Score: 5/5
Turning the original three-minute track into almost 10 minutes of beautifully heavy ambience, Ethel Cain masterfully brings a completely new and mesmerizing soundscape to the Midwest emo classic “For Sure” by American Football.
In late July, revered Midwest emo band American Football announced two new versions of their debut album American Football to be released on Oct. 18 for the album’s 25th anniversary.
Alongside a 2024 remaster of their magnum opus, the band is releasing a collection of other artists’ covers of their songs, each remade with their own stylistic flares.
Ethel Cain’s cover of “For Sure” came out on Sept. 5 as the second single from American Football (Covers). The track begins by setting the tone of the rest of the song. Synth notes come in one by one, overlapping to create a wholly enveloping atmosphere of sound.
After taking 30 seconds for the sound to ease into full volume, the iconic deep string plucking progression, seemingly the only element aside from the lyrics that are used from the original song, slowly comes in. Each chord echoes on its own before the next is plucked, emphasizing the intense heaviness of the sound.
The bass line repeats endlessly as the synth notes play lightly in the background. Close to the two-minute mark, Cain sets the scene of the track as the faint sound of birds chirping in the distance briefly enters the song, sounding like the faded remnants of a wistful memory.
The lyrics begin after the first two minutes. Cain’s voice floats over the guitar as she slowly sings “June seems too late / delayed,” drawing her voice over each vowel and dominating the sound of the track.
As the lyrics continue, Cain’s layered voice becomes more of an instrument in the track, almost indistinguishable from the synth but distinctly conveying the message behind the song’s heavy hum as she sorrowfully questions if her circumstances are “maybe for the better.”
She beautifully communicates the speaker’s built-up angst toward the still vague situation they are in, longing for something unreachable yet bitterly aware that nothing can be done except accepting things as they are.
Exactly halfway through the song, all the tension built up over the first five minutes breaks when Cain asks “whether this uncertainty is / for sure” and a surge of heavy guitar replaces the synth as the driving force of the track.
The song basks in the heavy guitar for several minutes as Cain continues to sing the words “for sure” repeatedly while a hypnotizing steady drum beat plays in the background. The middle of the song has an intensity that gives the sound a physical body, making it heavy enough to weigh down the listeners’ shoulders.
The song begins to wind down eight minutes in as Cain’s vocals reclaim dominance on the track and the heavy guitar dissipates into the background.
As her voice begins to fade out, the intensity of the song goes with it. When the instrumentals get quiet and the tension fades, Cain masterfully ends the song with the original string-plucking progression it began with.
Trading angst for suspense and simplicity for a deeply layered sound, Cain transforms American Football’s track into an entirely new listening experience. While the original song uses a lighter sound and mostly relies on the lyrics themselves to tell the story, Cain’s version forces the listener to feel the story. She builds suspense through the sound and breaks the tension with a gut punch of abrupt heaviness. The song envelops the space around the listener before Cain’s voice comes in to tell the story behind the intensity.
Cain’s rendition of “For Sure” is nothing short of beautiful. She skillfully maintains the original song’s core elements while adding a transcendental quality that makes it uniquely hers. This track is better described as an experience rather than simply a song and fantastically pays tribute to 25 years of American Football.