Playing the mimic

So, I've been discovered. Through means unknown to me, my brother-in-law has discovered my blog. Time to rent BTILC to see how Kurt Russell handled this (the more I think about the brief clips I saw of this movie, isn't there magic somewhere in this plot? I don't think it's a straight up blow-'em-up-as-they-kung-fu movie. There's something weirder going on.) Of course, I've been poberding my latest post for a couple days now, realizing that this post will sound similar to said brother-in-law post about Bloc Party, but whatever. Yeah, that's right. Whatever. The occasion for this post was that I put in Jimmy Eat World's most recent album into the car the other day because I hadn't listened to it in a while and I wanted to revisit it. First, let me say that me dealings with Jimmy Eat World have been strange. I listened to Bleed American in the summer of '02 and came away unimpressed. I was reintroduced to the album in fall of '02 and fell in love with it. Suddenly, all of the tracks that I had so easily dismissed morphed into instant classics and the album shot to the top of the best of 02 list and best of the 00s list. It's an incredible album, that Bleed American. My first listen to Clarity confirmed my intense approval of Jimmy. I was understandably excited for Futures to come up. Before I even listened to Futures, I went with my little brother to a Jimmy concert in Orem. Songs from Bleed American were spectacular. Songs from Futures...eh...I really didn't get into them. On the way to and from the concert, my brother played Futures and I just wasn't picking up on it. That concert reinforced to me the greatness of concerts, by the way. The finale was Sweetness. It would be impossible, absolutely impossible, to capture the crackling energy and perfection of that song in concert. It was unbelievable. Just knock your socks off great. It would have been worth the price of admission just to walk in, have them play that song, and then walk out. Funny thing too, was that Sweetness wasn't my favorite song off of Bleed American (that would be Get it Faster). But it was by far the best song of the night. Anyway, on to Futures. I think the initial problem with Futures is the inane opening track. Cool guitar line, the lyrics are infuriatingly horrible. Oh, so horrible. Jimmy made a major misstep trying to write about politics (just like every band has done since the Iraq war except for Elbow). Anyway, I listened to Futures for about a year, off and on, and came to the conclusion that this was not a great album. Just a boring, major-label emo release with juvenile lyrics and not to be even remotely compared to their two previous masterpieces (not important to this discussion is whether I like Static Prevails, which I don't).

So I put the album in my car two days ago because it was the first CD I grabbed. Once again, Futures drifted by with great guitar and terrible lyrics. And then something happened. Tracks 2-9 grabbed me with an immediacy I had not felt in a while. It was one of those incredible album experiences where the following song is just as good as the previous great song, where you feel exhausted because you've been exposed to greatness for such an extended period of time (the ultimate album experience is the Achtung experience where you really cannot believe that U2 managed to string together so many awesome songs). Maybe I had my indie on way too much in 2004 when I first heard the album. Anyway, the album confirms what Bleed American proved: That Jimmy should be hailed as the best American rock and roll band around. This is not disparaging Death Cab, but Death Cab seems less rock and roll. Jimmy adores electric guitar usage, but avoids the sludgey sounds of what is currently being passed off as rock and roll by such artists as Nickelback, P.O.D, Puddle of Mudd, etc. Sometimes I'll listen to Britisher Indie bands and think, "why can't indie American bands rock out like Brit Indie bands? Why does indie have to be associated commonly with fragile and wussy?" Jimmy proves there are indie (or once-indie) American bands that manage to achieve both the artistry of indie and the beauty of the loud electric guitar. I'm going to end this post now, but I might finish up later a better description of the various tracks of Futures. But for now, Futures has moved from a run-of-the-mill album, to vying for top album of '04.