After the slick, radio-friendly, but ultimately unsatisfying Chase This Light<\/i> (2007), Jimmy Eat World rebounded with Invented<\/i> (2010) and Damage<\/i> (2013), seeming to rediscover what made them special in the first place\u2014the combination a facility for strong melodic hooks and a willingness to push boundaries. Their early albums were at the other end of that scale, all too experimental and unfocused, but with Bleed American<\/i> (2001) and Futures<\/i> (2004) they struck a balance, a balance evident again on 2016\u2019s Integrity Blues<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Of course, even as Jimmy Eat World has worked to find its creative footing in its second decade as a band, more time has passed; the brash young men of 1996 are now in their early 40s, and both their musical approach and their lyrics have matured over time. Relationships still provide abundant material, but these days the songs are less about the fiery passionate opening chapter as about how relationships evolve over time, and how people grow together and apart. There are also, as indicated by the album title, songs about character and what it means to be a good person (or not) and what consequences there might be for that. Even at their most commercially inclined, Jimmy Eat World\u2014Jim Adkins (vocals\/guitars), Rick Burch (bass), Zach Lind (drums) and Tom Linton (guitars\/vocals)\u2014have always seemed like a thoughtful bunch.<\/p>\n
One of the best things about this album is that after sanding most of the edges off of their music on Chase This Light<\/i>, they\u2019ve steadily re-embraced the natural chaos of a big, loud rock band, with instruments bleeding into one another, quirky arrangements and abrupt transitions from soft to loud and back again. First single \u201cSure And Certain\u201d exemplifies this phenomenon; in the middle of this expansive, hooky rocker they veer into an airy choral section that builds back into a brief sunburst of a guitar solo. It\u2019s one of those tunes where everything\u2019s where it should be without ever feeling careful or precious. <\/p>\n
\u201cPretty Grids\u201d has a similarly messy charm, opening with distorted piano chords and building into a sort of blurry airiness, with a favorite early-days Jimmy touch\u2014bells\u2014making a return appearance at the close. The boundary-pushing continues with \u201cPass The Baby,\u201d a positively surrealistic number pairing a lyric about politics in the mass media age with music that opens with eerie looped percussion, building tension steadily until in the fifth and final minute the song literally explodes into a bone-crushing heavy metal outro. <\/p>\n
The most experimental number of all, alas, might be the least successful. For \u201cIntegrity Blues,\u201d the boys put down their instruments and feature lead voice Adkins singing over an orchestra. Good for them for taking the risk, but in this case it falls flat.<\/p>\n
In between and all around, the boys deliver Jimmy Eat World\u2019s meat and potatoes, earnest, appealing anthems like opener \u201cYou With Me,\u201d the coincidentally rhyming \u201cYou Are Free,\u201d and the emphatic \u201cThrough.\u201d \u201cGet Right\u201d is the darker flipside of this Jimmy specialty, with a big angular bass line anchoring its intense atmospherics. Of course, it wouldn\u2019t be a Jimmy album without at least one hearts-on-their-sleeves ballad, and \u201cThe End Is Beautiful\u201d delivers the goods. Closer \u201cPol Roger\u201d goes big again, a billowing number with a rather haunting melody and the orchestra returning in its epic closing minute.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The challenge for any band that\u2019s fortunate enough to achieve a certain vintage is to honor their past\u2014and their fans\u2019 expectations\u2014without ceasing to grow. Jimmy Eat World effectively balances their affinity for hooks with their instincts for experimentation on Integrity Blues<\/i>, and while not every risk taken succeeds, the end result is another consistently appealing outing from the favorite sons of Mesa, Arizona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6683],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-44680","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jimmy-eat-world","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44680"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}