"Honestly?" by American Football from the album American Football (1999)

Emo and post-rock make odd choices for stylistic crossover. But late-’90s Illinois trio American Football brilliantly set nostalgia and romantic dilemmas against a placid, pensive, experimental milieu. “Honestly?” has Mike Kinsella pondering an inability to relate to his adolescent self — a kind of emotional amnesia — before the guitars and drums embark on a sprawling, cyclic, fusion-tinged instrumental lament.

_Barry Thompson