Chase This Light a Fitting Tribute to JEW's Past and Present
Written: Jun 15 '08 (Updated Jun 13 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Everything you expect from JEW - catchy hooks, fantastic melodies, great vocals, etc.
Cons: Teeny little things, the occasionally questionable lyrical stanza from Adkins.
The Bottom Line: Jimmy Eat World incorporates the best from each of their previous releases, and the end result is a fantastic record perhaps better than anything JEW's come up with so far.
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| crypticv24's Full Review: Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World |
I'd hate to see Jimmy Eat World go. They've written so many fantastic songs over the past decade, and each album has at least something to offer a listener, even if it's nothing more than a catchy hook. Chase This Light is no exception, but something feels different about this album every time I listen to it. It took me about a month to zero in on the feeling's source - that if JEW made a greatest hits album, only all the songs were still new, it would sound like this.
Obviously that's a bit of a contradiction. The point is that Adkins' and Co. have constructed an album that at times takes elements from each of their previous releases, re-imagines those elements from the "bigger" perspective they've been gradually taking on, and weaves them together rather masterfully to create arguably their best album to date.
The first track and lead single, Big Casino, is aptly titled. A fast guitar riff immediately leads into the main part of the intro, and the song immediately takes on this huge aspect of sound, like the band could fill the biggest arena on Earth just by the charisma this song already possesses. I also like how drummer Zach Lind bucks the standard 1-2-3-4 drumming style and just goes with the bass and guitar lines (played by Mitch Porter and Tom Linton, respectively). The verses are tense and full of energy, and I love the bridge into the chorus, with its background guitar strums teamed with backup vocals chiming the refrain "Get up, get up!" nicely. The chorus soars appropriately in terms of music, with a really cool guitar wailing away in the background. The lyrics though...singer Jim Adkins' first stanza is fine, reading:
I'll accept with poise, with grace,
When they draw my name from the lottery.
And they'll say, "All the salt in the world couldn't melt that ice."
That part's fine. I like the salt line - twisting old axioms like that to fit the mood of a song will generally get me to smile favorably on you, at least for the moment. However, this clunker of a stanza then follows:
I'm on the one who gets away.
I'm a New Jersey success story.
And they'll say, "Lord, give me a chance to shake that hand."
I just don't know what Adkins is trying to say here, and for whatever reason, it's something I can't quite get over - like he couldn't decide how to work his way to that last line, which fits alright, so he just threw a couple lines in there to fill up room. JEW's not even from NJ - they're from Arizona, so that doesn't make sense to me either. Perhaps he's making an allusion to Atlantic City to tie in with the song title and winning the lottery and such, but the whole thing comes off as vague and forced to me. Regardless of this slight annoyance, it's a fantastic song that echoes and rivals the self-titled opener from Futures in both intensity and energy.
Gotta Be Somebody's Blues also borrows from Futures, with a dark tone and ominous violin harmonies liberally sprinkled throughout the song. It doesn't do too much, but after a lot of more up-beat songs preceding it (it's the sixth song), it does a good job of grabbing the listener's attention simply by virtue of NOT being upbeat, while still remaining taut and edgy. Firefight, on the other hand, takes from the other aspects of Futures, with some furious pounding of the drums complementing Adkins appropriately fiery vocal delivery.
Let It Happen follows up the first song as a similarly paced though slightly less intense second track. It's held together by an odd off-beat guitar that to me throws the rhythm of the song off a bit. However, the riff is pretty faint, and the chorus makes up for it, as the driving beat from the verses kicks in to full gear, and then leads into a musically tight tag. The last line of the chorus, "Say whatever you want, 'cause I can laugh it off", continues on in the tag with Adkins quite literally laughing "it" off, saying "ha ha" in a whisper-like style that I can't get enough of. The end is kind of "meh" for me, however, as it's just a fadeout of that weird guitar from earlier.
Luckily, the next track makes me forget anything I might not have been to sold on in the previous tracks, as Always Be starts up with snapping, leading into a buoyant verse depicting a tense situation between lovers as they drive around. The chorus than describes the collapse of this relationship:
I'm alone in this, I'm all as I've always been
Right behind what's happening
She's all lost in this, she's all like she'll always be
A little far for me to reach
It's a beautiful, soaring chorus, and Adkins' earnest voice perfectly conveys the emotion needed to make it sound sincere and not contrived.
Carry You takes the despondent tone of the previous song and continues with it. A musically bouncy, happy tune straight out of Bleed American (the title they never should have abandoned), this song serves as the logical lyrical progression from the previous track, as Adkins is slowly getting over the collapse of the relationship and is accepting what's happened to him as something to be cherished, but not blindly clung to.
Not one to leave the influence of an album out, JEW brings back the sound from their upbeat tracks on Clarity for Electable (Give It Up). It starts with teen anthem type of growling guitar riff and bass-heavy drums throughout the verses, than transitions into an admittedly-repetitive chorus consisting of several voices chanting "Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh, oh - give it up!" the whole time. It's catchy, but I also won't lie - it's a bit "fluffy" (sort of like a lot of Bleed American).
Dizzy also reminds me of Clarity, though if it were put in a blender with Futures. The airy, space-like tones found in Clarity classics like Goodbye, Sky Harbor are present in this closer, but there's a heavy bass presence and stronger, more pronounced drums in this song. I absolutely LOVE the piano in the second verse as well - it's pounded out on the lower register, and it serves as the perfect exclamation point to an excellent mid-paced closer that slowly builds in intensity, culminating in a satisfyingly-long-but-not-overly-drawn-out ending. Feeling Lucky also reminds me of Blister - it's a great, catchy, upbeat listen that moves along very nicely.
My favorite track has yet to mentioned, however. Utilizing a type of synth-guitar sound to introduce the song in one of the catchiest intros I've ever heard, Here It Goes features almost every good thing I can think of that describes JEW. The first verse features a faint growling guitar and drums, and feels sparse. This serves to distinguish the chorus better, as Adkins sings an "oh" that digitally drops in pitch rapidly, and serves as a great punch into a chorus built for singing along to. The two-part bridge is also really cool - the first half is driving, featuring a lot of emphasis on downbeats from the instruments as Adkins and the band trade off with each other in nice give-and-take manner. A fantastic drawn out tone from Adkins and an equally good fill from Lind leads into the second half, showcasing some vintage "ooh ooh" refrains that can only be described as gorgeous.
All things said, Jimmy Eat World has really delivered on their latest release. While I admit that it may not deliver quite as well as Clarity from a purely objective standpoint, I find that in spite of some occasional vocal missteps Chase This Light is the album I've connected to most in JEW's growing discography. The delivery on most songs is intense and simply fantastic, while still maintaining JEW's crisp sound and not sacrificing it for a more arena-rock-esque style like in Futures. Unless they release a traditional greatest hits album, Chase This Light will serve as perhaps the best representation of all that Jimmy Eat World has to offer.
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Hanging With Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
crypticv24
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Member: Nate
Location: Chi-Town
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