American Football

American Football bring their understated Midwest emo to O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, on 27 June 2026. Formed in the late 90s in Champaign-Urbana, the trio of Mike Kinsella, Steve Lamos and Steve Holmes shaped a sound built on interlaced clean guitars, shifting time signatures and quiet, inward vocals, with trumpet lines stepping in like a second narrator. A first EP in 1998 and an eponymous album in 1999 fixed their blueprint just before a split; the record slowly found its audience, leading to a 2014 reissue and a return to the stage. Since then, American Football have toured steadily and released two further albums, also self-titled, in 2016 and 2019, opening their palette to denser textures and a few guest voices, including Hayley Williams and Elizabeth Powell.

On stage, the core group expands to do justice to those layered arrangements; the set moves through patient builds, crystalline arpeggios and subtle rhythmic turns, shifting between the open-hearted minimalism of the early songs and the broader colours of the later records.