, American Soccer isn’t fascinated by reclaiming youth a lot as interrogating what got here after it. The Sonny DiPerri-co-produced LP4 (Polyvinyl) doesn’t simply revisit the band’s long-established emotional palette – it complicates it, stretching these heart-piercing guitar lattices and murmured confessions into heavier, stranger and, at occasions, genuinely disorienting realms. In spite of everything, emo boys don’t merely cry – they write songs that make everybody else cry too. Right here, that impulse usually appears like equal elements catharsis and confrontation.
Opener “Man Overboard” rapidly indicators the shift. Its knotty, virtually dizzying drum sample and swelling partitions of sound really feel alien on this context, culminating in Mike Kinsella’s blunt admission, “It’s hopeless.” By the point “No Feeling” settles into one thing nearer to the band’s traditional shimmer (heartbeat bass, interlocking six-strings, visitor concord vocals from Turnstile’s Brendan Yates), he’s emotionally checked out, tracing the numb aftermath of endings that don’t include villains.
If earlier American Soccer data hinted at grownup disillusionment, LP4 plunges cannon ball-style into it. “Patron Saint of Pale” pairs a deceptively buoyant rhythm with the logistical absurdity of divorce (Kinsella suggests a sport of Rock Paper Scissors as a novel, lawyer-free option to settle issues), whereas “Wake Her Up” cloaks morbid fixation in one of the crucial rapid and effervescent melodies the band has ever written. Even the wryness cuts deeper now; “Blood on My Blood” turns self-awareness right into a type of protection mechanism, its zig-zagging groove masking the menace embedded in its lyrics (“don’t make me use my pen” / “my worlds killed earlier than they usually’ll kill once more”).
The centerpiece, although, is “Unhealthy Moons,” an eight-minute sluggish burn that spirals from surreal humor into much more unsettling territory. Kinsella’s prolonged litany of sins dedicated at the hours of darkness — “misplaced my thoughts,” “explored new kinks,” “informed all my lies,” “slit my wrists” – lands with a cumulative weight that’s arduous to shake, particularly because the music fractures and reforms round him.
Even the instrumentals really feel purposeful. “The One With the Piano” and “Lullabye” supply temporary, uneasy respites, whereas the Music for 18 Musicians-tinged “Desdemona” threads hypnotic textures by a tune about intimacy and injury with no tidy takeaways. By nearer “No Soul To Save,” Kinsella sounds defiant, exhausted and unsure all of sudden. Certainly, from starting to finish, LP4 is remarkably expansive. Not louder, essentially – simply deeper, messier and fairly keen to tolerate discomfort. Center age has by no means felt, or sounded, like a extra lovely bummer.
