Kidnapped - Crunch CS

While I am an unabashed fan of sappy music like the Smashing Pumpkins or American Football, more often than not I need to spin something far more vicious, and for me, CT’s Kidnapped has mastered the distillation of brutality in their sound. Their music is built on a singular rage, the tones of a psyche snapping, and of the three releases they dropped in 2017, Crunch CS presents the best capture of Kidnapped’s unbridled fury.

Clocking in at just over six minutes, Crunch CS barrels headfirst into your ears with reckless and unrelenting energy. Not a single track breaks sixty seconds, yet Kidnapped still manages to cram tempo and dynamic changes into each piece. There is no time wasted on sentiment, nor a moment spared to catch a breath or tune a string—the band smashes song against song against song without apology, pumping their virulent music into your head until your brain is seeping from your ears.

Crunch CS sports an energy that is painfully immediate, capturing Kidnapped's live ferocity without sacrificing either decibel or definition. The drums deliver adrenaline-fueled blast beats at blistering tempos against a bass that groans like a skyscraper about to collapse. The guitars are massive and mangled with distortion, cabs retching feedback between songs and intermingling with snippets of fuzzed radio or sampled dialogue to construct a compound of insanity.



Atop this maelstrom of noise, they lay roaring vocals drenched in desperation and fury. The energy pent up in the instruments finds a voice in the lyrics, bursting from lines like "Cut me open / Rip it out / Make sure I scream / Fucking loud." Each shout smashes against the background of the instrumentation, as if fighting for its own space against the walls of noise and feedback.

When it comes to powerviolence, you will be hard pressed to find a band that hits harder than Kidnapped, and Crunch CS provides the perfect dose of their sound to get you hooked. Kidnapped cuts the bullshit out entirely, cramming viscosity and volume into each song, ripping through their riffs before careening to a quick and catastrophic end. So don't waste time and sleep on this record, because Kidnapped's trajectory is only upward, and they sure as hell aren't gonna wait for you to come around.

My top track: Scibelli Mondays

You can find more from Kidnapped, including upcoming live shows and news, on Facebook. Then grab your own copy of Crunch CS at their Bandcamp page.

American Football - American Football (LP2)

About a year ago now, I absolutely fell in love with American Football’s debut LP, a rite of passage that had eluded me completely until it was reissued. If I had one lament at that time concerning American Football’s music, it was that there simply wasn’t enough of it to be had. Thus, you can imagine my ravenous delight when I got my grubby mitts on their brand new follow-up album, American Football (LP2), seventeen years after their break-up. The prospect of more sprawling songs in which to lose myself certainly had me excited, and yet the fact that this band could not only recapture the magic of their youthful songsmithing, but also improve upon it, has left me amazed and impressed beyond measure.

It may be a bold statement, but to me, LP2 seems a massive step forward from American Football’s debut. While Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos have retained the emotional honesty and gentle but penetrating technical musicianship for which the act is known, there is no lack of evolution on this record. The musical and lyrical themes explored on their first album, both now considered quintessentially “emo,” are still present on LP2, but expressed in a more mature fashion. The band members use the wisdom and experience gained in the last seventeen years as lenses, giving the act a new light that is both profound and extremely relevant.

This maturity is most obviously present in the lyrics of the record. Although most songs started as interlocking guitar parts before being fleshed out in the band’s Dropbox, each piece feels written with vocals in mind, a distinct departure from the more instrumental-driven first record. Kinsella actually spent the entire recording sessions writing and rewriting his vocal parts to fit the songs, and this intense amount of attention certainly provides a solid product. Kinsella allows himself to be extremely vulnerable in songs like “I Need a Drink (Or Two or Three)”, where he admits an unhealthy dependence on alcohol, or with obscured acknowledgement of a tendency towards infidelity in “Desire Gets in the Way” and “My Instincts are the Enemy.”

