American Football in tier list
My first listen of the first album, I liked it but I wasn’t really sold. It’s a little empty, a little slow. The other stuff I’ve listened to that I’ve seen under the math-rock label has tended to feel somewhat… not frantic, but maybe a little bit jittery? Clever, witty, jittery—and I like that. American Football doesn’t feel like that. My second listen, I was much more interested. The empty spaces seemed to hold more in them, rather than less. There was a solidness and a character that I was starting to be able to feel. I listened a third time, and by then I really liked it a good bit.
Those feelings were all even more exaggerated on the second album. I just kept listening to it, I listened to it a full four times instead of my usual two. I can’t give a perfectly satisfying answer why, but I really love it. It is satisfying, it feels good, it is interesting and complex and also very simple. I don’t know. I dig it a lot, 9/10 and that’s only after day one. Day one with four listens, but still just day one, there’s not even been time to sit on it yet and I still like it that much I didn’t like Lp3 quite as much as Lp2, I didn’t feel it quite as much, but I still liked it and felt it quite a bit. I listened to this one a full four times, too.
I’m kinda hooked. I was open to and kinda expecting to like it a fair bit, but I like it way more than that. I feel attached to it already, it got into me. In some ways, it feels like it’s already familiar; there are parts of it that almost remind of Death Cab, of the parts of Death Cab that I like, so maybe there’s something there? In some ways I almost think it should bore me, because the songs sound kinda similar and it kinda blurs sometimes, because it’s slow and mellow and I don’t always have patience for that, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t bore me. The blurring is pleasant, almost trancelike. I’m not losing the music; I’m getting lost in the music. It’s slow and mellow, but more than that it’s almost meditative, it’s spacious.
I think I’m kinda a big fan. I think I kinda maybe like it quite a bit, already. Which, maybe that’s in part because I listened to all of these albums twice as many times as I normally do, but also I did that because I liked them enough that I wanted to, y’know? The feeling stands regardless. I’m gonna give an A+. That’s pretty high, A+ is where you really start getting into my top 10% (right now top 8%, even), and I think it’s pretty rare for first listens to go straight there, but… I dunno. At that level, there’s a pretty high baseline for how much I like the music, how much I like all of the music; there also starts to be a pretty high baseline for how emotionally connected I feel to the music and to the artist. Maybe it’s quick, but I think American Football is on that, that the connection is there and will stay or grow. So yeah. A+, I’m a fan
American Football complete, now listening to: RADWIMPS
tunafruitsandwitch 