SWX Bristol, 13th September 2024
It was the first true moody, angsty, cold day of the year, setting the scene perfectly for a good, nostalgic Midwest emo show. I was shivering in my band hoodie and beanie on my way to SWX to see the legendary friends from Illinois who released a genre-defining debut LP in 1999. While American Football (LP1) was created as a casual, half-assed’ side project’, it would soon receive cult classic status and be considered one of the most important albums of its time and one that was highly prominent in the development of Midwest emo as a sub-genre.
Twenty-five years later – just one night before the official anniversary of its release – the reformed band performed the self-titled debut LP in full. Upon entering SWX, the sold-out room was packed from the barrier to the door. By the time I managed to get to the front, I could sense the excitement for what we were all about to experience in the air. The lights went dark, the first sounds of ‘Five Silent Miles’ hit the speakers and the iconic American Football house in Urbana, Illinois, was projected onto the wall behind the stage. ‘The Summer Ends’ marks the start of the journey through LP1 played in its entirety. Having attended dozens of album anniversary shows in my lifetime, this one felt different to all the others.
It was not just a celebration of the record but a celebration of an entire genre, movement, and sub-culture. The celebration of growing up in a changing world that you don’t always understand and that doesn’t always understand you. The celebration and soundtrack of moving through the years, the experiences and the emotions like any emo teen. The celebration for feeling the feelings even when you can’t find the words to express them. The cold winter nights, sparkling summers, and every good and bad day. The instrumental twinkly guitars and soft trumpets form the perfect soundtrack to see memories of a lifetime of emotions and experiences flashing in your mind, like telling stories around the campfire with a cup of tea and a warm hug. And that hug is oh so welcome on this true autumnal Friday night.
For an album that is still so highly acclaimed and culturally relevant a quarter century later, the atmosphere in the room was a flavour of its own and one that I haven’t often tasted myself. The swirl of melancholy, nostalgia and peace meant you could hear a pin drop in the room. But don’t be fooled; this silence is not a sign of disinterest or a bored audience, but rather the hypnotising craft of the performance witnessed. Everyone in attendance was so in awe that the sound of the shutter of my camera snapped me back into the present.
At times, standing in the audience flooded me with the nostalgia and peace I felt listening to these songs in a friend’s shed as a teen secretly smoking and drinking in silence, the aesthetics of exploring, the moodiness of the changing seasons, the hotboxing of cars and driving around for the late night adventures that felt so deeply defining for many emo teens. For a moment, I completely forgot that the band was right there on the stage and that all these people were in the room enjoying the same emotions of nostalgia towards their teenage years and the sounds coming from the stage.
On occasion, a member in the audience would speak up during an especially quiet moment for the whole room to hear, interacting with the band, adding to one of the most intimate atmospheres I have ever seen at a show, where regardless if you were at the barricade or all the way in the back, it represented the true DIY emo basement gigs with a dozen people there – a feeling that is so rare to experience at a show with a few thousand folks in the audience.
Frontman Mike Kinsella admits to the audience that he does not often speak to large crowds, and his life usually consists of daily life errands, kids, groceries, housework, and even funerals of grandparents just like the rest of us – and apologised to the band for repeatedly bringing up his grandpa’s funeral. Is it really a Midwest emo show without some unprocessed emotions about loss, though?
The band jokingly states they will be playing ‘Wonderwall’ next as I am on my way down the stairs from the balcony, and I realise I hear the first riff of ‘Never Meant’ echo through the building and pick up my pace to make my way back to the pit to be fully immersed in the live experience of one of the best album opening tracks of all time. For the first time, the audience is not totally quiet, and the soft, respectful sound of excitement rises in the crowd as people start singing and humming along. The audience naturally splits into singing the instrumental riff of the final verse whilst the other half screams the lyrics, overlapping and intertwining each other like a perfectly rehearsed harmony, and I start to feel chills all over my body.
This album attained cult status for a reason, but this performance showed me that it created a community of people from all backgrounds who feel similar things and who are just looking for a deeper connection than we usually find in this world. And this show did exactly that; it made me feel more spiritually connected to a thousand strangers than I did most of my childhood in a world where I felt like I was the stranger. This sold-out show proves that maybe we aren’t so strange at all.
Words and photos by Willemjin Denneman, no use without permission.
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