Rock On, Young Saviour! Jimmy Eat World's Chase This Light
Written: Nov 20 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: "Big Casino" saves my life every time I hear it.
Cons: Jimmy Eat World make better singles than albums.
The Bottom Line: In which the author frightens his children while driving.
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| plorentz's Full Review: Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World |
Emo wunderkind Jim Adkins, lead singer of Mesa, Arizona's Jimmy Eat World sounds far too young and chipper to be singing a line like "there's still some living left when your prime comes and goes". But at 32, he's no younger than John Cougar (Mellencamp) was when he made a similar observation in a little ditty called "Jack & Diane" 25 years ago. But as grizzled as his voice was then, Mellencamp was still relatively new to celebrity in 1982, whereas Jimmy Eat World has been one of the more celebrated (not to mention tolerable) acts in their unhappy little subgenre for long enough to have seen the top of the charts from (as Joni Mitchell might say) both sides, now. And the band's latest single, a typically big-sounding, typically hook-loaded, typically hangin'-at-the-student-union-philosophical ditty called "Big Casino" seems to address the band's evolutionary wheel of fortune in terms of sanguine resignation:
I'll accept with poise, with grace
When they draw my name from the lottery
And they'll say, 'All the sun in the world couldn't melt that ice'
Jimmy Eat World seem to understand that after scoring a Top 5 pop hit with "The Middle" five years ago, they can never really go back to the sorta-indie-cool status they'd attained with their albums Static Prevails and Clarity in the late 90s (both recently reissued with bonus tracks, by the way). But nor have they been able to match or even reasonably follow up on the chart success of that magnificently catchy, eminently re-playable pop breakthrough. And not for lack of effort on both counts, I might add.
Witness the band's recently released fifth album Chase This Light, and you'll note a band teeming with the kind of youthful energy that has been used to fuel a couple gazillion hormonal TRL broadcasts - a band that sounds perpetually seventeen even when - especially when - their lyrics take us into thirtysomething territory. Even at their most somber, these are not the whiny, pretty-boy suicide notes that the emo label usually entails. Nor do they come across as terribly ambitious from a musical standpoint. And it occurs to me that, with this album, Jimmy Eat World may have finally established themselves as the emo equivalent of Erasure.
Which means - for those who may not be rabid synthesizer pop enthusiasts - that, in a genre well-known for self-absorption and melancholy as well as the absolute devotion of its fanbase of adolescent wallflower types, Jimmy Eat World has found a niche of lovable chirpiness and positivity with a writing style that works best when it's at its most essentially formulaic: three minute songs with soaring, brightly harmonic choruses and off-handedly inspirational lyrics, wall-of-sound guitar chords played in steady, urgent eighth notes. But, like the best of Erasure, formulaic or not, these are songs that keep you listening long enough to learn to crave them like heroin.
And "Big Casino" is easily the purest, most addictive batch of ear-smack that Jimmy Eat World has produced in ages, its appeal stemming largely from the challenge it presents to those of us who might sing along, and the subsequent rewards when you do finally get the pole-vaulting melodic intervals and conversational turns of phrase right: it's just a damn good time to sing along with. Which makes it both a fantastic single and the worst possible opening song for an album - as it'll have you skipping back to it again and again until you're either a) totally hoarse or b) home from your commute and you need to get inside and make dinner for your two kids, who, by the way, are really sick of hearing you sing "Big Casino" but are frankly too terrified to say anything about it because you look so possessed right now.
It's a hard song to let go of.
And while they're all pretty good, the ten tracks that follow on Chase This Light don't always make that letting-go a whole lot easier, even though, generally speaking, this is the band's most consistently upbeat collection of songs to date. There can be no doubt that songs like "Let It Happen" or "Feeling Lucky", or the uncharacteristically glam-funky "Here It Goes" (can we be sure that they didn't steal the tapes from an Ok Go session?) would, in a just world, tempt radio programmers like big bowls of brightly colored hard candy, with brisk tempos coupled and defiantly easy-going vibes - I should laugh it off - completely at odds with the pained deliveries of the Hoobastanks and Lifehouses of the world; and wordless vocal hooks - Ha! Ha! Ha-ah Ha! Ha! Ha-ah - that border on bubblegum, but have too much rock oomph behind them to be entirely written off as such.
"Electable (Give It Up)" finds the band commenting on the general political atmosphere of the day with a refreshingly naive, insistent sense of idealism. It's an angry sort of song, but you'd never know it. On the other hand, "Carry You" applies a pleasantly serpentine melodic wail and, of course, Adkins' signature lyrical resignation - here's to living in the moment, cuz it's pa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ast - like a bandage to the fresh wound of a broken relationship. You've no doubt heard some variation of all of these songs before, but here they all are again, and damned if they aren't just as charming and sweet and lovely as the first time you met. In fact, the least effective track here is probably the most artistically progressive and risk-taking - the grim, over-processed "Gotta Be Somebody's Blues" - which may fine on its own merits, but stuck in the context of such an otherwise safe and unchallenging record, just sounds odd and misguided. Frankly, I'd be okay if Jimmy Eat World never experimented with their sound again, as long as they continue to produce their cravable pop songs so reliably.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Chase This Light" by Jimmy Eat World
Tiny Evil / Interscope Records
Released 10/16/07
Produced by Chris Testa and Jimmy Eat World
SONGS: Big Casino - Let It Happen - Always Be - Carry You - Electable (Give It Up) - Gotta Be Somebody's Blues - Feeling Lucky - Here It Goes - Chase This Light - Firefight - Dizzy
Recommended:
Yes
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plorentz
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Member: Paul Lorentz
Location: The Land of Limburger and Leinenkugel's
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Somebody turn the lights on...
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