American Football Brings the No Feeling Tour to The Observatory in Santa Ana

If you're in Orange County and you've been watching American Football route their No Feeling Tour through everywhere except your backyard, your time has come. The band just announced an extended fall and winter leg, and September 24 at The Observatory in Santa Ana is on the list.

This is a proper headline show, not a festival set crammed between six other bands. Just American Football in a venue that actually fits the energy of their music. The Observatory is one of the best rooms in Southern California for a band like this. The sound is dialed, the sight lines are great, and it's intimate enough that you're not watching the show on a jumbotron from 200 yards away.

LP4 and Why This Tour Matters

The tour is in support of LP4, the band's fourth studio album, which dropped May 1 on Polyvinyl Record Co. It's their first new record in nearly seven years, and I'll be real, it's not a soft reentry. The album is heavy. Lyrically, emotionally, sonically. Producer Sonny DiPerri, who's worked with My Bloody Valentine and Trent Reznor, pushed the band wider than anything in their catalog. You'll hear vibraphone, trumpet, strings, dissonant piano, all working against those signature interlocking guitar figures.

The features on this thing are wild, too. Turnstile's Brendan Yates shows up on the title track "No Feeling," nu-gaze artist Wisp contributes to "Wake Her Up," and Caithlin De Marrais of Rainer Maria appears on "Blood on My Blood." Critics have been calling it the band's finest work. musicOMH gave it a 90, calling it "harrowing, emotionally ambiguous and petulant" while recognizing it as something truly significant. Kerrang! scored it an 80, noting that exorcising their demons together created their most adventurous music yet.

Hearing this material live is going to hit different. These songs deal with divorce, addiction, shame, rebirth. Mike Kinsella is laying it all out. In a room like The Observatory, with the lights low and those guitars doing their thing, honestly, good luck keeping it together.

The Full Fall/Winter Run

The Santa Ana date sits at the tail end of a stacked September stretch. Here's the full newly announced routing:

September

Sept 8 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
Sept 9 – Dallas, TX – Longhorn Ballroom
Sept 10 – Austin, TX – Levitation Festival (Stubb's Waller Creek Amphitheater)
Sept 23 – Denver, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Sept 24 – Santa Ana, CA – The Observatory

Dec 11 – Fort Lauderdale, FL – Revolution Live
Dec 12 – Tampa, FL – Ritz Ybor
Dec 13 – Orlando, FL – Plaza Live
Dec 15 – Jacksonville, FL – FIVE
Dec 16 – Charlotte, NC – The Fillmore
Dec 18 – New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall
Dec 19 – Worcester, MA – Palladium
Dec 20 – Buffalo, NY – Asbury Hall

Support on select dates comes from Nine Perfect Lives and Tanukichan, both confirmed for the Levitation date. Bleachers are also listed on select dates per the tour poster.

The Levitation and Fauna Primavera Connection

Two festival appearances anchor this extended leg. The September 10 Levitation slot puts American Football as a headliner on opening night at Stubb's, alongside Tanukichan and Nine Perfect Lives. Levitation 2026 runs September 10–13 across Austin's Red River Cultural District, with Bikini Kill, Molchat Doma, and Peter Hook & The Light rounding out the weekend.

Then in late November, the band heads to Santiago, Chile for Fauna Primavera, which just revealed its full 2026 lineup today. The festival runs November 26–28 at Parque Ciudad Empresarial, and the bill is stacked. The Strokes, New Order, FKA Twigs, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Johnny Marr, Courtney Barnett, and Yung Lean are all on the bill alongside American Football. Early bird tickets are already sold out. Presale for BCI clients starts June 9, with general sale June 10 via Puntoticket.

Why The Observatory Is the Play

Look, American Football played the Wiltern on the original spring leg. Great show, great venue. But if you want the version of this band that really lands, you want a room like The Observatory. It's smaller, the crowd is locked in, and American Football thrives in that kind of setting. These songs were written in a house in Urbana, Illinois. They're meant to feel close.

The September 24 date also comes right after a Red Rocks show in Denver on September 23. So the band will be coming off one of the most iconic outdoor stages in the country and stepping into a tight 1,100-cap club the next night. That kind of contrast tends to produce a special show.

About the Tour's Charitable Partnership

Worth noting that American Football has partnered with PLUS1 on the No Feeling Tour, donating $1 from every ticket sold to Safe Passage International and The Illinois Coalition for Immigration & Refugee Rights. So your ticket does a little bit more than get you through the door.

Get Your Tickets

Tickets for the fall/winter dates are available now via Ticketmaster and Live Nation. If you want to hear LP4 the way it was meant to be experienced, in a dark room with the volume up and nowhere to hide from those lyrics, The Observatory on September 24 is the one. Don't sit on this.

Cover photo courtesy of Ticketmaster.