The Phoenix 8.30.01

Jimmy Eat World: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? By Yakob Peterseil

There comes a point in every struggling band?s career when its members?lonely, frustrated, and weary?must ask themselves, ?Is this worth it?? The groveling before A&R execs, the long hours on the road, the uncertainty involved in living from show to show, single to single: it is a way of life that few people ever experience, and even fewer manage, like Jimmy Eat World, to turn into a top 200 album down the road.

Jimmy Eat World, four guys from Mesa, Arizona, who have been playing together since high school, faced such a crisis in the late summer of 1999?but with one significant caveat. The group was not an unknown, muddling around in indie rock obscurity, but a band that had been signed to Capitol Records since 1995. ?Clarity,? the group?s second album for Capitol released in 1999, sold well into the five-figures and yielded a minor hit, ?Lucky Denver Mint.? But the band faced an impasse later that year when Capitol decided that these figures weren?t impressive enough and abruptly dropped the group, leaving them where they had started: ?no record company, no A&R guy, no manager?just us,? in the words of singer/guitarist Jim Adkins. Lesser bands might have gone dejectedly back to their day jobs.

The Jimmy Eat Work Ethic

But Jimmy Eat World found in their calamity something to be happy about: ?We looked at the whole thing as a liberating experience, rather than part of any deliberate plan,? says Adkins. The group celebrated their new-found independence with a self-promoted five-week tour of Europe. In the process, they connected with the people who would be the ones truly responsible for the band?s success: not major-label execs, but fans. ?Our attitude was, ?So what if we don?t have the support of our label? We have the support of our fans,?? recalls drummer Zach Lind. Through their relentless touring and fan-based philosophy, the group quickly amassed sizable followings across Europe and in pockets of the United States. While in the studio recording their self-financed fourth LP, ?Bleed American,? the band was approached with offers from several labels, including the one that had dropped them a year before. ?We kind of looked around and said, ?Who?s gonna actually stick with it when things go bad?? Adkins says. The band ultimately settled on DreamWorks to release the new record?the best one yet, by all band members? accounts.

Since its release, ?Bleed American? has spent a total of seven weeks on the Billboard 200, peaking at #54. The record hit #2 on the CMJ charts before dropping back and settling comfortably in the top fifteen. Not bad for a band that didn?t even have a record deal while recording their latest album. But the success of ?Bleed American? owes less to the corporate muscle behind it than to the substantial work ethic developed by the band itself. ?The best thing [Capitol] ever did for us was to buy us a van,? Lind states flatly. ?We really got their money?s worth out of it. We treated touring like guerrilla warfare, which had other benefits aside from just saving money; it forced us to interact with people who had a real interest in the band?s success, to make friends as well as fans.? Indeed, in temperament, Jimmy Eat World is closer to a dyed-in-the-wool indie rock group than a major-label act. Before signing to Capitol, the band released a handful of seven-inch records and a full-length album on indie label Wooden Blue Records, based in Tempe, Arizona. For the past several years, Jimmy Eat World has also been a major draw on the indie concert circuit, playing to crowds of 600 people a night even without major-label support.

Jimmy Goes Pop!

But the most remarkable thing about Jimmy Eat World?s enduring existence is that the band simply keeps getting better with each new record it releases. ?Bleed American? is the most accomplished sound the group has achieved to date. Some ?emo? purists (those in the close-knit underground rock scene that favors earnest, emotive lyrics and buzzsaw guitars, from which Jimmy Eat World emerged) dismiss ?Bleed American? as pop fodder; yet, it is this very quality of the music that allows it to succeed. Often, emo music gets bogged down in its own earnestness, subordinating tunefulness to the expression of raw, at times embarrassingly overwrought, emotion. But ?Bleed American? is a pop record through and through. Songs like ?A Praise Chorus? and ?The Authority Song? belong on a jukebox next to the Tom Petty and Rolling Stones records you find at your local bar. The anger and earnestness of its emo roots remain?on the scathing title song in particular?but on ?Bleed American,? Jimmy Eat World seems to have died and gone to a blithe pop heaven. Armed now with its newfound tunefulness, perhaps the band can fulfill the prophecy embedded in its name and consume the pop world?one discerning listener at a time.

by: Yakob Peterseil (New Media Music - September 27, 2001)

Link To: hhttp://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01090185.html