American Football (LP3)

American Football's original triumph, on their 1999 self-titled debut, was to reunite two shy siblings: emo and post-rock. It was a pioneering album where lyrical clarity was obscured and complicated by the stealth musical textures surrounding it. Like Slint's Spiderland, or Codeine's The White Birch, even Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, American Football asked far more questions than it cared to answer. But there wasn't a band around anymore to explain it, anyway. The three young men who made the album - Mike Kinsella, Steve Holmes, and Steve Lamos - split up pretty much on it's release. 15 years later, American Football reunited (now as a four-piece, with the addition of Nate Kinsella).