As Mike states, he “feels more comfortable being sincere…in [the songs of] American Football,” an honesty which rings heavily in the tunes on LP2. He takes the tropes of introspection and sincerity for which his younger music was known and adapts them to fit his life as an adult. His statement of “We’ve been here before / But I don’t remember a lock on the door / Is it keeping me out or you in?” in “Where Are We Now?” brings a temporal aspect into the music, speaking of distance growing between two individuals over a long stretch of time. The lines “Wild nights when we were younger / We thought we’d live forever,” in “Everyone is Dressed Up” conjure a longing for the feelings of youth, yet in “I’ve Been Lost for So Long,” the album’s first single, Kinsella presents a very aware, if not humorous, version of those same feelings in the statement, “Doctor, it hurts when I exist / This isn’t the pain I’m usually in.”

But as LP2 exhibits, American Football’s music has grown in the interim, so much so that it is now able to look beyond the emo introspection of its youth. Kinsella’s writing has become more aware of the world around him and concerned for those who people it. “Give Me the Gun” is a track about “checking in on a distressed loved one,” while “Home is Where the Haunt Is” examines the effects of grief and loneliness. It is in this latter tune that Kinsella’s writing really shines, as he first acknowledges the heaviness of the situation: “the past still present tense / you need more time to mourn,” before finding some understanding and acceptance: “The ghost in the corner of the room / knows how you’re feeling / ‘cause your dead to him too.” LP2 shows this band’s growth from self-centered youths into responsible and responsive adults, connecting outward concern with the inward contemplation for which they are known.

The lyrical composition is hardly the one facet of American Football to have matured. Just as the scope of Kinsella’s writing has enlarged, so to has the band’s instrumentation. Both Kinsella and Holmes have retained the “sparkly” guitar sound which is their signature, and put it to work hard, but it is no longer their limit, as acoustic guitars, vibraphones, and bells all work their way to prominent spots in the songs. Similarly, the odd time signatures and interlocking melodies that define American Football’s sound are prevalent, but dialed back just enough to let Kinsella’s powerful, heart-wrenching vocals to take the center. And last but not least, their inclusion of Nate Kinsella as a full-time bassist has made all the difference, his unobtrusive yet poignant lines filling the low end that was so notoriously missing from American Football’s sound.

Perhaps the best example of the band’s sonic evolution is the second release from LP2, “Give Me the Gun.” The overall structure appears relatively simple, alternating just between A and B sections, but American Football brings its technical skills to the forefront with their time signature choices, writing the A section in a convoluted but harmonious 6/4 (one measure of 11 and one of 13), while the B section alternates between 8 and 7.  Kinsella’s vocals are sparse, his lyrics even sparser, allowing the intertwining guitars to meld together in between spotlights on Steve Lamos’ soft yet syncopated drum lines. “Give Me the Gun” is a perfect example of how this band brings its big guns to bear—subtly, letting the mood and music carry the true weight and adding flourish only when appropriate.

 

Whether or not you choose to place it against the band’s small but significant legacy, LP2 is an American Football record that easily stands on its own as awesome and evocative. The picturesque instrumentation, laden with both thought and feeling, couple perfectly with Mike Kinsella’s painfully truthful lyrics to design nine unique composites of the band members’ lives. LP2’s delicate beauty is both resonant and easy to absorb, and if it gives any hint as where these men are headed, I know I will continue following them with eager eyes and ears.

Tunes to Check Out:

1) Home is Where the Haunt Is

2) I Need a Drink (Or Two or Three)

3) Born to Lose

American Football - American Football

I listen to lots of music. Tons of music. All the time I surround myself with it. My every workday is soundtracked by the thousands of songs on my ancient iPod, every car ride defined by whatever album is spinning in my CD player. My tastes cross over almost every genre, and so it is rare that I am completely floored by a new song, nevermind an entire album. But from the very moment I decided to explore the newly-remastered, self-titled record by American Football, I was knocked off my feet by the completely original sound and the overwhelming human presence that each song encapsulates. 

Although considered to be a seminal record of 90’s emo, the sound of American Football far surpasses any genre label that tries to encompass it. Short of some almost-distorted chords in the coda of “Honestly,” there is hardly any edge to the record at all; Mike Kinsella and Steve Holmes focus on tangling their guitar parts together, skipping through jangly and gentle melodies that work in perfect unison. Similarly, drummer Steve Lamos’ beats move like a lazy river, driven by jazz sensibility with nary a crash cymbal to be found. Interaction is the focus of each piece, all three musicians coalescing into harmonious compositions that are utterly pleasing and wholly exciting to the ear. 

