Sunday, December 20, 2026

DSP Shows presents American Football live in Asbury Hall

7pm Doors, 8pm Show

Tickets on sale Friday 6/5  @10am EST: General Admission Standing $41 advance, $46 day of show, limited VIP Packages at $126 available, details below ** at TixR.com or in person at the Babeville Box Office M-F 11a-5p (in person: fee free cash sales, 3% credit/debit card fee)
*Limit 4 tickets per purchase, delayed delivery 72 hours before event

American Football has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold on our tour will go towards organizations protecting immigrant rights and supporting deportees, migrants and refugees. www.plus1.org

The quietest voices don’t just endure — sometimes they deepen.

For a band once def ned by understatement, American Football has become something increasingly rare: one whose stature has grown less by nostalgia than through patience, self-interrogation and the long view. Since reuniting in 2014 after a decade-plus dormancy, American Football hasn’t simply returned to its past. It has moved forward in parallel with its audience, writing music that reflects the disorientation, compromise, grief and hard-won perspective of middle age.

Its fourth self-titled album (LP4) is the clearest and most satisfying expression of that evolution yet. It’s simultaneously the band’s darkest and most playful, its most complex and — paradoxically — its most generous. Throughout, LP4 stares matter-of-factly at despair while refusing the comforts of melodrama or easy resolution.

Indeed, on “Patron Saint of Pale,” frontman Mike Kinsella proposes playing Rock Paper Scissors with his soon-to-be ex-wife as a way to avoid signing their divorce papers. And on the gripping, eight-minute “Bad Moons,” he jokes about actually being two little kids disguised in a trench coat rather than a fl esh-and-blood 40-something dad of two teens, before the reality of the situation can no longer be avoided: “I lost my mind in the dark / I told all my lies in the dark / I poured my drinks in the dark / I explored new kinks in the dark,” he sings, his voice seemingly cracking at times under the cold, hard truths.

“That’s the one where I was like, ‘Oh, fuck. My mom’s gonna listen to this.’ But I’m proud of it,” Kinsella says. “I think only a grown person would think those things or say those things, and I’m a grown man.” “Those are not funny lyrics,” drummer Steve Lamos adds, “but there’s a weird ‘fuck it’ to the whole thing that I love.”

That restless desire to grow and evolve has guided American Football since its return. The band’s 1999 self-titled debut became a touchstone almost accidentally — a record whose elliptical lyrics and interlocking guitar lines sneakily rewired Midwestern emo and post-rock alike. During the 2014 tour, the quartet was surprised to find itself playing larger rooms than it ever had the first time around. “It felt like stumbling into being a mid-level band without having earned it,” guitarist Steve Holmes says of those first shows back.

But over time, American Football leapfrogged existing as a mere reunion act and instead became a vibrant, ongoing concern. LP2 (2016) and LP3 (2019) documented that transition — the former cautious and connective, the latter expansive, exploratory and welcoming of new voices such as Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. LP4 completes this arc with one astonishing song after another.

** VIP Package:

American Football VIP Bundle
Includes:
● One (1) General Admission Standing ticket
● VIP exclusive merch bundle: curated, designed and signed by American Football
● 15% merchandise discount coupon, redeemable at this show only
● Merchandise shopping opportunity prior to the show
● Early entry or priority entry into the venue
● Limited availability