Jimmy Eat World
Chase This Light
3.5/5

Who It’s For: Fans of Jimmy Eat World…circa 2002.
Sounds Like: The album that everyone was expecting after Bleed American, until Futures was released.

If there’s one thing that can be said about Jimmy Eat World, it’s that they’re consistent. In over ten years and six full lengths under their belt, they somehow manage to be reliably good. However, where many would consider this the bands strength, it may also be their biggest weakness.

After the release of Futures and the Stay on My Side Tonight EP (featuring what many people consider one of their finest songs, “Disintegration”), hopes were high for Chase This Light. The band had seemingly taken a new direction, passing over catchy little ditties and replacing them with sweeping epic buildup tracks like “23”, “Polaris” and “Disintegration”. Sure, Futures had its moments of classic JEW pop-catchiness, but it seemed that for once, a band was growing up with its audience, and writing songs for the same people they had always been writing for.

With Chase This Light, any sign of forward progression has dissipated and the old Jimmy Eat World is back. This will please those who thought that Futures was too brooding or dark and cried for the old Jimmy to return. However, much like Weezer has been repeatedly unable to recapture Blue Album glory after Pinkerton, this new Jimmy album pales in comparison to JEW’s Clarity days. Other than “Gotta Be Somebody’s Blues,” which is unlike anything the band has released to date with it’s intricate string arrangements that actually help the band maintain a menacing tone for an entire song, the rest of the songs sound like carbon copies of previous JEW fare. It’s just too bad that carbon copies never quite reproduce the quality of the originals.

Track Listing:

1. Big Casino
2. Let It Happen
3. Like She’ll Always Be
4. Carry You
5. Electable (Give it Up)
6. Gotta Be Somebody’s Blues
7. Feeling Lucky
8. Here It Goes
9. Chase This Light
10. Firefight
11. Dizzy

- Ryan O’Shaughnessy