American Football Are Tormenting Their Fans With Cryptic Videos

Illinois '90s emo pioneers American Football have enjoyed a constant and considerable amount of reunion buzz for the past year-and-a-half or so, playing a string of international shows that, even by their account, nobody ever expected to manifest more than a decade after the band's initial dissolution.

As with all such reconvening, though, there comes a point where the temporary reunion either must wrap up entirely, and we all move on with our lives, or things escalate to an all-out revival — and, right now, American Football are just straight-up fucking with our hearts and minds, posting a pair of cryptic videos to their Facebook page over the past day or so that really tell us absolutely nothing at all, but have sent their fans into an absolute tizz of speculation nonetheless.

Now, we'd be pretty piss-poor at this if we didn't point out the aesthetic consistency between these videos and the promo art for another upcoming reunion show in Chicago this October — which itself, like pretty much all American Football publicity material, also evokes the now-iconic cover art of their 1999 LP — so, are these videos just designed to obliquely hype up that gig? Or, as the excited chatter filling up the comment threads below the videos clearly hopes, will we get a follow-up to their seminal self-titled album at last?

Certainly, that seems to be the prevailing hope among the faithful (not that we'd expect any different, honestly). After all, the band have previewed new material at their recent shows, and have made reference to writing new material in reunion interviews, which fills us with at least a little bit of hope that these mysterious videos aren't just further gig advertisements. As clever commenter Gerardo Gasca put it — referencing Frank Ocean's recent pre-album crypticism — in the wake of these clips, we "can't wait for the livestream of you guys building a house".

Like, it's probably not going to be that but we can always dream. Either way, it's driving us nuts right now — but we suspect an answer is coming one way or another in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled.