As promised...and pretty much on time. Bleed American is the third major label release for a band that could do no wrong before 2001 hit...then 2001 hit, and the boys from Mesa, Arizona found themselves with a fistful of tapes and no label to distribute their self-produced (well, longtime collaborator Mark Trombino produced it, but it was still on their dime) and official website proclaimed "very finest work" to date...and the marriage with DreamWorks was soon to follow. And now it's late September, two full months after the release of Bleed American, Jimmy Eat World has been on The Late Show with David Letterman, they've had a snippet of one of their tracks played on SportsCenter (the centerpiece of ESPN, for those not in the know), and are holding on to a top 20 spot in the College Music Journal Top 200...not to mention the airplay of two separate singles and a video on MTV to boot (those last two points being at the heart of the reason why a lot of long-time fans turning face and crying foul). Not bad for a band who found themselves homeless (as far as labels goes, at least) at the beginning of the year.
Just a quick note before I go any further...there is a full description of the title, Bleed American, up at the JEW website...just check the September news section...it's there to clarify the situation for anyone who drew unfortunate parallels between the title and the recent events that have shaken this great nation to it's very core. Moving along.
Jimmy Eat World / Bleed American
DreamWorks Records, 2001
Starting things right off with the hard-hitting title-track, Bleed American, you'll find out that this is a far cry from anything we've heard from these four boys in years past...gone is the sweet, almost romantic instrumentation we've grown accustomed to...in it's place we find a heavier, adrenal gland driven musicianship that not only shows the maturation of the band, but helps to set it apart from bounds that are rumored to sound quite a bit like the JEW of old (*cough*Juliana Theory*cough*). The lyrics are noticeably more intense as well, conjuring up past tracks such as Rockstar or Your New Aesthetic, which, themselves, were anomalies on their respective albums (Static Prevails and Clarity). Fret not, though...there do exist a few nuggets of honey-laced serenading on this album, one that's been around for several years, others that are newer and still keep the same feel as everything else on the album.
The oldie making it's first appearance in digital format is Sweetness, which was originally released as a vinyl only contribution to some single/split/ep who's name escapes me any my resources at the moment (hell, I can't even find it on the official site). The album version is a shorter version (approximately 43 seconds shorter) and has superior mix quality to the previous version...but it feels very out of place on Bleed American, and the fact that it's slapped between the love-hurts-like-a-mo'facka track Your House and the you'll-cry-almost-every-time-you-hear-this-track track Hear You Me doesn't help matters...it provides an off-feeling balance to the middle of the otherwise flawlessly mixed cd. That's really my only qualm with the entirety of Bleed American...it's a beautifully balanced, well thought out disc.
Your House is a song that relates particularly well to anyone out there who's been scorned by a lover or a friend at some point. Hear You Me is the perfect song to eulogize anyone with (I personally played it ad nauseum on that fateful day two weeks ago to pay homage to all of those that had fallen prey to very horrible fate...they're in a better place, believe me)...the line "a song for a heart so big god wouldn't let it live" is particularly poignant. Get It Faster is a hard-edged, sharp-tongued track that, oddly enough, starts off sounding like just about any number of songs off Nine Inch Nails' most recent effort, The Fragile...unlike the NIN track(s) I'm thinking of, this song builds into a pointed frenzy to convey the raw emotions of the song and it's lyrics.
The rest of the album has a generally positive message about sticking to your guns through the pains, joys, horrors and highs of living through life as a young twenty-something in today's society...as with albums past, Jim Adkins, Tom Linton, Rick Burch and Zach Lind put out an album for those out there who feel their emotions a little more sharply than the rest...full of heartbreak, healing, growth, triumph and tragedy...an all around B++ from an A+ band...the points I took off come from not putting Sweetness on the Singles album and putting it on this one instead (I personally would have gone with a song of theirs called She's Perfect, but then, I'm really just playing armchair producer...and that doesn't accomplish much in the end).