A deluxe edition was released by Polyvinyl in May 2014, shortly after American Football announced their reunion, the demand for which crashed the label's website and peaked at number 68 on the US Billboard 200.

A month later, a music video was released for the song "Never Meant", directed by Chris Strong, who created the cover artwork for LP1.

[3][nb 1] Shortly afterward, Lamos was jamming with Kinsella's college roommate Steve Holmes.

"[6] The first time the group met it was considered to be casual, and the band's "[musical] ideas were noodly and meandering", according to Kinsella.

[5] American Football was initially a side project,[6][8] not intending to become a full-time commitment, as Holmes comments, due to the band "always half-assing things".

"[3] While practicing the material, they didn't have a PA system and thus Holmes and Lamos did not know the lyrics until the group did live performances.

[10] According to Kinsella, the songs' melancholy lyrics were due to influences from outside of emo and post-hardcore, which included such bands as the Cure, Red House Painters, and The Sundays.

[3] Kinsella used American Football in an attempt to revive the more rock-oriented sound of the band's earlier material.

[3] Kinsella commented on what became American Football's signature guitar tone:[18] "Now you can buy a shimmer pedal to recreate what we did, but we did it manually and I think it was just dumb luck.

[11] LP1 was released on September 14, 1999, through Polyvinyl Record Co.[11] The band broke up due to the members no longer living in the same city[3] and their college courses coming to an end.

However, he unfavorably described Kinsella as a "torpid vocalist" whose voice he believed made him sound like an older person.

[27] In the 2004 digital edition, Jordan Rogowski of Punknews.org gave the album four and a half stars out of five; he praised its lyricism, describing it as "thoughtfully and intelligently constructed."

He believed the lack of Kinsella's vocals "works in its favor", allowing the listener to experience the full instrumentation.

[25] Despite its initial minor success, LP1, with the help of word of mouth, gained cult status since its release;[7] as a result, it was frequently bootlegged, and became a major topic of discussion on Internet forums.

[36][37] Polyvinyl co-founder Matt Lundford described the album's subsequent sales figures and influence in the years following its release in a 2019 interview with Noisey as "a constant climb upwards.

"[38] AllMusic reviewer Fred Thomas gave the album four and a half stars and described it as "an anomalistic emo-jazz hybrid"; he noted the record's laid-back production compared to emo's more aggressive tone and hardcore origins.

Goggins interprets the calm yet sad tone of LP1 as Kinsella experiencing these emotions but having to move on as a significant amount of time has passed since then.

[31] Philip Cosores of Paste gave the record a 9.0 out of 10, describing it as an "album that ultimately defies genre classification"; he states it "serves as what indie rock should be about, synthesizing the musical world around us, not dividing and separating.

Music journalist Sean Neumann, who documented the history of the house for Vice, noted that fans have carved markings into the sidewalk in front of the home where Strong took the original photograph.

Kinsella revealed that the repeated references to the house was due to the fact it was one of the few images related to the band.

[51] Directed by Chris Strong, the video was filmed inside and around the house that features on the album cover artwork.