Hey, Footballhead! The Chicago alt-rock band, which includes The Academy Is…’s Adam Siska and suburban indie rockstar, Snow Ellet dropped their single “Like A Blister.” The track comes from their upcoming debut album, Overthinking Everything, which arrives on March 1 via Tiny Engines. Vocalist Ryan Nolen started the project in 2022, and the latest song encapsulates a montage of melancholia.
This is the third single off of their upcoming LP, and relishes the dreariness of a winter in a prominent early 2000s young adult, indie flick. The opening guitar riff is reminiscent of alt-radio faves Everclear and Gin Blossoms. It offers a familiar tone to suck in the listener, yet transforms immediately into something moody. “I left your picture in a frame/Thought I could save her better days,” opens the song and details a short story about moving on from a past relationship. Despite the ending, it hurts when looking at the remnants of the relationship while trying to keep some memory of the experience intact.
Crunchy grunge chords emit later in the song to pick up the tempo and repeat, “I’ll keep your framed little picture/Even though it stings like a blister,” until the song fades out to an end. It emulates the spiraling thoughts of happier times. Clocking in at a little over two minutes, the song will have you putting it on a loop to descend into your coming-of-age film plot.
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Stylistically, they fit into several genres from pop and indie-rock, with a flurry, OG emo flair. Their previous singles off from the soon-to-be-released record jump around from sounding heavy and pop-punky with influence notes of Alkaline Trio in “Tightrope,” to a subdued, late-90s sound that would be in a popular sitcom, on “Habits.” It isn’t jarring to the ear though, because, through some sort of mastery from Nolen, there’s congruency in the energy that Footballhead has nearly perfected. It’s something that maybe the ‘90s animation friendship squad in Hey Arnold might’ve played during their hangouts.
They previously released an EP titled Kitchen Fly in 2022, and have played with KennyHoopla, Origami Button, and Say Anything.
