December 10, 2004
Austin 360

Music: Jimmy Eat World

Date: 1/15
Time: 9:00pm
Venue: La Zona Rosa
Area: Warehouse District
Cost: $20
Contact: (512)263-4146

About Jimmy Eat World: The road to success is not an easy one-but some handle its hurdles better than others. In 2001 Jimmy Eat World was a widely adored but criminally underappreciated band capable of drawing capacity crowds all over the world, but unable to find a record deal to their liking. Having just been unceremoniously spit out of the major label machinery, the band opted to record a new album entirely on its own dime and let labels come a-calling-or not-after the fact. Audio and Video

The gambit more than paid off, with the resultant Bleed American (later re-titled Jimmy Eat World), yielding the hits "The Middle" and "Sweetness," an ultimately selling over 1.3 million copies. By the time two full years of touring had wound down, they'd made triumphant breakthroughs everywhere from Saturday Night Live to a sold out Brixton Academy, been nominated for an MTV Video Music Award, seen their name on Blender and Alternative Press' Best Albums of 2001, SPIN and USA Today's Best Singles of 2002, and been awarded an Album of the Week by People and a spot on Rolling Stone's annual Hot List.

Not bad for a little band from Mesa, Arizona.

But then came the problem once all your rock dreams come true, what do you do for an encore? The band's new CD, Futures, is the answer to that question. It's a sprawling, epic, gorgeous, heavy-yet-quiet masterpiece. And it took a long time to finish. "We've always felt you're putting your name on something, you have to make sure it's the absolute best work possible," says Jimmy Eat World's Jim Adkins, "This time it took a while to achieve what we wanted. We had to get our heads into the zone where we were ready to kill ourselves to finish this. And did."