If you’re looking for consistency in a band, looking no further than Jimmy Eat World. While they’re a band that will probably never top ‘Clarity’ for all-round sheer genius, they consistently manage to record and release great albums. They’re all different in some way (I guess the more cynical among us may state they’ve gotten more melodic as time has gone on) yet still sound just like JEW – and that’s a very good thing.
As ‘Bleed American’ and then ‘Futures‘ were heavily coated in sugary production values and huge choruses, ‘Chase This Light’ continues the trend. It’s a massive sounding record; it hits most of the right notes and a couple of boring songs aside, it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from them. There are some absolute crackers on this record. ‘Big Casino’ is one of the best tracks they’ve ever done, certainly on a par with the likes of ‘A Praise Chrous’ and ‘Authority Song’. It’s so massively hopeful and encouraging that you can’t help but like it. As an aside it was
(coincidentally) the last song I heard before a recent job interview, which I ended up getting, so I guess the song now has added meaning. But that’s something all Jimmy Eat World songs manage to do; they burrow deep inside your brain and help you remember key events in your life. They’re like the soundtrack to your teenage years (or 20s/30s/40s, delete as appropriate).
‘Carry You’ and ‘Here It Goes’ are excellent too, as is ‘Let It Happen’. The latter is more akin to the ‘Futures‘ sound without actually sounding like a cast-off from a previous record. The middle-8 on ‘Electable’ is absolute genius, while ‘Dizzy’ is another all-time great Jimmy Eat World moment. That said, this record does have a flaw or two. The flow doesn’t seem to quite fit and there are a couple of tracks in the latter half which seem to drag, thus pulling the album as a whole down.
However, the vast majority of this is excellent and it’s hardly left my CD player for the last couple of weeks. It actually hasn’t left my car CD player since I first put it in. It’s a great record, not the band’s best by any means, but still better than the best effort by most bands.