American Football Share Ethel Cain Cover of 'For Sure' from LP1 Covers Album

American Football are sharing Ethel Cain’s arresting rendition of their song “For Sure” as they continue to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their seminal debut album American Football (fondly referred to as “LP1”).  Along with a completely remastered version of the 1999 album, the aforementioned cover of “For Sure” will appear on a covers edition of the record featuring contributions from an array of talented artists including Cain, Iron & Wine, Manchester Orchestra, Blondshell and more. Both the remastered American Football (25th Anniversary Edition) – lovingly adorned in a spot embossed and silver foil gatefold packaging with a 24-page booklet, and the American Football (Covers) LPs will be out via Polyvinyl Record Co. on October 18th, 2024.

"I knew I wanted to do ‘For Sure’ immediately,” shares Cain, who also shot and edited the footage for the cover’s music video. “It’s always stood out to me every time I spin the record, and I knew exactly how I wanted to translate it into my sound. My favorite part of the entire track is the sound of the train going by the apartment I lived in back in Pennsylvania, stretched out like a synth at the beginning and end. American Football is one of those bands that really marked such a moment in time with their debut record, a mark with so much longevity that it found me the same way at 20 years old that I imagine it found everyone else the day it was first released: as an instant classic. Their sonic storytelling has inspired me in more ways than I can count over the years, so being asked to contribute to this covers edition was truly an honor. American Football forever.”

American Football’s Steve Lamos highlights “For Sure” as one of his favorite AF songs. “It’s a simple-but-powerful statement on change and uncertainty that still rings as true for me in middle age as it did when I was in my mid-20s,” he shares. “It also showcases some of my all-time favorite Mike vocals: the ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ of ‘June seems / too late / delayed / maybe for the better’ are, to my mind, perfection. Ethel Cain has somehow made me like this track even more than I already did.” Lamos, a college professor by day, first became acquainted with Cain’s music through one of his students. “They wrote a brilliant paper explaining how Cain’s ‘American Teenager’ created a lush sonic landscape through textural elements, careful pacing, and plaintive lyrics,” he shares. “Cain bathes ‘For Sure’ here in similar luxury.  She takes her time with each note, each phrase, and each vowel.  In the process, she manages to intensify the ache and longing of the original: the ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ echo almost endlessly here.”

After a years-long hunt for LP1s original Digital Audio Tapes, and a subsequent quest for a machine that would render them properly, American Football LP1 has been lovingly remastered for the first time by original mastering engineer Jonathan Pines in Urbana’s Private Studios, where it was recorded. The intertwined guitars have more sparkle, the drums more bounce and flash, the occasional bass more depth. American Football (25th Anniversary Edition) is the definitive version of the beloved album.

What’s more, the new edition arrives alongside American Football (Covers), an ingeniously programmed set that highlights not only the way American Football fueled an eventual “emo revival,” but also and perhaps more important how their songs and sounds infiltrated and inspired so many corners of music. From string-swept and imaginative folk to idiosyncratic international pop, from intricate instrumental splendor to open-road shoegaze wonder, (Covers) traces—or at least teases—the endless ways the source material has cut across borders of generation, genre, and geography. It affirms just how important the nine songs three college kids cut in four days remain.

American Football cut its first—and, for a long time, only—LP in four days, as the spring of 1999 slid into summer. Steve Holmes, Steve Lamos, and Mike Kinsella were college kids who knew that as soon as their album of spacious and tenderly sad songs was done they likely would be, too. Aside from a few shows, they would break up at the end of the school year and perhaps go on to other bands, jobs, and lives. And for a long while, of course, that is exactly what happened: American Football’s sole album was a twinkling and circuitous entry in the annals of Midwest emo, remarkable for its musical tenderness and lyrical ellipses but largely unremarked upon, too. 

But what happened over the next two decades is an inspiring saga of wonderful work slowly finding its audience. American Football went from cult classic to emo linchpin, its reputation and sales accreting like sand piling up in some endless hourglass. The little white house on its cover, a physical manifestation of the Anywhere, U.S.A. melancholy of its songs, became a musical landmark. Reunions, reissues, and two new albums followed, American Football finally climbing atop its own steady growth curve and staring out to the massive and enchanted crowd it had created, to the scene it had helped foster. Made at the end of the last century, American Football, or LP1, unequivocally stands as one of this century’s most influential rock records.

American Football is Steve Holmes (guitar), Mike Kinsella (vocals, guitar), Nate Kinsella (bass), and Steve Lamos (drums, trumpet).

American Football (Covers): Tracklist

1. Iron & Wine - “Never Meant”

2. Blondshell - “The Summer Ends”

3. Novo Amor & Lowswimmer - “Honestly?”

4. Ethel Cain - “For Sure”

5. Yvette Young - “You Know I Should Be Leaving Soon”

6. Girl Ultra - “But the Regrets Are Killing Me”

7. M.A.G.S. - “I’ll See You When We're Both Not So Emotional”

8. Manchester Orchestra - “Stay Home”

9. John McEntire - “The One With the Wurlitzer”

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

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