CD Reviews

Jimmy Eat World

Chase the Light | Interscope

By MATT ASHARE | October 30, 2007

2.5 Stars

After two tortured, aching-to-be-grown-up albums that found Arizona’s Jimmy Eat World doing their best to distance themselves from the youthful, open-hearted emo of 1999’s Clarity, singer/guitarist Jim Adkins appears to have found a comfortable middle ground. There are still hints of the dark political overtones and the despair over the state of our decaying culture that colored 2001’s Bleed American (retitled Jimmy Eat World after 9/11) and 2004’s Futures. The sneering, punkish “Electable (Give It Up)” is a primary-season salvo aimed at “talking points from talking heads with automated smiles.” But that’s the exception to what rules on this their sixth album, a Butch Vig–produced modern-rock warhorse full of inward-looking songs and all kinds of musical embellishments, from the uneasy strings that accent the paranoid love song “Gotta Be Somebody’s Blues” to the synths that support the muscular guitars on the self-questioning “Big Casino,” a big single with smarting couplets like “I’m the one who gets away/I’m a New Jersey success story” and “Well there’s lots of smart ideas in books I’ve never read/When the girls come talk to me I wish to hell I had.” Adkins hasn’t shaken his skepticism altogether — he can’t help repeating “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha/I can laugh it off” in the hard-driving “Let It Happen.” But Jimmy Eat World go to great lengths to recapture the anthemic thrills of Clarity — and give or take a few bouts of brooding cynicism, they’ve succeeded.

Jimmy Eat World | Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, Boston | November 7 | 617.931.2000

Topics: CD Reviews , Butch Vig, Jimmy Eat World, Jimmy Eat World, More

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