Although the energy of the record is somewhat lackadaisical, there is no apathy to be found; in fact, American Football spends more time than most assembling intricate pieces of music. The record abounds with time signature changes: “But the Regrets are Killing Me” wavers constantly between 4/4 and 9/8, while the band flaunts in 5/4 in “You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon” and 7/4 in “The Summer Ends.” To make matters more complex, apparently each song features a completely different guitar tuning, because according to Kinsella, “no two songs [are] in the same key.” Despite this convoluted nature of the compositions, there is no pretention in any of the songs; each piece breathes with its own life, existing as it is without trying to prove itself. American Football’s three musicians move effortlessly through their technical tunes, yet they manage without effort to wring true human emotion from each and every note, drenching their sound with their souls. 

One of the best examples of American Football’s synthesis of prodigious musicianship and honest expression is the de facto closer to the record, “Stay Home.” At just over eight minutes, this sprawl of a song features all three band members playing in different time signatures “that sync up every so often.” The music is focused only on the idea of possibility; each repeat links differently with another part, creating a sonic orbit of sorts that only returns to the beginning after a lengthy journey. With “Stay Home,” the band isn’t trying to impress anyone with their skills, monster though they may be—in fact, they’re not trying to do anything at all, instead standing back and letting their song evolve as it sees fit. “Stay Home” is neither a performance nor an exercise, just a few friends teasing their instruments in and out of beautiful synchronicity. 

The instrumentation of American Football is the focal point of human emotion; the “feeling” of the songs stems heavily from the guitars and percussion, and as such, the vocals and lyrics provide more accent than content. Kinsella’s gentle crooning refuses to take the spotlight, but instead fades in and out of the songs, applying context to the instrumentation without truly defining it. As Kinsella relates, most of the lyrics were written “on the spot” or pulled from a journal of his teenage years. Indeed, the band was so focused on the work of their instruments that both Steves were unaware of most vocal melodies until the band performed live. 

Much of the writing is very general, but just as with the instrumentation, there is no lack of feeling in the words, and Kinsella certainly does not waste them. In “Honestly,” he weaves beauty and poignancy into the opening verse “I can’t remember teen dreams / all my teenage feelings and their meanings / they seem too see-through to be true,” while in “I’ll See You When We’re Both Not So Emotional” he is both gentle and scathing: “If you’re still prone to accidents and misunderstandings / You won’t understand me.” The sparse and unassuming vocals add context to the vivid instrumentation, placing a human frame around each piece to further the emotion without dominating the song. 

   

According to Kinsella, the focus of American Football was always “the interplay between the guitars,” and ostensibly, the instrumentation is far more prioritized than the lyrics—hence the two instrumentals, one of which is simply named for the odd instrument used in it. However, when there are words to be had, the band melds them with music in wondrous ways, and no more so than in the opening track “Never Meant.” Holmes and Kinsella create a complex web of guitar work that is stunning yet dolorous, while Lamos taps out a gentle beat laden with syncopation. 

The music is hauntingly beautiful, but Kinsella’s melancholy vocal really nails the sentiment home by giving the sadness a background. In a voice both detached and mournful, he tells his ex-lover to forget “everything said / and everything we did / best friends and better halves.” Emotion bleeds through the speakers as his vocals merge with the music as he states “you can’t miss what you forget” before imploring “let’s just pretend everything and anything between you and me was never meant.” Between the sparkling guitars and Kinsella’s fearsome lyrical statements, “Never Meant” has been proclaimed by the band as a “good representation” of their sound and feeling, and from false start to the final fade, it hits me just as hard as my first broken heart. 

With its incredible synesthesia of instrumentation and humanity, American Football is truly a wonder, yet what is more unbelievable is its striking lack of conceit. As Kinsella relates, the record “was literally the last thing” recorded before college ended, and that “we knew we were going to break up” before recording was even finished. For American Football, their eponymous LP is simply a collection of feelings and thoughts from their college days, created for no one but themselves. That honesty rings loudly in each of their 9 songs, and it is no wonder this record has since been held in such high regard. American Football captures with powerful clarity the cadence of the human soul, and I have no doubt I will be stuck on this record for years to come.   

Tunes to Check Out:
1) Never Meant
2) I'll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional
3) But the Regrets Are Killing Me