Jimi Giannatti
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight taught us that you either die a hero or survive long enough to see yourself become the villain. The members of Jimmy Eat World have a sunnier take on that bleak wisdom, having become alt-rock heroes and survived long enough to see the musical trend they helped popularize — emo-pop-punk — come around again.
It’s been a whopping 23 years since the Arizona-based foursome released its first album and 15 since they blitzed alt-rock radio with Bleed American, their third and breakthrough disc. Now, they are releasing their ninth album, Integrity Blues, which hits stores 10 days after they play an Oct. 11 gig at the Barrymore Theatre.
Rick Burch, the band’s longtime bassist, still recalls the experience of having Jimmy Eat World’s first single — the title track from Bleed American, yanked from radio playlists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, due to its suddenly unfortunate title. The silver lining? It opened the door for the band’s defining hit, “The Middle,” and catapulted Jimmy Eat World into pop-culture immortality. Burch cites the band’s 2002 appearance on Saturday Night Live (hosted by Cameron Diaz!) as a career highlight, as well as a 2013 concert at Brixton Academy in London, during the band’s Damages tour.
“If you would have asked us 23 years ago if we thought we’d still be out here kicking, I would have said ‘You’re crazy, man, no way,’” says Burch, calling from Arizona. “But every time we’ve gotten to a new country, a new town, that’s been a motivator. That’s how we got started. We wanted to go play in California, then in Texas, in Colorado. We just kept making our loops bigger and bigger.”
The band took a full year off from making music together before reuniting to write Integrity Blues, an 11-song collection of tunes about subjects — love and longing, accepting life’s curveballs — as familiar to Burch and company as their own road-worn skin.
“It’s a current snapshot that includes everything we’ve done in the past,” says Burch. “We really wanted to stretch and challenge ourselves, but we didn’t totally derail ourselves to do it.”
You can hear it in an anthem-rock tune like “Get Right,” with driving guitars and yearning lyrics that sound like they could have fit perfectly into the setlist from Futures, the band’s second album. But Integrity Blues also pushes Jimmy Eat World in a few new directions.
“We were very conscious about letting a song go where it wanted to go,” he says of the album’s production. As an example, he points to “Pass the Baby,” a tune that shifts tone three different times over the course of its five-plus minutes.
“It starts tight and close, and then it has a drifty feel and then a feeling of madness at the end,” Burch explains. “It’s based on an interesting idea we’ve been kicking around for a long time, and now we were finally able to fulfill it.”
Regardless of how the new album and tour connect with old and new fans, Burch isn’t ready to say whether Jimmy Eat World’s in the middle of its career or closer to the end.
“We’re not putting any expiration date on ourselves,” says Burch. “We’ve survived this long by setting short-term goals, taking it album by album. If it’s not feeling right, we won’t flog a dead horse, but at the same time, if Jimmy Eat World ceased, we’d all still find ways to do music.”
As a fortuitous aside, the band’s label has paired with Madison’s Strictly Discs to offer fans who pre-order Integrity Blues on vinyl or CD at the Oct. 11 show an added bonus: a voucher to pick up a seven-inch vinyl of the album’s first single, “Sure & Certain” backed with a non-album track called “My Enemy."
Editor's note: This story was corrected on Oct. 5 to clarify the Strictly Discs offer.
