It’s almost the end of summer, which means it’s just about time to dust off your melancholic emo playlist and watch the leaves start to turn outside. And what better way to kick off the season than listening to Ethel Cain cover a classic Midwest emo ballad?
It’s been 25 years since the Illinois-based band American Football released their first self-titled album, which propelled them to icon status in the emo world. The band will drop an anniversary edition of the album next month, but there’s another project coming along for the ride — American Football (Covers), a full cover album reimagining the band’s entire debut from indie artists including Girl Ultra, Blondshell, Yvette Young, and Iron & Wine, whose version of “Never Meant” (once named the best emo song ever recorded by Vulture) came out on July 31.
The cover album also features Cain performing another beloved American Football song, “For Sure,” in a mashup of styles we never knew we needed so badly. The band’s original tune is a crisp three-minutes-and-change song about the uncertainty of a relationship, with a wistful little trumpet motif to catch the ear of any passing band geek. Cain’s version keeps the core emotions of the original, but expands them into a nearly 10-minute dreamscape, played at half tempo as Cain’s signature breathy vocals caress every syllable.
Cain’s music video takes all this to the next level, largely composed of delirious, blurry, double-exposed visuals (shot by Cain herself, as Stereogum noted). Meandering through rural settings, the viewer eventually finds themself watching a massive sparkler burning in a field, looking on alongside a group of others holding smaller sparklers in their hands. There’s a sense of community, but also of distance, melding seamlessly with the original lyrics as if Cain was always meant to shoot the official “For Sure” video that never existed. (Admittedly, I’m also biased as a reviewer towards lo-fi aesthetics in music videos — see also jaboukie’s “BBC.”)
“I knew I wanted to do ‘For Sure’ immediately,” Cain told Stereogum this week, saying it was “truly an honor” to be approached for the cover album. “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. [...] 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.”
For many of us, emo really wasn’t a phase — and Cain’s love letter to American Football through a cover of their own song is a perfect encapsulation of how deeply the Midwest emo scene (and the other groups and subgenres it inspired) continues to affect fans and musicians to this day. If your “songs to quietly dissociate to” playlist needs some new blood, look no further.
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
